Path Clear for Self-Perpetuating Majority on Dartmouth Board

Dartmouth alumni have voted to abandon a lawsuit against the school’s board of trustees, in a victory for the board’s effort to select a majority of its own members rather than having them chosen through alumni elections.The Association of Alumni had previously sued the college’s board of trustees for attempting to expand itself, which would have diluted the voice of the alumni-elected members currently on the board. But in what amounted to a referendum, the Association of Alumni elected new officers last week who ran on a platform of dropping the suit. The vote may mark the end of a long dispute that has seen an unusually high number of trustees elected to the board who are openly critical of the Dartmouth administration.For more than a century, trustees elected by alumni have held eight of the board’s 18 seats, while trustees appointed by the board have held another eight. With the legal challenge gone, the Board of Trustees will be able to proceed with a plan to add eight new seats, all of which will belong to appointed trustees.An alumni-elected trustee who had supported the lawsuit, Todd Zywicki, said he was disappointed with the association’s vote.“The traditional parity between elected and appointed trustees has served the college very well for 117 years now,” Mr. Zywicki said. “It would be unfortunate if that progressive, innovative governance regime were ended.”But one of the newly elected Association of Alumni officers, Cheryl Bascomb, pointed to a study conducted by the board that compared Dartmouth to 30 other leading universities. The study concluded that even with alumni representation reduced to one-third of the board, Dartmouth would still have among the highest percentage of alumni-elected trustees of its peer schools. Ms. Bascomb also noted that nearly all of the school’s appointed trustees have been alumni themselves.Not all of the alumni association officers elected last week agree with the board’s plan, Ms. Bascomb said, but they all feel that the lawsuit is inappropriate.“It was unnecessary to go to the courts to work out differences that are really an internal issue,” she said. “Now we have the opportunity for people to talk about it.”The origin of the dispute is a clash over Dartmouth’s future. The last four alumni trustees to be elected, including Mr. Zywicki, have resisted the college’s efforts to convert itself into a research-intensive university and to institute a code governing free speech on campus. The rest of the board has accused them of having a conservative political agenda, claiming in a letter that the group wants to “turn back the clock.”“This group has wrapped itself in the rhetoric of ‘democracy at Dartmouth’ but they are working with national groups that have a clear ideological agenda for the College,” 12 trustees wrote in a letter intended to influence the Association of Alumni election.While the board claimed that it originally proposed the expansion to broaden its base of expertise, it acknowledged that alumni trustees would be capped at eight due to the “divisive” alumni trustee elections in recent years.

Path Clear for Self-Perpetuating Majority on Dartmouth Board

Path Clear for Self-Perpetuating Majority on Dartmouth Board

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