Alumni Association Votes Sunday
By Quinton Klabon | Friday, February 10, 2006
The famed warmth of the Dartmouth community’s camaraderie has continued to chill since the October 23 defeat of D. Dean Spatz ‘66, Joe Asch ‘79, and other petition candidates in Alumni Association elections. Despite a concerted effort to the contrary, the majority of alumni voters present in Hanover (many culled from the ranks of the administration-friendly Alumni Council), rejected the increased budget transparency and electronic voting pledges of “outsider candidates” like Spatz and Asch. Yet the 108-vote mandate (up to 0.18 percent of all living alumni!) did not lessen the status-quo supporters’ fears. A newly-proposed constitution seeks to solidify the current balance of power through bureaucratic redistribution and reformatted trustee election rules. (For earlier summaries and analyses, please see TDR 10/7/05 and 11/4/05.)
The revised constitution introduces three controversial changes to the College’s political landscape. It would relegate the Alumni Association to a place within a revamped, and still undemocratic, Alumni Council. Each committee in this body would only have half its seats open to election, effectively sapping it of any of the democratic nature it may have once had. The president of the renamed Alumni Assembly, though elected, must have been a member of the assembly for at least a year, thus leaving alumni at-large to choose only among hand-picked and administration-friendly candidates. Also, in an apparent effort to stifle the thrice-successful petition candidates in trustee elections, all petition candidates would be forced to declare their candidacy 45 days prior to the announcement of the Assembly’s candidates. Currently, the deadline for hopeful trustees is 60 days after the Council’s choices are declared. This 105-day transfer not only subverts the purpose of a write-in campaign (to counter Council candidates with whom some alumni are displeased), but also allows administration loyalists more than a month to pick well-matched opponents. In fact, a particularly clever Assembly could potentially choose a write-in candidate as an official candidate, decreasing the amount of truly supported contenders. Finally, the voting methods for trustee elections would be changed from an approval system to an instant run-off. Instead of each alumnus choosing all of his preferred candidates and declaring the candidate earning the most total votes the victor, a ranking system would be utilized, wherein the votes of the lowest candidate would be transferred to each alumnus’ second-lowest choice. It can be assumed that this will allow the multiple Assembly candidates to coalesce votes, giving at least one of them a seat.
Those with a bit of political savvy may think that such a constitution would have little chance of passing without a large dose of political gamesmanship. And they would be right, if the current actions of the Alumni Council are any indication. A February 12 vote looks to determine the future of Dartmouth’s alumni governance.
This Sunday, an amendment to the constitution will be considered that could significantly alter the adoption process of future amendments. Summarized, it says that ballots on all future amendments may be sent in by any medium, electronic or otherwise, and that they need only be approved by a two-thirds majority, as opposed to the current three-fourths. This strikes those accustomed to the current Council’s obstructionism as odd. To ease the passing of amendments would make the present state of affairs vulnerable to change. Of course, one only needs to consider a few points to realize the true incentive for the change.
With a potentially opposition-halting constitution in the wings, Sunday offers the Lone Pine Revolution’s opponents an opportunity to strike. A decrease in the proportion of voters needed to amend the constitution simply makes changes easier to pass. Any partisan manipulation against petition candidates would be made much simpler with relaxed restrictions. Unfortunately, this conduct is not aimed at a mere proliferation of amendments. Since a new constitution would require the same vote distribution as an amendment, a victory for the administration on the February 12 puts the new constitution one step closer to ratification. A confirmed constitution may mean a premature farewell to petition candidates in the vein of Peter Robinson ’79 and Todd Zywicki ’88, and the perpetual rubber-stamping of administration ideals.
Furthermore, one must remember that one aspect of the February 12 amendment—all-media voting on amendments—will not go into effect until after the bill’s approval. That means that, as always, only those physically present in Hanover will be allowed to vote. If precedent holds, a plurality of those will be administration appartchiks. In an interesting twist, this weekend coincides with the annual “Affiliated Alumni Groups” meetings. The Affliated Groups, composed of at least 100 members who share a common identification as “under-represented” alumni, include the Black Alumni of Dartmouth, GLBT alumni, etcera. If the amendment does pass, council members against petition candidates and their positions will, in effect, have their proverbial cake and eat it, too.
Furthermore, the much-needed all-media voting provision is bundled together with the constitutional amendment procedure vote, making it impossible for alumni to favor one provision but not the other. Thus those who support all-media voting and oppose the constitution face a lose-lose situation. No one has ever accused the Alumni Association officers of political naïvete.
The clamor of dissent has reached a crescendo, however, thanks to a number of alumni focused on effective methods of combating the Council leviathan. Supporters of petition candidates have rallied around a proxy vote as a means of resisting Sunday’s judgment. Though voting by proxy is unconstitutional when authorizing a change of constitutions, the document does not forbid a proxy vote on amendments . Since the bill to be passed gives practical franchise to all voters, a proxy vote for said bill would demonstrate a dedication to that line of thought. A proxy vote also silences all those who deem certain alumni “unworthy” of voting due to a lack of concern for Dartmouth’s future (read: their political inclinations). After all, a proxy vote simply demonstrates absenteeism, not insufficient interest. Simply completing the ballot indicates an acceptable interest in the amendment. Nevertheless, tensions about this method have escalated at an alarming pace. Advocates of open governance have filed suit in Grafton County court seeking an injunction against Sunday’s meeting because the Association’s refusal to allow proxy voting. If successful, the suit would overturn the outcome of this fall’s executive committee elections, during which several hundred proxy votes were cast for the petition candidates. At press time, a hearing in the case was scheduled for Feb. 8.
Meanwhile, debate on alumni matters now has an official forum in the blogosphere. In a Jan. 30 address to the Dartmouth Club of the Upper Valley, Vice President of Alumni Relations David Spalding ‘76 announced the launch of http://www.dartmouthaoa.blogspot.com, which debuted the next day. According to the website, the blog “was created to provide a forum for open dialogue on alumni association issues,” and the few posts thus far have seen vigorous debate between supporters and opponents of the new constitution.
However, not everyone seems to be so excited about this ongoing debate. In a speech directly following Spalding’s, College president James Wright “warned alumni to avoid ‘adversarial relations’ among themselves and with the College ,” according to a Jan. 31 report in The Dartmouth : “We have too good an enterprise, we have too much to do together, to get caught up in feuds [and] misunderstandings that sap our energy and erode our purposes.” Whatever you say, Comrade Wright.
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