The People’s United Front to Save Dartmouth
WSJ editorial page writer Joseph Rago (D ‘05) begins his profile of embattled Dartmouth trustee T.J. Rodgers with some dubious praise for the unsung heroics of yacht-less millionaires:
Some men of his means and achievement buy a yacht, or turn to philanthropic work, or join other corporate boards. Mr. Rodgers went back to school: He became a trustee of his alma mater, Dartmouth College–and not a recumbent one.
Still Mr. Rodgers comes off as a likeable and capable figure at the center of a fiercely-fought controversy over trustee alumni representation, a controversy which has lately spilled beyond the nativist-angst-filled pages of the Dartmouth Review and invaded both the op/ed section of the Wall Street Journal as well as the advertising pages of the New York Times (see right). Two groups, Committee to Save Dartmouth College and Vote Dartmouth, have set up websites devoted to the issue, one of which publishes the contact information of every Dartmouth trustee. Its blog invokes the civic wisdom of P Diddy: “Vote or die!” They’ve even got one of those highly-effective online petitions going. “Dear Dartmouth,” the rest of the world wonders, “What the hell is going on?”
UPDATED 9/8: The Board of Trustees has decided to add eight charter trustees (i.e., unelected by alumni) to its membership, in effect packing itself. The D has the story. Also, see Joe Malchow’s excellent account at Joe’s Dartblog.
The backstory is this. Since 1891, eight of Dartmouth’s 18 trustees have been directly elected by alumni, usually from a slate of candidates pre-approved by the administration. A couple years ago, however, Rodgers — unhappy with what he perceived as a drift away from Dartmouth’s core commitment to the excellence of undergraduate education — decided to bypass the process and was elevated to the ballot by petition, ruffling the feathers of many an apparatchik along the way.
Three more so-called petition candidates have been subsequently elected, and some see this as part of a concerted ideological take-over. Rodgers, in the WSJ profile, refers to his petition buddies as, “independent people willing to challenge the status quo,” which is clearly a euphemism for “conservative:” one of the new trustees is the author of such books as How Ronald Reagan Changed My Life and It’s My Party: A Republican’s Messy Love Affair with the GOP.
The Dartmouth administration, meanwhile, is frankly up to no good. Last spring they introduced a measure which would have curbed the power of alumni to determine the trustees. Shockingly, the alumni declined to vote away their own voting rights. Now the administration has sunk to a new level of insidery skullduggery: they’ve convened an ominous-sounding “Governance Committee” to “reform” the process of trustee-elections.
The rhetoric is heated on both sides. Figures allied with the administration tell tales of a “radical minority cabal” and a “sinister conservative conspiracy.” For his part, T.J. Rodgers has declared, “This is not a conservative-liberal conflict. This is a libertarian-totalitarian conflict.” And yet the real story may be closest to what one student at Dartmouth confided,
a lot of prose has been spilled on both sides, but i don’t think i’ve ever actually talked to any undergraduate in person who cares or knows anything about the trustee election.
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September 6th, 2007 at 12:05 am
Good coverage, but…*yawn*
September 6th, 2007 at 12:16 am
A thoroughly researched, informative article without a hint of gossip and no mention of Facebook? For shame!
September 6th, 2007 at 6:35 am
good article (ie informative) and reinforces two ideas: 1) nobody at dart cares what is going on and 2) dart’s admin is backwards in so many ways.
September 6th, 2007 at 7:19 am
The whole thing is a joke. Mostly, it’s something for bored, old alumni to do. Recent alumni and current students are overwhelmingly happy with the College, despite the obvious shortcomings of the current administration, which is far from permanent. The problem is that the petition candidates have run on campaigns that more or less trash Dartmouth, so that they can sensationalize the issues and freak the shit out of alumni from the 1950s onward. You know, Dartmouth Review-style. I could only laugh when I was an undergraduate and was hearing people who have long since had nothing to do with the College tell me about how unhappy I was.
September 6th, 2007 at 1:23 pm
amen d’07 – these trustee battles are being fought by alums whose idealistic views of what dartmouth should be went out the window when we went co-ed. no one on campus/young alums care – the school must be doing something right. everyone i know loved their experience and will be sending their kids there too.
