A brief history of the trustee debate

Having trouble sorting out this trustee dispute? Not sure which side you support? That's understandable. With all the partisan noise reverberating through the pages of The D like 80s music at a Green Key dance party, it can be difficult to get the facts of the matter down. In fact, it seems like the enormous amount of reading and information required even to form an opinion is enough to dissuade most students from caring. So let me help you wade through all the whining and answer a few crucial questions.

1. What is the Board of Trustees, and who serves on it?

Dartmouth College is legally incorporated as the "Trustees of Dartmouth College." As such, the Board serves as its ultimate governing authority. The Board appoints all faculty and high-ranking administrators including the College President--an important function given the pending departure of James Wright. The Trustees also manage the College's assets and have final say over its administration and academics.

The Board is currently made up of 18 men and women. Two of these members serve ex-officio: the Governor of New Hampshire (who does not normally participate) and the President of the College. The remaining sixteen are split evenly between "Charter Trustees" who are nominated by a committee within the Board and "Alumni Trustees" who are nominated through an election by the College's alumni.

Upon the graduation of his or her class, every former Dartmouth student, whether they have graduated or not, becomes a member of the Association of Alumni. Members of the Association then elect an eleven-member executive board to conduct the Alumni Trustee elections, among other things. However, the group tasked with selecting the two to three nominees that appear on the ballot is the Alumni Council, an independent but parallel organization. If someone is not selected by the Alumni Council but would still like to run for Trustee, the constitution allows that candidate to appear on the ballot if he or she collects more than 500 alumni petition signatures. These candidates are often referred to as "petition candidates" and have won the last four consecutive electoral contests. Prior to the 2004 election of Silicon Valley CEO T.J. Rogers that started the recent trend, seven petition candidates have appeared on ballots and only one has been elected.

2. What does the Board want to do and why is this controversial?

In 2007, the Trustees commissioned a review of college governance to be conducted by the Board's aptly named Governance Committee. By September of that same year, the committee published a report of its findings and recommended that the board expand by adding eight new members, all Charter Trustees. The original college charter limited the size of the Board to twelve members, consisting mainly of non-alumni clergy who promoted theological education. In 1891, amid a tight financial situation, the Board agreed to select five of its members through Alumni elections in exchange for alumni donations. This "1891 Agreement" established a precedent in the eyes of many alumni for parity between Charter and Alumni trustees and was maintained when the board expanded to sixteen members in 1961 and to eighteen members in 2003. Members of the Association of Alumni have complained that that, in choosing to deviate from this precedent, the Board has acted unilaterally and has not sufficiently sought outside advice.

This proposal also comes at a contentious time in college governance. In 2006, the Association of Alumni attempted to revise its constitution in order to change the method through which Alumni Trustees were chosen, in part by absorbing the Alumni Council. In that plan, candidates would be selected by the mostly unelected members of the Nominating Committee, thus giving alumni executives a lot of control over the selection process. The plan would also force petition Trustees to gather signatures before the Nominating Committee finalizes its list of candidates, thus defeating the whole point of petition candidacies organized in response to dissatisfaction with the existing candidates. The constitution was voted down by a majority of alumni, and many see the Board's new expansion plan as a second attempt by governance "insiders" to exert control over trustee selection.

3. Why is the board doing this?

On September 8, 2007 Board Chairman Ed Haldeman '70 wrote an email to students explaining the board's decisions. In the letter, Haldeman explains the benefits of having a bigger Board, which include

ß Amassing a "broad range of backgrounds, skills, [and] expertise" among decision-makers, thereby making their collective actions more informed

ß The ability to "creat[e] new Board committees focused on... academic affairs, student life, and alumni relations"

ß And the increased "fundraising capabilities" that would come explicitly from the new Trustees' skill sets, and implicitly from their donations.

He also points to the fact that Dartmouth has a comparably smaller board to peer institutions and thus would be conforming to industry norms by expanding. All of these points are sound: having a small Board places limits on its members' available time and collective experiences. However, the point of contention is that by adding only more Charter Trustees, the Board would be breaking the tradition of parity.

By adding only Charter Trustees, Haldeman and the Board, in the eyes of some, are trying to limit the power of the petition Trustees who have come to dominate Alumni elections by running on "anti-administration" platforms. In order for them to get elected, the views of these candidates had to be shared by a significant portion of the alumni. By choosing to push their reforms now in the face of the recent election trends, the Board exposes itself to the criticism that it is working to subvert democracy and the clearly articulated "anti-administration" views expressed in these elections.

4. How should I evaluate the arguments?

As the one proposing changes to a long established precedent, the burden of proof rests on Haldeman and the Board to prove why the changes are necessary. The only relevant reason he provides in his lengthy email is the notion that by diluting the elected portion of the board, it will simplify the nomination and election process. He says that the current system is problematic because the Trustee elections have become increasingly politicized, costly, and divisive.

