A slate of petition candidates is in the process of soliciting signatures to allow the slate's inclusion on the Association of Alumni executive committee ballot, according to an e-mail obtained Friday by The Dartmouth.
The e-mail was originally sent by John MacGovern '80 at the Hanover Institute on Jan. 7. In the e-mail, MacGovern said he would support the slate of candidates and asked recipients to respond and add their signatures to the candidates' petition. He apologized for the "extremely short time frame" left for recipients to submit signatures.
The candidates who include J. Michael Murphy '61, a petition candidate in the 2008 Association presidential election have until today to collect the required 50 signatures to be included as a petition slate.
John Mathias '69, current Association president and candidate in the upcoming election, said Friday that he does not know if the slate has filed its petition papers yet.
No one had filed to be included as a petition slate on the Association ballot as of Friday, according to Diana Lawrence, director of communications for the Office of Alumni Relations.
Lawrence added that it is "not unexpected" that a slate would be proposed in the near future.
MacGovern is the founder of the Hanover Institute, a nonprofit organization that has supported the campaigns of several petition candidates for the Association and for the Board of Trustees in the past. The Institute is also helping to fund the current alumni lawsuit against the College, as previously reported by The Dartmouth. The lawsuit contends that the Board's 2007 decision to increase the number of Board-selected members is a violation of an 1891 Board resolution, which they say legally requires parity between the Board-selected and alumni-elected trustees. The lawsuit was originally brought against the College by the Association in the fall of 2007, and was the major issue of contention between the petition and Association-nominated slates during the 2008 Association election. This election saw the face-off between then-Association presidential candidates Murphy and Mathias.
Mathias, leader of the "unity" slate for the Association, ended the lawsuit following his election. The current Institute-backed lawsuit, which remains ongoing, followed the dismissal of the Association lawsuit.
Both John Daukas Jr. '84, chair of the alumni liaison committee for the Alumni Council, and Mathias said they suspect the proposed petition slate would support the ongoing lawsuit against the College.
"If [the petitioners] are struggling to get signatures, I guess that might indicate that there aren't as many unhappy alumni as perhaps there have been in the past," Daukas said. "Maybe the Hanover Institute's support of the lawsuit has turned some alumni against them. They kind of have constant criticism against the College and maybe that's wearing thin, and especially because we have a new [College] President that people are happy about."
MacGovern could not be reached for comment by press time.
Stuart Richards '63, who is listed as one of the proposed executive committee candidates declined to comment when contacted by The Dartmouth, stating that he would rather wait until the campaign is more organized.
Bradford Borden '54, a member of executive committee on the proposed slate, also declined to comment, saying he would prefer to wait until the petition is official.
The Association petition slate includes Alpha Bond '52 and Diane Ellis '08 as first and second vice presidents, respectively, with Emily Esfahani-Smith '09 as the candidate for secretary-treasurer.
Esfahani-Smith is the former editor-in-chief of The Dartmouth Review.
The executive committee members on the slate of candidates include Richards, Borden, Alan Orschel '61, Richard Paris '71, James Guth '77, James Baehr '05, Noah Riner '06 and David Martosko '91.
During his time at Dartmouth, Riner served as student body president and drew controversy when his speech at the 2005 Convocation ceremonies contained religious statements, including that Jesus was "the solution to flawed people like corrupt Dartmouth alums, looters and me," The Dartmouth reported previously.
The rest of the members of the slate could not be reached for comment by press time.
