Lawsuit against Dartmouth
by Tom Temple
Oct 3, 08:31 PM
Is the subject of the most recent “Speaking of Dartmouth” email. After reading it, all I know is that 1) it has something to do with the board of trustees and 2) I’m supposed to be mad about the lawsuit.
The lack of substance was pretty troubling. It reminded me of all the constitution mailings I got. i.e. a power grab. I can see Joran’s point that such power grabs are not necessarily bad for the college, I just don’t like when people try to manipulate me.
So with a little effort you can find out that the issue is the following. The alumni elect half the board of trustees. The board votes to add more seats to the board. Should half of those new seats be elected by the trustees or not? Jim thinks no, most of the alumni think yes.
Does anyone know how this problem came to be? If half of the board is responsive to the alumni, how could the other half manage to push such a thing through? And if there is dispute within the board, it should certainly be resolved within the current membership as opposed to after one side has granted themselves extra votes. So it would seem, I too advocate an injunction. I imagine that such would not severely “harm” the college or if it did, I hope it wouldn’t be “immeasurable” nor be too much of a “distraction … to the students faculty and staff”, or be “wildly expensive”.
Oct 6, 02:14 PM
“Should half of those new seats be elected by the trustees or not? Jim thinks no, most of the alumni think yes.”
I’m kind of nitpicking here, but shouldn’t we say that “slightly more than half of alumni who actively participate in college elections think yes”?
What I’m worried about is this. My position on the role of alumni is that we’re enablers. We give money, if we like what the college is doing. Otherwise, I have no “right” to a “voice” in setting policy for the college. (Obviously, lots of alumni will disagree with this.)
But my position on the correct role for alumni leads me to, in general, not vote, and not pay much attention to these sorts of issues at all. So I worry that there is a large number of alumni out there who think similarly (perhaps implicitly), but we don’t hear about them because, well, they don’t much care. But the fact that they don’t care stems from their belief that alumni don’t have any business having this great a role in college policy, which is important.
Just to balance this out, though, I agree with your general sentiment Tom that Jim Wright et al have been pretty brazen about implementing a, well, power grab. I just don’t think it really makes that much of a difference for the college, or for me, so I don’t much care.