Dartblog

The Alumni Council Nominating and Alumni Search Committee is hard at work choosing a single candidate for each of the two open slots in the Board elections next spring and, according to the head of the Committee Tom Daniels ‘82, its members have reviewed over 400 names to date. They will announce their choice in early December.

What do you bet that the Committee continues its tradition of nominating only people like its past candidates: alumni who could not see a single thing wrong at the College no matter how hard they looked, except perhaps that the English Department had been insufficiently forthcoming with superlatives to express the greatness of Jim Wright’s presidency?

If you have been mystified by such conformity to the desires of the President and the Board of Trustees, be mystified no more. Rather, take a look at the Alumni Council Constitution Article IV, Section 2, Paragraph C:

The Chair of the Nominating Committee of the Board of Trustees of the College may sit with the Nominating Committee of the [Alumni] Council as a non-voting ex-officio member at such times as the Nominating Committee is dealing with the subject of nominating candidates for the position of Alumni Trustee.

It seems that our alumni representatives work hand in glove with the Chairman of the Board of Trustees (who is usually on the five-person Goverance Committee that picks Charter Trustees for the Board) in picking candidates who are supposed to independently represent the will of the alumni. No wonder the alumni have rejected the Council’s nominees in elections for the last four open Alumni Trustee seats. Perhaps it is the Alumni Council itself that needs reform, not the Alumni Trustee campaign guidelines.