With the election period for the Association of Alumni elections ending in two weeks, the "Unity" slate led by current Association President John Mathias '69 is engaging in e-mail and word-of-mouth campaigning, while the "Dartmouth United" slate is in the process of sending a postcard mailing to thousands of alumni, according to the candidates.
Although the "bills" for the mailing have not been paid yet,petition presidential candidate J. Michael Murphy '61 said he hopes that John MacGovern '80 of the Hanover Institute willpay some of those bills once the election is completed.
"MacGovern will hopefully see to it that the contributions he's gotten from Dartmouth people will pay some of our [bills]," Murphy said.
By the end of the election, MacGovern "will have helped," Murphy said.
In a previous interview with The Dartmouth, Murphy said the slate was not backed by the Hanover Institute but that Murphy had contacted MacGovern while choosing potential candidates for the slate.
The Hanover Institute is a nonprofit organization that hassupported the campaigns of several petition candidates for the Association and Board in past elections, also funding the recent lawsuit against the College.
The group's mailing is intended to direct College alumni to the slate's web site, Murphy said.
"We can't win on catchy slogans," Murphy said. "We hope we can get people to go to the web site and take 15 minutes or so to read what's there."
The postcard was sent to the limited mailing list to which the slate has access, Murphy said.
"We have a great handicap of trouble with mailing list access," Murphy said. "We can't reach everybody the way the other slate can. We do the best we can."
Mathias said that contrary to what some people have contended in the past, his slate does not have access to any College mailing lists.
Dartmouth Undying, a nonprofit organization that has supported Alumni Council and Association-nominated candidates in recent years, has sent two mailings on behalf of the Mathias slate, according to Martha Beattie '76, one of Dartmouth Undying's leaders during this election period.
Dartmouth Undying does not have access to College mailing lists, Beattie said, estimating that the Dartmouth Undying mailing list reaches about 30,000 College alumni.
Beattie said she anticipates the organization will send out athird mailing before the voting period ends. The first was sent one week prior to the voting period and the second arrived in alumni mailboxes during the first week of the voting period, she said.
Each mailing costs "about $30,000," Beattie said.
The candidates also took opposing stances on the appeal to theNew Hampshire Supreme Court in the second alumni lawsuit about parity between alumni-elected and Board-selected seats on the College Board of Trustees.
Mathias and Murphy opposed each other as presidential candidates in the 2008 Association election. At the time, the Association had brought a lawsuit against the College contending that the Board of Trustees' 2007 decision to increase the number of Board-selected members from eight to 16 was a violation of an 1891 Board resolution, which required parity between the Board-selected and alumni-elected trustees.
Mathias' slate ran on a platform of ending the lawsuit, while Murphy's slate included members of the 2007 Association that filed the initial lawsuit against the College, none of which are on the current petition slate.
"We ran the first time promising to end litigation and we ended it," Mathias said.
Following Mathias's election, the Association withdrew thelawsuit with prejudice in 2008. Months later, an independent group of alumni filed a second suit with the same claims to parity based upon an 1891 agreement, which was dismissed in January 2010 by Judge Timothy Vaughan. On March 15, the plaintiffs announced their intention to appeal the case's dismissal.
Mathias said he was "disappointed" upon hearing the news of the appeal in the second suit, while Murphy said he understands why the plaintiffs felt the need to file an appeal.
"I guess the only thing I can say is that we understand theplaintiffs believe very strongly in what they're doing," Murphy said. "I guess they just want to satisfy themselves that they've exhausted every possibility and this would be the last logical step."
While the petition slate's members have varying opinions on the lawsuit, none "had anything to do with the Association lawsuit or this individual lawsuit," Murphy said.
Murphy explained that some members of his slate disapprove of the lawsuit, while others understand why some alumni felt that a lawsuit was necessary to correct the trustees' 2007 decision to end parity.
Mathias emphasized that his slate has "rejected" any form of litigation against the College in order to restore parity.
"Litigation is never an appropriate means for Dartmouth alumni to end political disputes," Mathias said.
Murphy said he hopes the lawsuits will end by a resolutionof the parity issue.
"We hope that the trustees would reconsider the parity question now that they've had two to three years to see the effects of what they did," Murphy said, adding that the end of parity had a "terrible effect on alumni unity."
Both Mathias and Murphy claimed that their opponent slates are focusing more on the lawsuit than is appropriate in the current election.
"We want to move away from the issues that [the "Dartmouth United" slate] consistently bring up," Mathias said. "They're campaigning as if ending the lawsuit was a bad thing and that's a huge difference between us."
In a similar manner, Murphy criticized the "Unity slate," led by Mathias.
"The other slate is trying to make an issue of the lawsuit inthis election when it doesn't apply," Murphy said. "How many elections do there have to be before they drop the issue?"
Mathias said that his slate hopes to "move on" by workingcollaboratively with College President Jim Yong Kim.
"We want to work with President Kim to involve our alumni in great issues facing the world today and join together in an effort to make a difference," Mathias said. "Alumni deserve more from their elected representatives."
Before parity negotiations, the Association first had to "create an environment" where it could discuss adding more alumni-elected trustees to the Board by ending the first lawsuit, Mathias said.
"We want to increase the number of elected trustees," Mathias said. "But we're doing it with civility, collegiality and persuasion - not suing, demanding, confronting and dividing."
If elected, the Unity slate - which consists of nine current members of the Association executive committee - plans to continue meetings with the Board to discuss the parity issue, Mathias said.
The Unity slate will also work to develop a "controlling consensus among politically active alumni" about potential reforms to campaign finance regulations for trustee elections, Mathias said.
Murphy declined to share his slate's plans to resolve the parity issue, saying it would be inappropriate to discuss the plans since the Board keeps its discussions private.
In recent years, trustee candidates have spent more than $100,000 to finance their campaigns, The Dartmouth previously reported.
Mathias explained his opinion that campaign finance reform should be addressed before more alumni-elected trustee seats are added to the Board, which would assure the Board that the elections for the added seats would not be as "expensive" and "contentious" as many of the recent elections have been.
MacGovern could not be reached for comment by press time.
