Dartblog

David Nachman writes in defense of democracy at Dartmouth:

The Board of Trustees is placing present concerns over long term pragmatism. Over time, Dartmouth’s alumni will be increasingly liberal, and many of today’s concerns will become irrelevant. The 1891 agreement to split the board between alumni-elected trustees and board-elected trustees ensures that the board ultimately follows the will of the alumni. Some would say that the views of the alumni don’t really matter, but that certainly cannot be the case. Without alumni control, Dartmouth would be running in a vacuum of its own self-perpetuating leadership. It would be like a Supreme Court that could choose its own successors. Who knows what direction its would take over many generations. An even split of trustees creates a system where the board remains firmly grounded to alumni control, but also more stable through its ability to counterbalance alumni decisions through its own choices. Without a large number of alumni trustees, Dartmouth would be like a corporate board operating without shareholders. The 1891 agreement ensures that we are the shareholders.

That last line — “we are the shareholders” strikes me as utterly crucial. No student at Dartmouth is more than four years from being an alumnus. The battle lines — and, alas, they are that — are between current and former students, united in their desire and due right to steer Dartmouth towards the future, and an insular and self-interested technocracy locally referred to as “the administration.”

Every Dartmouth guy and girl has heard this a thousand times from President James Wright: You pay for half of the Dartmouth experience; alumni pay for the rest. Quite true. Those two groups, current and former students, are the shareholders. They’re the relevant interested parties. Their right to democratic representation on the Board is neither notional nor reliant on a single 1891 document. It is foundational and necessary; it is immanent to everything Dartmouth is.

There will be much, much more on this in weeks to come. But for now, just study the situation carefully. Observe the fleeting humor and general dread of what a small cabal on the Board — four Trustees and James Wright — are trying to do through their superpowerful Governance Committee.

The constitution, emphatically rejected last year, was the sweet way of doing this. Now comes the quick and dirty way.