And Around Again

By Daniel F. Linsalata | Friday, January 12, 2007

On December 1, President Wright addressed the Alumni Council for the first time since the defeat of the proposed Alumni Constitution which they had unanimously endorsed, save for a single councilor on a second vote. To say Wright was addressing a sore subject would be an understatement. Happily, ex post, he could drop his thin veil of neutrality and finally admitted that he fully supported the constitution. No surprise there.

While I cannot commend President Wright for throwing his support behind one side of an issue on which the College and its administrators had professed neutrality on for so long, his subsequent remarks were right on the money. Notably, he expressed “worry about institutionalizing a state of conflict,” in alumni trustee elections and within the alumni body in general. Empirical evidence from the constitution debate, if you could call it that, indicates that simple inertia will bring Wright’s fears to fruition.

To recap the mud-slinging, name-calling, and alarmist propaganda that plagued the campaigns for and against the Alumni Constitution would be to rehash the editorial page of the Daily D for the last year, not to mention would consume more ink than this page allows. Suffice it to say that it was nasty and, (allow me to be selfish for a moment) for those reporting on it, or even observing closely, quite tiresome. Each new day brought a new, vitriolic letter or a new report of some underhanded campaign technique. And therein lays the problem. Although the new constitution’s failure necessitates that this spring’s upcoming trustee election be conducted under the existing election system (an admittedly broken system for several reasons), there has been one important change.

The Balloting Committee of the Alumni Council decided to repeal the restriction on open campaigning, nominally to reduce the perceived advantage that petition candidates have grâce à their ability to spread their message while collecting signatures. A dubious claim, at best. More worrisome is the Pandora’s Box that has been opened by deregulating trustee campaigns. In this spring’s election, we can expect nothing less than the frantic, tiring, and even childish campaigning techniques that we observed during the constitution campaign. Though I am loathe to advocate a touchy-feely, why-can’t-we-all-just-get-along stance on trustee issues, such a state of affairs would be quite welcome in the wake of last fall’s constitution runaround.

Wright also observed that as a result of the rigors of campaigning, the needs of the board, vis-à-vis qualifications and expertise of a candidate, may come to play second fiddle to “electability,” the trend that has plagued national politics for the last several election cycles (see: Kerry, John F.). Candidates will be far less inclined to throw their hat into the ring if they perceive the time demands of campaigning to be overwhelming, or if they feel they may be defeated simply based on their biographical information rather than their campaign platforms.

The notion of electability really ought to have no place within College governance. Nobody doubts each candidate’s devotion to Dartmouth, and those eager to bemoan the polarization within the alumni body are simply trying to create problems where there are none. Just under half of the voting alumni liked the proposed constitution and a few more than half wanted to wait for a better proposal. Simple as that. Those seeking some sort of conspiracy for a coup d’état are barking up the wrong tree. Each candidate has their own vision for Dartmouth, and voters ought to agree or disagree with it; no one vision of Dartmouth or the Dartmouth experience is “better” than another, just preferable.

In the immediate, we are fortunately still too early in the game for true qualifications to slip below electability. The Alumni Council has already announced three official candidates, all of whom appear to be extremely well qualified. Sandy Alderson ’69 is the current CEO of the San Diego Padres baseball team, a former Marine, and a Harvard law grad, with two children who attended Dartmouth. Sherri Olberg ’82 is a past president of the Alumni Council and co-founder of a public biotech company. John Wolf ’72 has spent his career in the foreign service, most recently as Assistant Secretary of State for Non-Proliferation. At first blush, Olberg and Wolf fit the “insider” mold far more than Alderson, a self-described “disaffected alumnus.” If the Alumni Council is already playing the electability game, then their chips certainly seem to be on Alderson.

Sometime today or early next week, Stephen Smith ’88, will announce his candidacy as a petition candidate. Smith, currently a University of Virginia law professor, grew up in the inner city of Washington, D.C., with his mother and three sisters, relying on public assistance. A history and philosophy major and a member of Sigma Nu fraternity, Smith chose Dartmouth over other schools offering more attractive financial aid packages after visiting under the Admitted Minority Student Overnight Program. He is quick to attribute his successes in the legal profession to his time at Dartmouth. In a series of statements on his website, Smith states that his major priorities are “curbing bureaucratic bloat,” “guaranteeing due process for students,” “ensuring genuine freedom of speech,” and “keeping Dartmouth College a college.” While Smith’s platform and qualifications are both undeniably strong, he was ultimately chosen over a number of other qualified candidates to run as the sole petition candidate, immediately bringing the “electability” question into play, whether it is truly the case or not.

Nonetheless, it appears that there will be four strong candidates entering the mud-wrestling ring that will be this spring’s trustee election. I’m not yet ready to throw my support behind any one of them, but I doubt Dartmouth will lose either way. However, I must share President Wright’s regret in agreeing with him on one undeniable point: this one will be ugly.

And Around Again

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