Dartmouth Changes Threaten Independent Trustees

Dartmouth College alumni are being targeted in a public relations blitz that seeks to persuade them to vote to change the way the school’s trustees are elected.Groups lobbying for the new constitution, such as Dartmouth Alumni for Common Sense, have hired public relations firms that are connecting through phone calls and mass mailings with as many of the college’s 65,000 alumni as possible before voting on the proposed constitution ends October 31.The new constitution would curtail the “petition candidate mechanism,” a feature of Dartmouth governance that allows any alumnus to be added to the ballot in trustee elections if they are able to solicit signatures from 500 alumni.The new constitution would make it more difficult for petition candidates to be elected because it would require them to declare their candidacies before the college discloses whom it will nominate in opposition, affording Dartmouth the opportunity to select candidates to counter petitioners.Three petition candidates — an entrepreneur, T.J. Rodgers, a former Reagan speechwriter, Peter Robinson, and a law professor, Todd Zywicki — sit on the board of trustees; all ran on platforms critical of the Dartmouth administration’s policies on issues ranging from free speech to political correctness.“The new constitution is an effort to protect the established order,” Mr. Zywicki, who has received three phone calls and multiple mailings from public relations companies, said. “This is not an issue of conservatives versus liberals, but of allowing people regardless of their views to have their voices heard.”Mr. Zywicki said the new constitution would decrease petition candidates’ chances of being elected by reversing the normal election process. Now, the petition mechanism provides a “safety valve” for alumni dissatisfied with Dartmouth’s slate of trustee candidates. “By trying to find out who the petition candidates are, the concern is that the new constitution gives discretion to the nominating committee to choose which candidates and how many they’re going to run in response,” Mr. Zywicki said.A leader of Dafcs and a former trustee of the college, Dick Page, told The New York Sun that his group supports petition candidates and that the new constitution will make it easier for them to be elected because it requires them to obtain only 250 signatures to get on the ballot. In a letter to the Native American Alumni Association from Dafcs, though, Mr. Page wrote that Dafcs’s goal is to support slated candidates “in opposition to likely petition candidates — in forthcoming Alumni Trustee elections in 2007 and beyond.” When asked about his stated opposition to petition candidates, Mr. Page declined to comment.Some pro-constitution efforts do appear to be directed at keeping the petition candidates off the board of trustees. A 1968 graduate who is a former trustee, Peter Fahey, wrote in the student newspaper, The Dartmouth, that the petition candidates constitute a “radical minority cabal” that aim to “take over the Dartmouth Board of Trustees.” Mr. Fahey said their continued service could “lead the College into a downward death spiral.”Dartmouth’s administration says it is impartial about the new constitution. “The college does not have a position on whether it should be passed,” the director of communications for alumni relations, Diana Lawrence, said.Opponents say the college has violated its pledge of neutrality. The American Council of Trustees and Alumni, a nonprofit organization that explores issues of academic freedom, said in a statement that Dartmouth’s president, James Wright, “voted — in his capacity as a Dartmouth trustee — to recommend that alumni vote yes on the proposed constitution” and that Dartmouth officials used college computer servers to send e-mails exhorting alumni to support the constitution.“These aggressive and expensive campaign tactics are the kind of thing I would expect from an embattled corporate board of directors facing a hostile takeover attempt,” a 1965 Dartmouth graduate who has received e-mails and phone calls from the public relations companies, Dale Beihoffer, said. “The Dartmouth administration and current alumni officers seem to be deeply afraid of an open and honest debate and fair election procedures, throwing everything they can into persuading alumni to vote ‘Yes,'” Mr. Beihoffer said.

Dartmouth Changes Threaten Independent Trustees

Dartmouth Changes Threaten Independent Trustees

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