No Smoke-Filled Rooms Here
By Andrea M. Lordan, Chair, Nominating and Trustee Search Committee of the Alumni Council, Cambridge, MA
Published on Thursday, March 3, 2005
To the Editor:
I want to correct a statement made by Joseph Asch '79 in his op-ed article about the upcoming trustee elections ("Dear Old Dartmouth?," Feb. 28). Asch says that the petition candidates are "running against a slate of candidates chosen by the College's usual procedures." The process to nominate a slate of candidates for election by the alumni body is a process designed by alumni (as governed by the constitution of the Association of Alumni and the Alumni Council) and run by alumni (a nominating committee comprised of 9 alumni who serve on a rotating basis).
This committee of alumni volunteers spends the better part of a year soliciting nominations from the alumni, researching potential candidates, doing extensive confidential referencing and, finally, interviewing a "short list" of candidates in order to put forth a slate to their fellow alumni for the final selection. To imply that this process is one conducted by the College, and thus indirectly that these candidates are not independent of the administration, is simply wrong. It shows either a lack of understanding of the alumni-driven nature of the process that results in these nominations, or a willful attempt to mislead readers to achieve the author's agenda.
As previously publicized in the alumni magazine and the e-mail publication "Speaking of Dartmouth," all alumni who wish to submit names for consideration in the nominating process can do so by going to http://alumni.dartmouth.edu/leadership/nominate.html. In today's online world, that is as open a process as can be conceived.