JoeVsDartmouth.com -- which billed itself as a web site founded by Dartmouth alumni against the petition candidacy of Joe Asch '79 for the Board of Trustees -- was taken down Saturday evening. Christopher Allen '07, the chief technical officer for the shared campaign between Alumni Council-nominated candidates for the Board of Trustees -- John Replogle '88 and Morton Kondracke '60 -- created the site, according to his user profile on Blogger.com, which also cites him as the creator of the campaign web sites of Replogle and Kondracke.
Allen could not be reached for comment by press time.
"This website [sic] has been created by Dartmouth alumni who believe Joe Asch's actions and approach to Dartmouth issues make him unable to be a constructive member of the Dartmouth Board of Trustees," the web site said. "Read his words and those of his supporters and detractors, and decide for yourself."
The web site contained a series of unattributed posts, each referencing an article from The Dartmouth, The Dartmouth Review, the Valley News or a post on Dartblog, a web site to which Asch frequently contributes.
Both Replogle and Kondracke denied involvement with the web site's creation.
"I am not responsible for that web site nor do I have editorial control of it," Replogle said. "But it does look to me to be pretty factual as it mainly reports on public data and draws from recent publications in either Joe's web site or The D or [the Valley News]."
Replogle added that he thinks the web site "can be a valuable source of information for alumni to educate themselves."
When asked about Allen's connection to the "JoevsDartmouth" web site, Replogle and Kondracke both denied prior knowledge of the web site's creation.
"I don't know anything about the creation of that web site," Kondracke said. "I knew it was up, [but] I didn't even know [Allen] was doing it."
The domain JoevsDartmouth.com was registered to Domains By Proxy, Inc., an anonymous proxy service that registers domains on behalf of web site creators who wish to keep their identities anonymous. Both domains for Replogle's and Kondracke's respective campaign web sites are officially registered to Allen, according to information publicly available in the WHOIS database on GoDaddy.com, the domain registrar which processed the sale of all three domains.
Joevsdartmouth.com was created on Feb. 9, according to the database listing. Asch filed his petitions to be included on the Trustee ballot on Feb. 2.
One section of the web site titled "Joe vs Dartmouth: Asch's Own Words" included two references to Asch's previous postings on Dartblog.
The site also included a section titled "Others on Joe," offering several links to articles and letters to the Editor in The Dartmouth about Asch's previous involvement with the College.
A cached version of the "John Replogle for Dartmouth Trustee" web site included a section called "Joe vs. Dartmouth," which was recently taken down.
In a previous interview with The Dartmouth, Asch criticized that portion of Replogle's web site.
"You don't raise yourself up by lowering someone else down," Asch said. "We should try to keep the campaign civil and positive - on what we're going to do rather than why the other guy isn't adequate."
Offering links to a previous article in The Dartmouth ("State denies control over College's charter" Feb. 13, 2008), the web site suggested that Asch advocated for a lawsuit against the College.
In previous interviews with The Dartmouth, Asch has stated that he was never a supporter of the second lawsuit against the College, although he does support parity on the Board.
The lawsuit was the second legal challenge to the Board's decision on parity, and both suits argued that the Board's decision violated an 1891 agreement to maintain parity, which they saw as legally binding. The first lawsuit, filed by the Association of Alumni in October 2007, was withdrawn by the Association after the alumni body elected a new executive board to the Association in June 2008. The lawsuit was dismissed with prejudice, but an independent group of alumni brought a second lawsuit in November 2008, which was dismissed in a motion for summary judgement by Judge Timothy Vaughan on Jan. 7.
The web site also included quotes from Asch in a Valley News article in which Asch expressed his doubt about President Jim Yong Kim's appointment to lead the College.
"When Jim Kim was named President of Dartmouth, Joe said to the Valley News that he 'would have preferred a president who was a world-class scholar,' and criticized his administrative experience, explaining 'I would not hire as a CEO of a major corporation someone who has never run a company before,'" the web site read.
Another link in the "Asch's Own Words" section cast doubt on the appropriateness of one of Asch's previous postings on the Dartblog web site.
"Joe blogged about the format of staff time sheets under the headline 'The Dark Satanic Mills of the Dartmouth Bureaucracy,'" the web site said. "Dartmouth's staff is overseen by the Trustees."
Stephanie Welsch-Lewin '88, the joint campaign manager for Repogle and Kondracke, could not be reached for comment by press time.
Senior Staff writer Kate Farley contributed to the reporting of this article.
View a cached version of the Joevsdartmouth.com web site saved by The Dartmouth.
