Dartblog

Call Snapple; we’ve found better stuff. A longtime correspondent writes, in response to our recent digestion of the latest filings in the Dartmouth College Case, Autour de Deux:

Joe, in your Dartblog post, you referenced the infamous [Director of Communications Diana] Pearson notes that came out in discovery. I have given these a close read several times, including the one copy in her own handwriting. […] There is one section where it is clear that the ‘colluders’ were speaking of the possibility for a constitutional amendment and, knowing that they could not get 67% for passage when they only got 60% to elect a new leadership to end the suit. [Which leadership did not, we hasten to note, advertise itself as being opposed to parity, only the momentary instrument of the suit -J.M.] Instead they spoke of getting a majority of the AoA executive committee to simply ‘agree’ with a majority of the Board (read the numbers in her notes carefully relative to the numbers on both the E.C. and on the Board), to mutually “negotiate” an end to the parity agreement—while not acknowledging that the agreement actually existed. They never proceeded with this back-door plan, apparently understanding it would not fly legally and would be political suicide. The detailed inferences in the Pearson document are many and telling.

They doubtless also understood that a formal agreement to put parity to rest would be a public confiteor that some formal agreement originally gave birth to parity.