In the last election, petition candidate Stephen Smith won his seat through a mass-mailing campaign of alarmist literature criticizing the administration for "bureaucratic bloat," "large classes," and the handling of reforms to the Committee on Standards. The cost of this mailing, which was sent to almost all of Dartmouth's 70,000 living alumni, has been estimated to be between $50,000 and $90,000; Sandy Alderson, Smith's chief Alumni Council-nominated rival, also spent a considerable amount: $14,000 on his website alone. The argument goes that these costly, politicized elections will scare away otherwise qualified candidates from participating.

To accept this logic one must assume all of the following:
(1) That Alumni are unsatisfied with their trustee choices
(2) Trustee election politics is detrimental to the college and should be avoided
(3) Political divisions will disappear if the relative size of elected alumni on the Board is decreased
(4) The decrease in the Board's accountability to the alumni is outweighed by the benefits of the plan, and
(5) These reasons are compelling enough to justify reversing a tradition more than a century old.

If you don't accept these arguments, then the debate is over: you are against the plan. It does not matter what Todd Zywicki said about President Freedman nor does it matter if Dartmouth is better now than it was 50 years ago, nor how much the lawsuit costs or who is paying for it. These issues are all mere distractions. To address each of the five points above, the unprecedented participation in the recent elections certainly shows that alumni feel passionately about particular candidates. Just like on campus, there are legitimate and serious disagreements among the alumni that deserve to be expressed and resolved through the electoral process. Regardless of the trustee breakdown, disaffected alumni will continue to push their political messages as they do now in the Association of Alumni elections. Even those who disagree with the recently elected petition candidates can't help but feel a little weary over giving up the only external accountability the Board has.

A more pragmatic camp in favor of the Board's plans simply disagree with the petition candidates and their followers and want to exclude them from college governance however possible. In order to be a democracy, there needs to be an element of bounded uncertainty among the participants: that is, all parties will abide by the results, which are not predetermined. Except in the most utilitarian of cases, and certainly not in voting, rights are not based on consequentialism, and so there is profound fallacious logic among those supporting the plan because they dislike petition candidates and those opposed to it because they support them.

5. What about the lawsuit? Is it possible to support parity and be opposed to the lawsuit?

In an effort to stop the Board's expansion plans, the executive board of Association of Alumni decided in October of 2007--by a majority vote--to sue the Trustees (and therefore Dartmouth College). The Association is seeking a court-ordered injunction, arguing that the 1891 Agreement is a legally binding contract that compels the Trustees to honor the parity precedent. The Association's Executive Board has claimed standing to bring the lawsuit as a party to the original agreement and as the elected representatives of Dartmouth's Alumni. In November, the College made a motion to dismiss the Association's lawsuit. The motion was eventually rejected. The civil case is currently in a "discovery period" during which each side produces evidence in preparation for the trial.

In all actuality, the legal prospects for the Association don't look good. For one, there is ambiguity over whether or not the 1891 Agreement is even a contract, as the intentions of the different parties are questionable and insufficient. Even if we assume that it is a binding contract, there is the question of whether it guarantees the alumni permanent parity, or merely the next five available Board seats. For a more comprehensive take on the two sides of this matter, I would refer to Kate Stith-Cabranes' '73 TDI column, and Todd Zywicki's reproduced column in the most recent edition of the Dartmouth Review.

Even so, the real purpose of the lawsuit may be to stall for time. Those against the lawsuit often criticize the Association's Executive committee for forcing the college to spend an estimated $2 million in legal fees for its defense. This point is rather silly because if the case was wholly without merit, the college would have to spend very little to point out the obvious points in court (I don't think the College's defense against Priya Venkatesan's "anti-federal discrimination" lawsuit is breaking any banks). If the case does have merit, the Trustees have another option, one that the litigants are probably holding out for: a compromise.

While they are ostensibly separate things, practically speaking the lawsuit and the Board's expansion program are one and the same. If the lawsuit fails, then there is nothing to stop the Board from doing whatever it likes. That is not to say that it is impossible to support parity and disagree with the lawsuit; one should simply know that both will not succeed.

As if to refute the notion that politics will disappear if the board's expansion plan goes through, the Association of Alumni election is now host to a battle between the two camps. Two different slates have been proposed: one in favor of the Board's plan under the name "Dartmouth Undying" and another for parity named "Dartmouth Parity." Each seems to be running with the lawsuit as their single issue, Undying pledging to withdraw it and parity pledging to support it. The election results may end up being the deciding factor on whether the Board's plan will succeed, and thus whether the contentious issue of Dartmouth parity will continue to spark further controversy in the future.