The Dartmouth Alumni Council has voted to nominate only one candidate to seek election for each of the two Board of Trustee seats vacant in the spring 2010 trustee race, the Council announced in a statement released Sept. 17.
The decision is intended to facilitate head-to-head competition against petition candidates that Alumni Council members believe will enter the elections, according to Tom Daniels '82, chair of the Alumni Council Nominating and Alumni Trustee Search Committee.
Petition candidates have been elected in the last four election cycles, and are expected to enter the race again in the spring. These candidate have traditionally been outspoken in their criticism of College policies.
The vote on the resolution was conducted by e-mail, with 88 eligible alumni councilors voting in favor, and three against.
In May, 82 percent of eligible alumni supported an amendment to the alumni constitution that lowered the number of Council-nominated candidates from a required three to "no more than two."
The Alumni Council has always planned to nominate only one candidate per open seat if petition candidates are likely to enter the race, and made this clear during efforts to generate support for the amendment, Council member and former Council president John Daukas '84 said in an interview with The Dartmouth.
Past trustee elections with a large number of candidates have suffered from crowded pools, Daniels said in an interview. These elections also saw instances of ticket-splitting and trustees elected by a small minority of alumni, he added.
Joe Asch '79 is a likely petition candidate, Daukas said. Asch, a vocal alumnus who by his own estimation has contributed over 30 columns to The Dartmouth over the past eight years, and became a regular contributor to Dartblog starting on Aug. 22. The blog, founded by Joe Malchow '08, is often critical of College policies.
Malchow is currently an employee of Trustee T.J. Rodgers '70, the chief executive officer of Cypress Semiconductors and a former petition candidate, Asch said.
Asch, in an interview with The Dartmouth, declined to comment on his possible candidacy. He said he believes that the Council would be well-served to nominate someone with "inside" knowledge of the College, such as a professor or dean.
"If the council nominates someone like that, I'll be the first to support them," Asch said, adding that he has "never ruled out" running as a petition candidate.
The September Alumni Council resolution does not affect future Councils, which will be free to select up to two candidates for each vacant trustee seat.
"If in the future it appeared that there wasn't going to be a petition candidate, I imagine the Council would select two [candidates]," John Mathias '69, president of the Association of Alumni, said.
If no petition candidates run in the spring 2010 elections, the Council-nominated candidates would run uncontested.
While the Council would prefer there to be contested elections, Daukas said, he emphasized that the nomination process entails vetting and choosing a candidate from "an extensive" pool of alumni-suggested potential nominees.
"[An uncontested election] would be a kind of de facto appointment, but there's been a ton of the alumni input in the nomination process," Daukas said.
The Council will accept nominations for trustee candidates until Nov. 3. After the Alumni Council announces its slate of candidates, petition candidates will have up to two months to procure the 500 alumni signatures required to appear on the ballot.
