Original Article: http://dartreview.com/archives/2006/03/03/stalinist_dartmouth.php
Friday, March 3, 2006
Dartmouth is, on paper at least, something of a representative democracy. Administrators report to the Board of Trustees, half of whose members are elected by the College’s alumni per an 1891 agreement. To use a simplified analogy, the alumni are the “people” to whom the “government”—of the College—is ultimately responsible.
However, as in many Communist regimes around the world, the people have come to be represented by a small and loyal party: the Administration Party. The parallels are striking: like the Party Congress in China and the Soviet Union, the Alumni Association is theoretically all-powerful but practically weak, controlled as it is by party leaders. In the USSR, these leaders composed the party’s Central Committee; at Dartmouth, we call this body the Alumni Council.
This 98-member collection of administration loyalists dominates Association elections through the requirement that alumni must be present in Hanover to vote. Conveniently, these elections occur at the same time as Alumni Council meetings, for which the College flies its favorite sons and daughters to Hanover at its own expense.
In Communist Russia, the Central Committee elected the Politburo. At Dartmouth, the Alumni Council selects candidates for the Board of Trustees, one or two of whom are rubber-stamped by the alumni. The loophole in this iron-clad pseudo-democracy, one Stalin or Mao would have never allowed, is the provision allowing candidates to run for Trustee if they collect enough signatures. Launching an outsider campaign is always a long-shot, but widespread alumni dissatisfaction with the College has led to the consecutive victories of three petitioners—Mssrs. Rodgers, Zywicki, and Robinson.
Unable to win at the polls (though it tried by hook and by crook), the Administration Party decided it had had enough and is now seeking to change the rules. A committee of loyal comrades, the Alumni Governance Task Force, has proposed a new constitution that would further eviscerate the Association—effectively merging it into the Alumni Council as a subordinate body—and make it much more difficult for petition candidates to succeed.
This constitution was proposed by the new Executive Committee of the Association, elected in the fall in the same weekend as the Alumni Council was flown up to Hanover at a meeting in which 400+ proxy votes in favor of a petition slate were arbitrarily rejected. Next came an amendment to reduce the majority needed to modify the constitution from 3/4 to 2/3 (see page seven), which was mischievously bundled with a much needed amendment to allow all-media voting (but only for amendments to the constitution, not Association elections). While it passed by a large majority, this amendment just happened to be debated the same weekend that Associated Alumni groups (read: minority special interest groups recognize by the College) had their meeting in Hanover. Again, proxy votes were disallowed, and debate was rudely truncated by Association president Al Collins ’53
You might think we’re being a little harsh on the Alumni Council, which has been often criticized in these pages. However, recent events on campus have led us to conclude that the Administration Party is not being criticized harshly enough. While the Council members are selected from a smattering of special interest groups, a plurality is class representatives. Class representatives are selected by class officers. For each graduating class, the class officers are chosen from amongst the Senior Executive Committee (SEC), which plans not only graduation but class events through their five-year reunion
This year’s elections (the plural is intentional) for the Class of 2006’s SEC were held earlier this month. As Paul Heintz ’06 (with whom, it should be noted, this paper infrequently agrees) noted in a February 27 editorial in the Daily Dartmouth —“this year’s SEC has only two fraternity members and two varsity athletes,” meaning only a quarter of its representatives come from the College’s two largest constituencies. Furthermore, observed Heintz, “at least half of the committee members are also either in Palaeopitus or the Casque & Gauntlet Senior Society.” While the members of these two societies are for the most part well-meaning folks, suffice it to say they are known for not rocking the boat. Indeed, their composition, and consequently that of the SEC, smacks of tokenism rather than genuine diversity, as Heintz rightly points out.
Far more disturbing than the membership of SEC, however, is the way in which it was selected. First, not one but three elections were held, supposedly because the online voting system malfunctioned twice. By the time the third and final election was held, all but the do-gooder and try-too-hards had presumably tired of the process and did not vote. However, we’ll never know, since the ’06 Class Council has refused to release voting tallies. Furthermore, while students could vote for twenty candidates, only twelve members of the committee were selected by popular vote. The remaining eight were chosen by administrators —Assistant Director of Young Alumni Rex Morey, Class of 2006 Dean Teoby Gomez and Student Activities Director Linda Kennedy—“based on mysterious criteria known only to them,” writes Heintz.
This shrouded process is used to “ensure the diversity of representation on the committee,” according to Morey, as quoted in the Daily Dartmouth on February 13. “While this sort of a system might make sense in a struggling, post-Soviet bloc country,” Heintz retorts, “it does not remind me of any electoral system I have seen in this country.”
It does, however, remind us of the methods employed by Communist parties everywhere: closely-controlled “elections” give the veneer of the democracy, while the political functions of the Administration Party and the governing functions of the administration are largely indistinguishable. To recap: the administration chooses 40% of the Senior Executive Committee, which chooses a plurality of Alumni Council members, who choose the Trustee candidates, who select the administration.
This cycle has made the administration, like most Communist regimes, self-perpetuating, yet the ossification and arrogance of this insular process has provoked the Lone Pine Revolution, a democratic movement that stands as the last hope that Dartmouth will represent those to whom it is ultimately responsible. For, while most Communist regimes have moved from authoritarian oligarchy to representative democracy, the College will move in the exact opposite direction if the Administration Party succeeds in its bid for a new constitution.