What’s New in the Trustee Matter
By A.S. Erickson | Sunday, November 18, 2007
Ever since the Board of Trustees changed the ratio of their composition a couple of months ago, their strategy to win the debate surrounding the change has become increasingly clear: just wait it out, and unless Association of Alumni’s suit succeeds, the strategy will almost surely be successful.
Considering the grim prospects, let’s survey that which is new in the last few weeks of this ongoing controversy. The big news is Representative Maureen Mooney’s progress in introducing a bill to the New Hampshire House of Representatives that would overturn a law that stipulated: “Notwithstanding any provision of law to the contrary, Dartmouth college shall be permitted to amend its charter in accordance with the provisions of RSA 292:7, provided that the governor shall continue to serve as an ex officio member of the board of trustees.” This law was passed in June of 2003.
In a statement concerning the bill, Robert Donin, the College’s general counsel wrote, “While we have not had an opportunity for an in-depth review of the proposal, we believe it is inappropriate for the state to intrude on the autonomy of the College or any other private not-for-profit institution on matters of internal governance.”
Mooney, a Republican serving in her third term, has made no secret of the reason for her bill: it’s intricately linked with the recent imbroglio involving the Board of Trustees. A co-sponsor of the bill noted that their need to be some “checks and balances” in the process. The popular view is that the 2003 law reasserted the famous Dartmouth College v. Woodward, though that case said only that the state could not unilaterally change the College’s charter. The 2003 bill swung to the other extreme, giving Dartmouth permission to change its own charter with no input from the state—a right most other universities and colleges possess. As it now stands no further action will be taken on the bill until this winter, when a public hearing will be scheduled.
In separate news, the College announced that instead of seating new trustees at their November meeting they would wait the 1st of February to elect new trustees. This news led the Association of Alumni to drop the injunction against seating new trustees from their suit. There are a slew of legal documents available for viewing at http://dartlog.net/2007/10/today-dartmouth-college-followed-time.php for those so inclined. Other than this, little has happened concerning the lawsuit against the College.
As mentioned above, the trustees had a meeting in Hanover this November. Over the weekend they implemented the creation of three new standing committees—academic affairs, alumni relations, and student affairs—the announcement of their creation in September may have been overshadowed by another announcement.
Also during their visit to Dartmouth, the trustees were subjected to unfiltered questions from students for the first time. The event was the result of last minute preparations by a small group of students. Indeed, trustees didn’t receive invitations for the Friday event until Wednesday morning. Initially, only two trustees confirmed their attendance: Stephen Smith ’88 and Todd Zywicki ’88, both were petition candidates. By the time of the event, however, attendance was the best that could be expected with thirteen trustees fielding questions from students. The three trustees who did not participate were unable to attend the November meeting in general.
The Q&A was interesting in that students were able to see and interact with the trustees, but they received few straight answers to their questions. This was probably inevitable and in many cases necessary. What was disturbing though, was how few questions were asked. As soon as the initial student introduction was over Ed Haldeman ’70 (Chariman of the Board) jumped to the podium, clearly intent on sidetracking the event as much as was possible—and he was largely successful as approximately ten or twelve questions were answered in 90 minutes.
Once at the podium, Haldeman underhandedly criticized the events organizers, rambled on about how busy the trustees were, and tried to co-opt the process of asking questions. Instead of having students line up in an orderly fashion behind the microphones in the aisles of the auditorium, Haldeman wanted to have students simply raise their hands, and someone (presumably him) would pick who was worthy of asking questions and who was not. Fortunately this effort was squashed by one of the event’s organizers, Joe Malchow ‘08—who stood up and contradicted Haldeman, telling students to go ahead and line up behind the microphones.
Failing in his endeavor to cherry-pick the questions, Haldeman implemented a filibuster tactic. He asked all of the thirteen trustees in attendance to introduce themselves before any questions were asked. The net result of all of Haldeman’s stalling was that 25 minutes into the Q&A exactly zero questions had been asked. This was especially vexing as he put a time limit on the event saying they had to be somewhere at 6:15—though, curiously, at the end of the program he had changed that time to 6:00. Haldeman funneled all of the questions to the “appropriate” people on the Board, which meant that in practice anywhere from 2-6 people gave answers to each question, greatly lengthening the time of response and thereby reducing the number of questions asked. The Board members’ stock answer to most questions was that the issues were “complex” and “complicated.”
Haldeman’s most noticable gaffe was thankfully pointed out by one of the questioner’s. On the College’s bureaucracy, he had directed everyone to a recent Forbes article which showed clearly that every school’s bureaucracy was growing, virtually saying that is was all right to be like all of the other schools—mediocre. In the end, though, the Q&A could be qualified as a success as the students in attendance (about 160) were able to closely observe the trustees and their interactions with one another. The most heartening note was signaled by Haldeman who made an offhand remark that this would not be the last Q&A. n
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