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Dartmouth's nosedive
Dartmouth has had a busy year when it comes to clarifying its stance toward governance, free expression, and free association. On the one hand, Dartmouth repealed its speech code last spring--and it did so, to its great credit, voluntarily. On the other hand, Dartmouth required a great deal of public pressure last spring to convince it to comport itself properly when Todd Zywicki and Peter Robinson ran for the board of trustees. Zywicki and Robinson were not the chosen, "inside" candidates of Dartmouth's Alumni Council, but were instead dark horse petition candidates who earned places on the ballot the hard way, by amassing signatures of support, and who supported a platform centering on improving Dartmouth's commitment to free speech and educational accountability. Zywicki and Robinson won, and their victory was hailed as a victory for democratic process and liberal educational values at Dartmouth.
Now there is a new wrinkle in what begins to look like Dartmouth's ongoing struggle to seem to support free speech and transparent procedure while not actually, ultimately, doing so. Instead of recognizing that the victories of Zywicki and Robinson prove the importance of allowing petition candidates to run for trustee, Dartmouth's Alumni Governance Task Force is doing all it can to prevent the sort of grassroots uprising that landed two wild card trustees on the board last year.
The AGTF is now writing a new constitution that would compel petition candidates to conform to the impossibly restrictive requirement that they submit their entire agenda before the Nominating Committee names its official candidates; in other words, the AGTF is planning not only to subject petition candidates to a different set of electoral rules than those governing officially endorsed candidates, but is also, in so doing, undermining the ability of petition candidates to run in reaction to the aims and agendas of their opponents. Needless to say, the very notion of the petition candidate is predicated on the recognition that oppositional candidacy is a legitimate and reasonable thing, something that tends to arise spontaneously, out of felt necessity, when official candidates are felt to be lacking. The new rules that may govern petition candidates render that sort of candidacy virtually impossible, and so weaken what ought to be a vigorous, robust, and open electoral process. That petition candidates are limited to an unreasonably small window of time--thirty days--to amass the necessary number of signatures only underlines the chilling intention of the new constitutional provisions.
To his great credit, Dartmouth undergrad Joe Malchow has been covering the latest Dartmouth debacle in depth. For still more commentary, see FIRE's coverage.
Posted by acta online at March 28, 2006 10:29 AM
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Comments
You realize that you're not commenting on Dartmouth's governance or trustees but on its alumni club, right? The board of trustees appoints its own members (see comment A>) and is free not to appoint someone who is nominated by the Association of Alumni, by alumni petition, or by anyone else. I hope you haven't confused the alumni club with Dartmouth College and its trustees -- the groups overlap, but the school is still run by the trustees.
Posted by: Reader at March 30, 2006 09:12 AM
I'm sorry, but to say this is merely about some 'alumni club" is, at best, misleading.
Dartmouth alumni (I'm one; Class of 1972) elect a portion of the Board of Trustees of Dartmouth College. The constitution that's being debated will change the rules governing the election of that portion of the Board of Trustees elected by the alumni.
This debate is about Dartmouth's "governance and trustees," and to say otherwise is simply untrue.
Posted by: Tom O'Bedlam at March 30, 2006 06:53 PM