Dartblog

Grant Bosse, Class of 1994, e-mails:

I’ve been following and working on political campaigns since well before I could vote. So I never really shared the frustration others had with all those annoying Get Out The Vote phone calls leading up to Election Day. That is, until “Dartmouth Alumni for Common Sense” got my phone number.

Henry Kissinger is quoted as saying “Academic quarrels are so vicious because the stakes are so small.” The stakes in the proposed Alumni Constitution are quite narrow; the process by which Alumni Trustees are elected to the Board. And most Alums, for all their love of Dartmouth, don’t really care.

We haven’t had much reason to care. The Board of Trustees has largely functioned as a mutual admiration society of fundraisers and backslappers. The Association of Alumni has consistently refused to give us a choice of candidates with competing visions of Dartmouth’s future. To fill this void, over the past two years, three candidates put their names on the ballot through petition. All three won. The Alumni Governance Task Force was formed to prevent any future expressions of Alumni discontent.

The document produced by this Task Force is confusing, convoluted, and intensely undemocratic. It liquidates the Alumni Council, stacks the deck against any future petition candidates, and locks in the current Alumni Association officers for up to four years. In the process of railroading this document towards approval, the Alumni Association even cancelled this year’s elections that could have replaced them before their safety net was approved.

You may have guessed that I’m voting no on the proposed Constitution, but I’m not asking you to join me. If you care about preserving more than a token voice for Alumni in Dartmouth’s future, I ask you to look past the endless emails, including this one, and the annoying phone calls. I ask you do something that this “Common Sense” group doesn’t trust you to do. Make up your own mind. After all, if the Proposed Constitution passes, you might not get another chance.