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Victory for accountability at Dartmouth
Accountability is the wave of higher education's future. And alumni have a pivotal role to play in shaping that future. Dartmouth is a hot spot in this regard: Recent years have seen several dark-horse alumni petition candidates win places on Dartmouth's board, as well as a great deal of ensuing debate about who runs Dartmouth, how board members are elected, and what it means that alumni are increasingly inclined to elect independent reform-minded petition candidates rather than those put forward on the Alumni Association slate.
ACTA has been closely involved with concerned Dartmouth alumni since the 1990s, when William K. Tell, Jr., a valued member of ACTA's National Council, helped found Dartmouth Alumni for Open Governance. And ACTA has been outspoken in its support of alumni who offer independent perspectives and seek to ensure meaningful alumni participation in the governance process.
Now, for the fourth time since 2004, a reform-minded petition candidate has been elected to Dartmouth's board--and ACTA is delighted.
University of Virginia law professor and Dartmouth alum Stephen Smith ran on a platform that declared his desire to "stop bureaucratic bloat and to invest in excellence" as well as protect the quality of undergraduate education at Dartmouth; he is the fourth independent-minded petition candidate to win a spot on Dartmouth's board in the last three elections.
"Stephen Smith's election underscores that today's alumni are concerned about what's going on at their institutions," ACTA president Anne D. Neal said in a press release issued last Thursday. "For years, Dartmouth alumni have been rightfully demanding input on critical issues facing their college. ... It's time for the academy to realize that alumni will no longer 'put up and shut up.' Indeed, the academy ignores alumni voices at its own peril."
But Smith's election is not the only victory for the preservation of alumni rights. Reform-minded candidates seeking leadership positions in the Dartmouth Alumni Association have also scored a great victory. Seven of the eleven seats on the Executive Committee of the Alumni Association were won by petition candidates.
Those elected to the Executive Committee represent all 65,000 Dartmouth alumni--and have considerable ability to influence Dartmouth's future, including selecting the official slate of alumni candidates to run for open seats on the Dartmouth board.
This marked the first time Dartmouth alumni were permitted to vote for Association representatives without being required to go to Hanover, and the results speak for themselves.
Posted by acta online at May 21, 2007 02:06 PM
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Comments
Why is "William K. Tell, Jr.[] a valued member of ACTA's National Council" when he has filed so many loser lawsuits against Dartmouth, and lost them all?
When Tell asked, the Federal Court of Appeals for the First Circuit said that private universities are not accountable to their alumni, not even Dartmouth.
Whom is ACTA accountable to, anyway? Why aren't they holding it accountable for its choice of Tell?
Posted by: qbert at June 25, 2007 04:45 PM