Original Article: http://dartreview.com/archives/2008/05/19/asktdr_aoa_versus_alumni_council.php
Monday, May 19, 2008
Editor’s note: Many of you may have noticed the College’s AskDartmouth feature on Dartmouth’s homepage. Recently, one of the submitted questions asked about the difference between the Association of Alumni and the Alumni Council. Given the pertinence to the current lawsuit against the College, this question is explored below in some detail. Specifically, this article outlines the differences between these two organizations, with an eye to determining which one actually represents alumni.
In many ways, the ambiguous and confusing relationship between Dartmouth’s Association of Alumni and Alumni Council is old news. A bombardment of explanatory pamphlets and articles—with heavy doses of spin—flooded forth in the fall of 2006 before the failure of the proposed constitution, which sought to subsume the Association of Alumni under the Alumni Council (among other things). Emerging from the smoke and rubble of that epic battle, however, most students and alumni remained understandably unclear about the exact difference between the Association of Alumni (AoA) and the Alumni Council.
The recent controversy over the trustees’ attempted board-packing plan and the AoA’s lawsuit against it once again thrusts the tension between the AoA and Alumni Council into the limelight. This article will revisit the issue, offering a brief explanation of the differences between these two bodies, both of which claim to represent the alumni of this great college.
As with all things, it is helpful to understand the history of the issue at hand. Founded in 1854, the AoA holds annual meetings and conducts alumni trustee ballot contests. Its membership includes “every person who has ever matriculated as a full-time student in pursuit of a Dartmouth degree” at the undergraduate college or the graduate schools, currently some 70,000 alumni.
The AoA has four officers, a president, two vice-presidents and a secretary-treasurer, who are members of an eleven-member Executive Committee, which is chosen in an annual alumni-wide election—this year’s election is currently being held, and voting continues until June 5, 2008. Vote at www.voxthevote.org.
In contrast to the AoA, the Alumni Council, formed in 1913, consists of 120 members “representing classes, geographic clubs, graduate schools, affiliated groups, students, and others.” According to its constitution, the Alumni Council intends to be the “clearing house for, and principal spokesperson of, alumni sentiment to the administration.” Beginning in 1913, the Alumni Council nominated an alumnus to fill each vacancy among the alumni trustees.
If dissatisfied with the Council’s options, alumni can nominate their own trustee candidates by petition. Between 1913 and 1990, there were only seven petition trustees nominated; so on most occasions the name of the Council’s designee was simply forwarded directly to the Board of Trustees as the alumni’s nominee, leaving the AoA with virtually no responsibilities. The role and relevance of the Association has been increasing since 1990, when the Alumni Council and AoA constitutions were amended, requiring the Council to nominate three candidates for each vacancy and renewing the Association’s responsibility to run elections for each alumni trustee vacancy.
Now that the proportion of alumni trustees on the Board is being called into question, it is natural for the roles and differences between the AoA and the Council to be brought to light and questioned, since both groups are involved in the alumni trustee election process. In addition, it is especially important to keep both groups distinct as the majority of the AoA’s Executive Committee fundamentally endorses the lawsuit, while the Alumni Council does not (see pages 8-9).
In August of 2007, the Association polled the alumni, and ninety-two percent of respondents agreed that the Board should maintain parity between alumni-elected trustees and charter (appointed) trustees, as established by the 1891 Agreement and upheld ever since.
On October 3, 2007, following a majority vote by the Executive Committee, the AoA filed a lawsuit on behalf of alumni seeking to stop the board-packing plan. The lawsuit is currently in a discovery period at the Grafton county court. The board-packing plan reduces the proportion of alumni-elected trustees from one-half to one-third.
Bill Hutchinson ‘76, president of the Association, opposed the lawsuit, deeming it “unnecessarily divisive and unwittingly destructive.” According to Hutchinson, some members of the Executive Committee relied on an expansive interpretation of Article IV. 3.i. of the Association’s constitution, which states, “The Executive Committee shall…have charge of the general interests of the Association,” to argue that the Association’s Executive Committee is the rightful representative of the alumni body.
On October 5, 2007 the Alumni Council issued a statement condemning the lawsuit, and on November 6, the Council filed an amicus curiae brief with the Grafton county court, authored in part by J.B. Daukas ‘84, president-elect of the Alumni Council, in support of the College’s motion to dismiss the suit.
In the brief, the Alumni Council calls the Association a “vestigial and traditionally ceremonially body with very limited responsibilities and powers.” The brief goes on to claim that the “Association of Alumni’s Executive Committee lacks standing to bring suit on behalf of Dartmouth’s alumni,” and that the members of the Alumni Council are the principal spokespersons of Dartmouth alumni.
The Association countered the Alumni Council’s claims in a response filed on December 10, 2007 with the court. The Association observed that, unlike the Executive Committee, the Alumni Council is not directly elected by the alumni, which raises questions about how well the Alumni Council truly represents the opinions of Dartmouth alumni. The Association also deems the Alumni Council’s claim to be the principal spokesperson specious because it rests heavily on the Alumni Council’s own constitution and mission statement, which were enacted by the Alumni Council itself. Finally, the Association makes the argument that the Association has standing as a party to the 1891 Agreement, which predates the creation of the Alumni Council.
Hutchinson asserts, “The lawsuit does not change the fundamental role of each group, but it certainly has created a wedge between them.” Indeed, this wedge is painfully manifest in exhibits two and three of the Association’s response to the amicus curiae brief, which contain a collection of heated e-mail exchanges sent between president of the Alumni Council Rick Silverman ‘81 and members of the Association’s Executive Committee.
Though fifty-one percent of the alumni who voted opposed the new alumni constitution in 2006, there seems to be a fairly large consensus that the current system can and should be improved—there must be a better, streamlined system without the inefficiency of having two separate bodies feuding for the right to represent alumni. The Executive Committee of the AoA is a very small, but democratically elected, group of alumni seeking to speak on behalf of all alumni.
The Alumni Council is a large sample of Dartmouth alumni intended to represent them, and designed to speak on their behalf. Ultimately. the Alumni Council is not directly elected by alumni. Which of these two bodies can best reflect the will of and defend the interests of alumni?
Many feel that the results of the current AoA elections will be an important gauge of the issue. The election of a new Executive Committee opposed to the lawsuit might suggest that the Alumni Council better reflects alumni sentiments.
On the other hand, if the alumni elect leaders who continue the lawsuit, it will seem that something is broken with the way the Alumni Council selects its members—as something was broken with the way the Council’s Nominating Committee was selecting its alumni-elected trustee slate. For the past four alumni trustee elections, the Council has nominated trustees which alumni have not voted into office; rather, alumni put forth their own petition trustees to counter the Council’s trustees, and each petition trustee has won his respective election.
Ultimately, for the purposes of the current lawsuit, the key difference between the AoA and the Alumni Council is that the AoA’s Executive Committee is directly elected by alumni and therefore directly representative of alumni, while the Alumni Council’s is not, despite the claims of the Council’s amicus curiae brief.