At the Alumni Council's three-day meeting this weekend, the body voted both to endorse the Dartmouth Alumni Association's newly proposed constitution and to revise the existing constitution to allow all-media voting on subsequent amendments to the Council's constitution.
The vote to endorse the new Alumni Association constitution was unanimous, according to a statement from the Office of Alumni Relations, and the all-media voting provision passed by 87 percent. The amendment to the Council's constitution will ensure that any changes made to the new Association constitution before June 15 can be incorporated into the final document.
Rick Routhier '73 Tu'76, president of the Council, said he was confident about the vote on the constitution because there had been substantial debate and revision of the document, including approximately three hours of discussion at this weekend's meeting.
"When you're as open and as good at listening and as inclusive as the [Alumni Governance Task Force] has been, it would be difficult to imagine not coming out with a product that was excellent, and we believe it is," Routhier said.
The vote comes after several years of debate and revisions, during which the AGTF has been tweaking the proposed constitution. Since the Council has voted to endorse the constitution, it will now be publicly posted on the Alumni Association website this summer, and alumni will be able to vote on it by e-mail starting Sept. 15.
Under the new constitution, the Council will combine with the larger Association of Alumni to form a body that encompasses all 66,500 alumni.
Routhier said the Council will probably use class presidents and work within the class structure to publicize the new constitution and the vote to the alumni body, though he is not yet certain exactly what methods it will use.
The Council also discussed transition issues that will arise if the new constitution passes and spent significant time discussing how the Council works under the committee structure. According to Routhier, these improvements will transfer over to the new governing body if the constitution passes.
"It should be quite relevant to the next generation of people who will lead the Council," Routhier said, "or the assembly as it's going to be called if [the constitution] passes."
In the next few months, Routhier said, the Council will be working to publicize the vote and the new constitution and to reconcile technical details in the document.
"We want to move this to the next phase," he said. "We've got a long way to go between now and next December to make sure that we've thought this thing through."
