Alumni Constitution Fails, Trustees Expand

By Alexander Talcott | Friday, June 11, 2004

Dartmouth's governance was singled out for revision last fall, as the Board of Trustees voted to expand its membership even as the College's alumni beat back a move to limit their role in electing members of the Board.

A move to merge the Association of Alumni and the Alumni Council under a new constitution narrowly failed to pass at the December 6th meeting of the Association of Alumni. The proposed constitution, opposed by The Dartmouth Review (see TDR 10/30/03) and the Dartmouth Alumni for Open Governance (DAOG), received support from 71.5 percent of alumni present at the meeting, short of the required three-quarters vote.

A second effort to pass the constitution, if pursued, cannot be raised until the next Association meeting, in May.

Under the new constitution, the Association, a body composed of all 62,000 living College alumni, would have come under the direction of an enlarged Alumni Council, currently composed of ninety-six alumni who purport to "guide and direct Dartmouth alumni affairs." Former College president Ernest Martin Hopkins founded the Council and served as its first president. The Council's primary purpose is to nominate Board of Trustees candidates for the alumni as a whole to vote on, a mission the body would have retained.

According to Student Body Vice President Noah Riner '06, there were a number of objectionable elements in Article Seven of the proposal, which were perceived as potentially empowering a governing committee to set voting rules, to the detriment of alumni rights to elect half of the College's Trustees.

In addition, the constitution would have expanded the Council to include several more seats for select College-approved minority organizations, further diluting the influence of the popularly-elected alumni representatives. These additional minority seats, nominally designed to give greater representation to alumni in the name of "diversity," would have given greater power to College-approved minority groups—already currently represented on the Council—and not the alumni as a whole.

Approximately fifty undergraduates, spurred by an e-mail from the Student Assembly, protested the proposal and the closed nature of the proceedings outside Dartmouth Hall. In fact, the press was not allowed into the proceedings to hear the debate.

In November, shortly before the constitution vote took place, the Trustees announced they will increase their membership to twenty-two by the end of the decade. The six-seat increase will include three charter trustees appointed by the Board and three alumni trustees nominated by alumni and elected by the Board.

The Board of Trustees will also limit member tenures to two four-year terms. Trustees could previously serve up to two five-year terms. Trustees currently serving on the Board will finish their five-year terms, and they may then be re-appointed to a second term of four years.

"It's somewhat daunting to ask them to make a commitment for ten years," said Susan Dentzer '77, chair of the Board.

"I believe the decision to expand the Board is aimed at providing a rich array of voices and experiences from the Dartmouth alumni body," said Janet Terp, administrative liaison to the Board. "Dartmouth wants to make sure that the membership is balanced in terms of profession, gender, age, race, ethnicity and geographic location, etc. I think it is less about rewarding big donors and more about meeting the demands placed upon individual trustees as they guide Dartmouth's increasingly complex environment."

Dentzer confirmed Terp's interpretation of the move: "Ours is an increasingly complex institution, and the Board's ability to govern it well requires the addition of members with specific skills, capacities and expertise. In addition, we have long sought to have a balanced Board in terms of the different professions of our members, as well as their gender, age, race, ethnicity and state or country of residence. This modest expansion will better enable us to achieve all our goals in these regards."

Dartmouth sought and last year received authority from the New Hampshire legislature to amend its charter without the body's approval, allowing the expansion. In the past, any changes to the charter had to be approved by vote of the legislature.

Dartmouth's original 1769 charter set the Board membership at 12, a number expanded by four in 1961. The Board is currently composed of seven charter and seven alumni trustees, the President of the College, and the Governor of New Hampshire.

Alumni Constitution Fails, Trustees Expand

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