Although the withdrawal of the Association of Alumni's lawsuit against the College in June paved the way for Dartmouth's Board of Trustees to make significant changes to its structure, more than one month later the Board has yet to take any action. The Board's silence appears to be the result of its ongoing negotiations with the Association, as the groups work to address the underlying causes of recent alumni controversies.
The Association's legal effort, which ended after the organization gained new leadership, attempted to prevent the Board from adding eight new trustees not elected by alumni. This move ended a century of parity between the number of alumni-elected and Board-selected trustees. Despite the resolution of the suit, the Board has not announced when or whether it will add the new trustees. It also has not specified when it will end its current "freeze" on Board membership.
Trustee T.J. Rodgers '70, who has opposed the Board's decision to add Board-selected trustees, said in an interview that he supports the freeze.
"The number one duty of any board is to elect the best president it can get," Rodgers said, referring to the Board's current search for the College's next president. "Whatever disagreements we have on other issues need to be put on hold while we're doing job number one."
The freeze postpones the election to replace alumni-elected trustee Michael Chu '68, whose term will end in June 2009. Election proceedings and campaigning would normally begin this fall. Such elections have become increasingly politicized in recent years.
The Board's decision to add eight trustees to the Board stemmed from its summer 2007 governance report, which also recognized a need to address the growing divisiveness and expense of trustee elections.
The governance report said the politicization of theses elections can harm the College's reputation, hinder faculty recruitment and alienate alumni. It recommended that the Association replace the approval voting process it presently employs, in which alumni vote for an unlimited number of candidates.
The report also called for the Alumni Council, the College's other alumni-representative body, to nominate one or two candidates for election, rather than the three currently selected. Petition candidates would still be permitted.
"We want to address those issues on a mutually satisfactory basis because the Association of Alumni wants to run this election," Association President John Mathias '69 said.
Some of the recommended changes may require a referendum on amending the Association's constitution, Mathias explained.
The governance report states that the College will assume responsibility for organizing the selection of trustees if the Association does not reform the election process.
Several Association members met with trustees in Boston on Monday to discuss moving forward so that the Association can maintain electoral control, Mathias said.
"I met Monday with alumni leaders, along with the chairs of the Board's Alumni Relations and Governance Committees, John Donahoe ['82] and Christine Bucklin ['84], to discuss how to enhance communication between the Board and alumni and how to improve the alumni trustee nomination process," Board Chairman Ed Haldeman '70 said. "This was a continuation of discussions I have had during the past year with alumni leaders."
None of the trustees who oppose increasing Board membership -- including Rodgers, Peter Robinson '79, Todd Zywicki '88 and Stephen Smith '88 -- attended the meeting. These four trustees filed a brief in support of the Association's suit.
Rodgers said he was not upset that he was not included in the meeting.
"People have meetings all the time," he said. "I'm not trying to interfere, nor do I care if people talk with each other whenever they want."
Mathias said he believes it is important to address election reform before dealing with Board structure and the addition of new trustees, the focus of the lawsuit.
The political issue, he said, is not the addition of charter trustees who are not elected by alumni, but whether this change will be accompanied by any future addition of alumni-elected trustees. As a result, election reform is tied to Board structure, he said.
Frank Gado '58, a former member of the Association executive committee who supported the suit, said he was troubled that the present committee is not focusing on the addition of the new trustees.
The current executive committee members had made campaign promises to discuss the trustee addition with the Board.
"They seem to be moving slowly," he said. "I don't know of any progress they made toward negotiating parity."
Mathias said the Association would focus on the parity issue after it has addressed election reform.
"I am of the belief that the trustees can act differently in the future than they have in the past," he said. "The prospect of adding additional trustees is something that is fair game for discussion."
