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Tuesday, September 11, 2007

Getting away with it

What a wild, crazy, no-holds-barred, anything-goes weekend for collegiate governance. As a majority of the trustees voted to do away with the means by which they might be contradicted, I imagined that they snapped on little black burglar masks, similar to the one pictured in the graphic I've usefully included.

Packing the board was perhaps conceived as a judicious compromise in the face of no-so-hot press in billions of periodicals around the world, the message being, "We didn't technically curtail democracy, see?" Once again, brilliant move. These men and women fall somewhat short of Søren Kierkegaard in their grasp of human behavior and motivation, but they are at least entertaining in their efforts. (See also: Ask Dartmouth, Vox the Vote.) Seriously, this cannot be said for many, and for that at least they must be congratulated.

Perhaps the logic was that alumni, still being able to pick eight trustees, would not notice the extra eight charter trustees slathered onto their Salisbury steaks. However, alumni do not fetishize lucky number eight per se. It was a nice figure when it made up a goodly chunk the board. Suddenly, though--no offense--it looks a little measly. The thing about alums is they grin ear-to-ear when their votes influence college governance. They're very particular vermin that way.

As soon as the hamburglars of Parkhurst and Blunt recover from the raucous celebration party they probably threw this week, they should scan the internet and see how they're doing in the court of public opinion. And what a sobering experience that'll be.

*Well, to begin on a note of hope, we have the college press office's release (no link). Right on, lots of strengthening going on here, we see, mm-hmm, very well put you incredible nitwits.

*The Association of Alumni executive committee issues a bold statement to the press.

*The ennui-filled ironists at IvyGate, after calling this publication "nativist" (include me out), dabble in earnestness for long enough to say:
The Dartmouth administration, meanwhile, is frankly up to no good. Last spring they introduced a measure which would have curbed the power of alumni to determine the trustees. Shockingly, the alumni declined to vote away their own voting rights. Now the administration has sunk to a new level of insidery skullduggery: they've convened an ominous-sounding "Governance Committee" to "reform" the process of trustee-elections.
*The Valley News account of Wright's visit does not make it sound as if divisiveness has disappeared or anything cool like that.

*The New York Times chimes in.

*Review chairman James Panero over at New Cri takes another thwap at the Parkhurst piñata:
This is a dark day for the school. What's so unfortunate is that people like Ed Haldeman will risk destroying Dartmouth to save his consolidation of power. It is interesting to note that Alumni giving reached record levels of participation after the election of the four petition candidates and the defeat of the new constitution. I gave a donation to the school for the very first time. But Haldeman does not care about such statistics, nor does he care if he turns off thousands of loyal alums in the process. Haldeman has called the petition elections "politicized, costly, and divisive"--these are elections that alumni voted in. Are their votes divisive?
*And, as already noted, the Wall Street Journal's editorial.

Posted by Nick Desai at 9:18 PM

Comments

Nick, why don't you be quiet already about "democracy"? Since when has any nonprofit needed to have a "means by which they might be contradicted"? Why would you think the board owes you something?

Posted by Anonymous Anonymous — September 12, 2007 8:51 AM  

Doesn't money fit in here somewhere? Why do people donate to nonprofits they disagree with? The Governance Committee must have had the Development Office do a cost-benefit analysis before last weekend. I'd love to see that.

Posted by Anonymous DartBored — September 12, 2007 9:39 AM  

The version Wright gives in his Valley News interview is basically this will all blow over. I have some related thoughts here. Another question is, given that Wright is 68, what he seriously intends to accomplish in the rest of his time as President. How long will it take the grumpiness to blow over? What will he do then? Reimpose the SLI? Start working on the Unviersity plan? I'm just not sure that these guys are being completely realistic.

Posted by Anonymous John Bruce — September 12, 2007 1:23 PM  

I hope Dartmouth does not actually take a fundraising hit because of the grumpiness of alumni. I am going to double my admittedly meager donations in the hope that I can make up for the withdrawal of some fickle alumnnus. When this blows over, and it will, the people who claim to feel burned will look very petty and childish.

Posted by Anonymous Anonymous — September 12, 2007 1:39 PM  

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The threat must be made clear:
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Either parity or diversion.
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Withholding funds is a threat, but not a realistic one as Dartmouth can survive off large endowment funds and donations from almost half these levels.

The donor participation might drop, but it already is lower than it should be.

What is really scary is if the current Association of Alumni executive committee established a new 501(c)3 trust, named 10 new 10 year trustees to it (one to be elected each year successively) and started to request funds to benefit the association of alumni, the College, or Dartmouth related activities as the new trustees saw fit. Call it the Association of Alumni of Dartmouth College Endowment Trust.

All donations should not be withheld, but diverted to the new Endowment.

1% of every donation should be yearly forwarded to the College to maintain our donor participation. The College has wrecked participation rates, and challengers have recently improved these rates across the board and shouldn't threaten to lower them.

The impact of the alumni's endowment would be real. Alumni could officially donate to the new official fund, which would build up and at some point, the new endowment could have the bargaining power to force a full and lasting charter revision that even the dead-enders in the administration would be grudgingly accept: perpetual parity.

Every alumni officer to every class, council position, or association position must be asked:


Will you or won't you support alumni parity on the Board of Trustees?


Every donor must be asked:

Will you willingly divert your donation to the alumni's fund to be held in trust until the board permanently recognizes alumni parity on the board?


Withdrawal or lawsuits?


Perhaps a structured threat of diversion is more powerful.
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Posted by Anonymous Anonymous — September 12, 2007 2:43 PM  

I'm Nick Desai
And I'm not high.
The Trustees owe me,
But I don't know why.

I don't know what, and don't know how,
But they've hurt my feelings--
Make them pay up, now!

Waahhhh! (Hoo wah!)

Posted by Anonymous Anonymous — September 13, 2007 4:14 PM  

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