September 6th, 2007 at 2:45 pm
I disagree with d’05 and d’07. I along with all of my dartmouth friends have been passionate about dartmouth since we were forced to make that final move out of mid mass or hitchcock or where ever we were living in of the year we graduated. Even while we were there, we were not happy with the “harvardizing” agenda of James O. Freedman (the former president). Like many students, were were ignorant of trustee politics at that time (not disinterested). But once we got out into the world, and found out what happened behind closed doors we were alarmed! This is not about conservative or liberal. this is about our right to choose our own leaders! It’s about checks and balances. Using the argument that people at dartmouth are perfectly happy and don’t care about whether people vote their leaders or not is akin to saying that as long as life in the US is okay for me, i don’t care whether we have a representative democracy or a totalitarian dictator.
you guys might be happy now. but what if the dartmouth board is taken over by former dartmouth review editors 20 years from now? don’t you want a way to vote people in who will oppose their agenda? What if the trustees all of a sudden decide that graduate education is more important than undergraduate education? Or that the admission requirements should be relaxed to the level of U Mich or UCLA… wouldn’t you want to be able to choose leaders who will oppose such tom foolery? This issue is more than sensationalizing gripes. It’s about who controls the destiny of the college for future generations…
September 6th, 2007 at 2:54 pm
dartmouth undergrads do care about the trustee issue–those who care about the college anyway
September 7th, 2007 at 12:03 pm
Of course “caring about” a place and actually owning it are different things. Only eighteen people own Dartmouth, and they are the Board of Trustees. Anyone else is just making a power-grab, and if he has to froth on with irrelevancies about “democracy” and a “right to vote,” I wouldn’t put it past him.
September 7th, 2007 at 11:07 pm
Agreed with ‘96. When I am an alum, I hope the college accepts my input as well as my money.
September 8th, 2007 at 7:44 pm
This new 26-member BoT is fucking bullshit. Of course, all the added seats are charter trustees.
September 10th, 2007 at 1:29 pm
As I understand the law of trusts, trustees hold property “in trust” for the exclusive benefit of the trust beneficiaries. Trustees are meant to serve the interests of others, not themselves.
To that end, the presence of an opposing voice is essential not only to good governance, but also to education. The expansion of the Board effectively silences the opposing voice. I have questions: why doesn’t the administration want to entertain difference of opinion, to debate their plans? Are they afraid that these plans can’t withstand scrutiny?
This seems like the behavior of poor losers, as though the charter trustees had said, “If we cannot win the game under the present rules, we’ll change the rules.” That smacks of immaturity… and these people will lead the College into the future?
September 10th, 2007 at 1:31 pm
As I understand the law of trusts, trustees hold property “in trust” for the exclusive benefit of the trust beneficiaries. Trustees serve the interests of others, not themselves.
To that end, the presence of an opposing voice is essential not only to good governance, but also to education. The expansion of the Board effectively silences the opposing voice. I have questions: why doesn’t the administration want to entertain difference of opinion, to debate their plans? Are they afraid that these plans can’t withstand scrutiny?
This seems like the behavior of poor losers, as though the charter trustees had said, “If we cannot win the game under the present rules, we’ll change the rules.” That smacks of immaturity… and these people will lead the College into the future?
September 12th, 2007 at 8:09 am
If “the presence of an opposing voice” were essential, then it would be required by law just as every other duty with which the trustees comply is required by law.
Should we really expect the board to heed your (or anyone’s) uninformed ideas about how it should do its job, or whether it is full of “poor losers” or is perceived by you to be changing the rules? Why should they care?
Don’t forget that all of the insurgents participated in this vote too. It was a decision of the full board, with Wright recusing himself and the Governor absent.
September 12th, 2007 at 3:10 pm
The 1500 people who marched against the SLI and the frats that canceled Winter Carnival back in ‘99 would disagree with the statement that “no undergrad cares.”
October 18th, 2007 at 1:32 pm
Packing the board is clearly an attempt to disenfranchise the alumni. I think the first step in the Alumni Association’s response should be to sue in court for a temporary injunction. That will freeze the status quo while a court decides whether or not the alumni have standing to challenge the board’s action. Letting this gross injustice stand without formal legal action gives it the appearance of legitimacy and a TRO will go a long way towards sending a signal to the administration that its actions will be opposed and the opposition’s claims have potential merit.
October 18th, 2007 at 1:34 pm
Packing the board is clearly an attempt to disenfranchise the alumni. I think the first step in the Alumni Association’s response should be to sue in court for a temporary injunction. That will freeze the status quo while a court decides whether or not the alumni have standing to challenge the board’s action. Letting this gross injustice stand without formal legal action gives it the appearance of legitimacy and a TRO will go a long way towards sending a signal to the administration that its actions will be opposed and the opposition’s claims have potential merit.