Dartblog

Marji Ross is Dartmouth Class of 1981, member of the Executive Committee of the Dartmouth Association of Alumni, and president of Regnery Publishing in Washington, D.C. In brief, she’s a Dartmouth success story. And here she explains why President Wright and Chairman Haldeman’s decision to end Dartmouth’s 116-year-old tradition of truly accountable governance is harmful to the College and its future students. I fully agree with her sentiments, quoted in part below.

I believe the recent decisions by the Board of Trustees are reckless, arrogant, harmful to the College, completely dismissive of the alumni, and disloyal to the tradition of Dartmouth. I believe Dartmouth stands alone as the best example of how alumni and administration can work together for the good of the College — at least, it DID stand for that, until September 7th. I believe it is foolish to emulate other institutions’ governance when Dartmouth has been a leader in this field (it reminds me of those Supreme Court Justices who want to base their decisions on international law, rather than our own Constitution). And I believe the Board has been terribly misleading in their descriptions of what they passed, and what the ramifications of those changes will be.

ALSO READ Douglas Anderson’s excellent correspondence with a member of the Governance Committee that worked to formulate the recently-enacted alterations to the governance system.