Sounding Board

By Brendan Woods, Contributing Columnist

Published on Tuesday, February 23, 2010

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Apparently, there is a storm a-brewin’.

Reading the pages of The Dartmouth, one would think that there is an epic battle taking shape. Debates over parity and other issues rage at fever pitch, most recently in the riveting race for one of two alumni-elected seats on the Board of Trustees. The contest is shaping up to be a classic case of new vs. old: in the one corner, we have the petition candidate — a man who is either a bold change agent and dedicated student advocate or a dangerous loose cannon; in the other we have the alumni council nominee, the mild-mannered CEO of a lip balm company.

All this activity has forced student attention to a rather mysterious aspect of the Dartmouth community, namely, the Board of Trustees. If the trustees were a Cabinet office, they would be something like the Commerce Department — you know that it’s important, but you’re not sure what it does and, hey, you’ve never actually seen its members. Now that there is so much discussion around the trustees, current students have been taking a look at the Board for the first time. I’ve taken that look, and I have a few questions.

My first question has to do with the Board’s mission. At its founding, Dartmouth’s charter only required the trustees to do two things: swear an oath of allegiance to King George and purchase buildings for the service of the College. Today, the Board serves as a combination of investment council, advisory board and final authority on all College matters — powerful stewards of Dartmouth. With such important responsibilities, the Board should be representative of the entire Dartmouth community. Why, then, has it denied the Student Assembly’s requests to grant senior students the right to vote in Board elections, as the Board did in 1997 and 1999?

The second set of questions is about the trustees’ role in the Dartmouth community. According to the trustees page on the Dartmouth web site, the trustees are leaders in prominent fields such as business and academia. It is perhaps a sign of their prominence outside of Dartmouth that I have not seen any of the trustees at a campus-wide event since College President Jim Yong Kim’s inauguration. It’s certainly worthwhile to have such talented and influential people in the service of Dartmouth. But the average student — whose only knowledge about the trustees comes from the biographies on their web site — might wonder if, with such demanding primary jobs, these people have the time to fully serve Dartmouth. Furthermore, the trustees’ web site says the Board has “ultimate responsibility for the financial, administrative and academic affairs of the College,” but what does this entail? Few students, if any, know the answer.

If the trustees want to clear up these questions for students, they should involve students in a more open process with communication in both directions. To do this, I propose two solutions.

First, prove that you are committed to representing the interests of Dartmouth as a whole. This would ideally take the form of promoting the inclusion of student representation on the Board (as Cornell and Princeton have) or by granting the senior class the right to vote in Board elections. As the people most knowledgeable about the day-to-day life of the College, seniors’ opinions would provide a valuable perspective and a much needed student voice to the Board’s affairs.

Second, give us more to go on than a web site. We have little idea what the Board does, and know even less about how it makes its decisions. An article last week in The Dartmouth (“College Board Set Apart from Peers’,” Feb. 18) reported that Harvard runs itself with comparatively little input from either of its boards. The Board must prove that it is more than a group of successful alumni that comes to campus a few times to lay off staff. The Board of trustees held its first ever open forum with the student body in 2007, but since then the only time it has sought significant student input was during the presidential search process. We would all benefit if the Board held more focus groups and town hall-style events, and not just for the momentous and rare occasion of picking a president.

The Board currently exists as an abstraction in students’ minds. If the trustees, who are some of the most loyal sons and daughters of Dartmouth, want to truly serve the student as well as the alumni body, they need to provide us with a little bit more information, and a few more opportunities for participation.