Understanding Dartmouth: The Board of Trustees

We’ve all heard of the Board of Trustees, but does any­one re­ally know what it does?

“Well, I don’t know, they’re a board of peo­ple that Dart­mouth trusts,” some may re­spond — in this case a '15 who prefers not to be named.

This enig­matic group of Dart­mouth alums pos­sesses sig­nif­i­cant power over our beloved Dart­mouth, and their de­ci­sions im­pact each of us. Ac­cord­ing to Dart­mouth’s orig­i­nal char­ter, the Board is given the power to es­tab­lish the “or­di­nances, order and laws as may tend to the good and whole­some gov­ern­ment” of Dart­mouth. Its web­site also states that the Board has con­trol over “the ap­point­ment of fac­ulty and prin­ci­pal ad­min­is­tra­tive of­fi­cers, the pur­chase and dis­po­si­tion of real prop­erty, the es­tab­lish­ment of salary scales, and the award­ing of de­grees.” In other words, it's pretty im­por­tant.

Most stu­dents have a de­cent, but vague, grasp of what the Board does. An as­sort­ment of re­sponses about their du­ties in­cludes: “they deal with the bud­get,” they “de­cide what money in the bud­get should go to­wards,” they try to “keep up with alumni net­works,” and they “fig­ure out how to spend the en­dow­ment and the money to best help the stu­dents, hope­fully.”

The Board also ap­points the pres­i­dent of Dart­mouth and ap­proves in­sti­tu­tional poli­cies. It is com­posed of the gov­er­nor of New Hamp­shire and Pres­i­dent Kim, as well as eight alumni trustees and 16 char­ter trustees. Char­ter trustees are elected by a ma­jor­ity vote of the Board, while alumni trustees are nom­i­nated by alumni. The du­ties and pow­ers of both are iden­ti­cal and each mem­ber, aside from the pres­i­dent and the gov­er­nor, serves no more than two four-year terms.

Gail Koziara Boudreaux ’82 and Bill Burgess ’81 were elected to the Board in April 2011. Al­most 16 per­cent of Dart­mouth alumni, or 10,572, voted in the elec­tion.

Board mem­bers are very high-pro­file in­di­vid­u­als, so it’s no won­der that some nom­i­nees, such as John Re­plogle, even cre­ate cam­paign videos to gain votes. Mem­bers in­clude the CEO and pres­i­dent of eBay, the se­nior ad­viser of Mor­gan Stan­ley, a re­cip­i­ent of the Na­tional Medal of Sci­ence, the CEO of GE and the CEO of Unit­ed­Health­care.

Twenty of the 26 trustees re­ceived grad­u­ate de­grees from ei­ther an Ivy League school or Stan­ford Uni­ver­sity. There are seven women on the board and 19 men. Pre­vi­ously, the Board re­stricted alumni of less than five years from join­ing, but this lim­i­ta­tion has been abol­ished. The vast ma­jor­ity of mem­bers, how­ever, are grad­u­ates from the 70s or 80s, with three from the 60s.

Last year, the Board’s fo­cuses, ac­cord­ing to Chair Stephen Man­del Jr. ’78, were “en­sur­ing the on­go­ing fi­nan­cial health of the Col­lege” and in­creas­ing “vis­i­bil­ity and ac­ces­si­bil­ity to the broader Dart­mouth com­mu­nity.” In terms of fi­nances, the Board of Trustees re­cently en­acted a plan to cut $100 mil­lion in ex­penses. In April, the Board also ap­proved the con­struc­tion of the Alpha Phi soror­ity house pro­ject, re­spond­ing to stu­dent de­sire for more soror­i­ties. In an ef­fort to reach out to alumni, the Board is host­ing sev­eral alumni club events across the coun­try this year, hop­ing to hear from alumni first­hand about dif­fer­ent per­spec­tives on Dart­mouth life and ideas for im­prove­ment. Kim will make an ap­pear­ance at sev­eral of those events.

The Board met Nov. 4-5 will have an­other March 2, 2012. In case you for­get, every time you see a green light shin­ing from Baker Tower, you know the trustees are in town.

If so in­clined, you can like the Board of Trustees on Face­book — though I’m warn­ing you, you might be the first in your friend group to do so. Nonethe­less, it's not a bad idea to brush up on your knowl­edge about the peo­ple that pull the strings that con­trol the col­lege you at­tend.