On Aug. 4 the Grafton County Superior Court threw out a lawsuit filed by John MacGovern '80 against the Association of Alumni. MacGovern had filed a petition on Nov. 30, 2005 to force the Association to overturn the results of the annual officer and executive committee elections held in October and count 420 proxy votes he had collected before the body's meeting.
MacGovern, who founded and currently heads the Hanover Institute, a non-profit group critical of the Association, attended the Oct. 23 meeting in Hanover armed with proxy votes for the petition candidates. Had those votes been counted, he alleged, the slate selected by the Association's own nominating committee would not have won the election. The county court dismissed MacGovern's lawsuit, finding that nothing in the Association's constitution either allows or forbids proxy voting.
Association First Vice President Merle Adelman '80 said that MacGovern attempted to "change the rules midstream" by trying to get the proxy votes counted in the elections.
"I believe he brought proxy votes last year too. We told him no," Adelman said.
Alumni still have to be in Hanover to vote in officer elections.
A measure in the new proposed Alumni Association constitution, for which voting starts Sept. 15, would nullify the proxy voting issue all together by allowing all-media voting for future officer and executive board elections.
Adelman said that the executive committee promised in March to use all-media voting for its next election regardless of whether or not the proposed constitution is approved.
A March 21 letter from the current officers, posted on the Association's website, states only that "the current executive committee is developing a plan to conduct the annual meeting in such a manner as to allow official and petition candidates to ... be elected by all-media voting."
The lawsuit was the fifth in a series of challenges filed against the Association since 1995 by vocal alumni who have complained about the way the Association handles officer elections and self-governance issues.
Adelman said that, given that history, she expected that MacGovern might sue over the issue and had the Association retain a lawyer.
She said that the Association "really has no budget" other than support from the College used in turn to support alumni.
"The sad part is that these things cost money to defend and you've got to be able to put that money to other use," Adelman said.
According to Justice Timothy J. Vaughan's decision in the MacGovern case, the Association tried to get the court to order MacGovern to pay its legal bills, arguing that his case represented "the fifth in a series of lawsuits brought by a small group of Dartmouth College alumni who, in various combinations, continue to bring frivolous and vexatious lawsuits complaining about the procedures used by the Association in conducting its business."
MacGovern was not ordered to pay the defense's legal expenses, which The College, through Adelman, declined to release.
Frank Gado '58 ran as a petition candidate for second vice president in the October election. He said that he had spoken with MacGovern before the lawsuit was filed and had written independently to the Association to urge it to accept mailed-in ballots.
"I still think we have a good case but it's very hard in this state of New Hampshire to go against Dartmouth," said Gado, a board member of MacGovern's Hanover Institute.
Gado said the response to his letter and a letter MacGovern had also written over a month before the October meeting was the same: there was not enough time to institute new rules.
"It's not as though he did my bidding," Gado said of his discussions with MacGovern. He said he talked about the lawsuit with MacGovern, visited the lawyer with him and talked about what should be emphasized in the suit.
"It's not a conspiracy -- we're very open," he said.
Gado said that the lawsuit MacGovern filed was not ultimately about proxy voting anyway.
"The real motive behind all this was to get the Alumni Association to permit off-campus voting so that we would have more than a small group of local alumni, dominated by College employees, who would decide these things," Gado said.
Gado argued that the rules for electing officers are meant for current officers to hold power and to disenfranchise alumni, citing the fact that the next officer elections have been postponed indefinitely until after the fall constitution vote.
"It's not because I'm a sore loser. You're going against a stacked deck," Gado said.
MacGovern, who has until early September to file an appeal, was not available to comment on this article.
