Alumni and democracy
By The Dartmouth Editorial Board
Published on Friday, February 17, 2006
Dartmouth is an institution which prides itself, in part, on an ability to produce students who are fair-minded, well-informed and supportive of democratic ideals. These are qualities that are cultivated here in a variety of forms throughout the entire liberal arts curriculum. They are also qualities Dartmouth hopes to instill deeply enough in its students to make them last a lifetime.
These qualities should also be reflected by the backbone of the institution: the alumni. These are the people concerned with keeping our past treasured, our present secure and our future hopeful. It is they who helped students actively resist the unpopular introduction of the Student Life Initiative, they who give countless contributions to better our well-being, and they who have helped ensure the demise of the formidable "housing crunch" by supporting the construction of new dorms.
In light of these facts, we are surprised by the actions the Association of Alumni took at its Sunday meeting. Our surprise, it must be noted, comes not from the measures voted on themselves. The first measure, the implementation of all-media voting, is one with which we are in full agreement. It finally provides to alumni who do not have the means of making the trek up to Hanover on obscure Sundays the ability to vote on issues for which they have every right to vote.
We also agree with the second decision, contingent upon the first, of changing the requisite majority from a three-fourths to a two-thirds majority to pass a measure. With all-media voting established, there should be a significant rise in the number of voters and the majority percentage must reflect this alteration.
The surprise, then, comes from the way in which the Association went about approving these measures. As our article on Monday reported, the meeting did not follow any defined rules of procedure and its leaders were unresponsive to repeated requests into why this was the case. As a result, the meeting provided little room for dissenting voices to fully express themselves. Instead of being passed in an open and egalitarian manner, the changes to the constitution were rammed through the Association in a manner that can only be characterized as undemocratic.
This is behavior that should not be tolerated among current Dartmouth students. That is why it is shocking when our graduates act contrary to the values they fervently work to pass on to future classes.