The two Alumni Council-nominated trustee candidates for the upcoming Board of Trustees election Morton Kondracke '60 and John Replogle '88 announced the composition of a joint steering committee for their campaigns on Thursday. The candidates will both use the committee composed of over 100 Dartmouth alumni as a forum for dialogue between the candidates and the alumni body, Replogle said.
"[The committee's] key role is two-way communication to provide us with insights, but also to do broad outreach to alumni," Replogle said, adding that the committee will work to raise general awareness for the election among College alumni.
Voting for the trustee elections will take place from March 10 until April 7.
The announcement of the steering committee came one week before the Feb. 4 deadline for alumni to file for inclusion on the trustee ballot as petition candidates. Joe Asch '79 announced his intention to enter the race and oppose Replogle last week.
The steering committee represents a "distinguished group of alumni" that encompasses over 50 years of graduating classes of the College across a range of affinity and geographic groups, Kondracke said in an interview with The Dartmouth.
"This is not a final list this is a list to be grown," Kondracke said. "We're inviting anybody who is seriously interested in doing some work to give us a hand, and these people will be recruiting other people as well."
Although Kondracke highlighted the diversity of the committee, Asch said that the committee seems to be primarily composed of Alumni Council members.
"The Alumni Council very much wants its candidates to win," Asch said. "Those people, who most all of them are either present or past alumni councillors, have rallied behind their candidate."
In addition to sharing a steering committee, the two candidates are also running a "coordinated" campaign, said Stephanie Welsch-Lewin '88, campaign manager for Replogle and Kondracke's joint effort.
Two of the campaign's primary goals are to have Kondracke and Replogle elected with "the largest number of alumni votes ever cast" and to enlist alumni from the steering committee to spread support for the candidates throughout the alumni body, Welsch-Lewin said.
"[The third goal is to] really bring to the surface the maximum number of smart ideas from all of these alumni that we are working with so that we can move beyond the poisonous landscape of never-ending lawsuits against the College," Welsch-Lewin said.
The campaign efforts for Kondracke and Replogle are now being funded entirely by the supporters of the Council-nominated candidates, Welsch-Lewin said. Alumni can choose to contribute through donations of their time or money, she added.
"We really hope that it doesn't have any need to turn into an expensive campaign," Welsch-Lewin said. "We're hoping that the money we are able to raise is enough and that the candidates are not required to shell out substantial monies of their own."
Although the two candidates are sharing campaign efforts, the two will remain individually distinct in the upcoming months, Replogle said.
"[Kondracke] and I are both unique candidates we have different experiences and backgrounds but we have a commonality in that we were both vetted by the Alumni Council," Replogle said. "What we have tried to do is communicate effectively with a broad base of alumni and do the outreach."
Replogle added that he and Kondracke share a similar style of "collaboration" and common interest in "the sound stewardship of the Dartmouth Experience," which makes a collaborative effort a sensible strategy.
Although Kondracke and Replogle are working on a joint campaign, Asch said the he does not believe this collaboration will have a major effect on the outcome of the contest between Asch and Replogle.
"This is a campaign of ideas and both of them seem to have the same ideas, and they're different from mine," Asch said.
Kondracke said he is not currently aware of any alumni who plan to challenge him as a petition candidate in the upcoming election.
"If I don't have an opponent, I'm going to campaign as strongly as if I did," Kondracke said, adding that a portion of the campaigning would be in order to support Replogle if he is contested.
