Dartblog

The amusing anomaly in the current Trustee election is that both my supporters and critics agree that I possess extensive on-the-ground knowledge about the daily operations of the College — but they disagree almost violently on the implication of this observation. I’ve audited courses for two decades, gotten to know several generations of students and members of the faculty, and in writing columns for The D and posts for Dartblog, I’ve acquired a good database of statistical facts about the College — along with a healthy scepticism for the spin that emanated too regularly from the past administration.

My supporters believe, as I do, that this background will make me a valuable addition in the Boardroom, where the majority of members were all too eager to accept the past administration’s justifications for bad decisions — the results of which beleaguer the College today in a hundred million different ways.

My critics assert, however, that too much knowledge is a dangerous thing. While I agree that ignorance is bliss, does being uninformed help one be an effective trustee?

These critics worriedly express the concern that I will be unable to restrain myself from “micro-managing” the College’s affairs. Why is that exactly? As a strategy consultant with Bain & Company in London, I did not suffer from this problem. My son just asked me what a non sequitur is; I cited this strange proposition.

Let me give you an example of why extensive knowledge helps rather than hurts Trustees do their job. For almost a decade, students, faculty, parents and alumni have asserted that the College is overstaffed. I wrote a column in The D about the problem in 2004. And yet year after year, the overwhelming majority of the Trustees approved President Wright’s budgets — which is one of the Board’s key responsibilities (along with evaluating the President, setting long-term strategy and managing the endowment). Would they have done so had they known, among myriad other examples, that the number of non-faculty staffers at the College was exploding (increasing from 2,408 to 3,417 between 1999 and 2008), that the cost of Dartmouth’s benefits policy was out of control, or that the College’s administrative staff was laboriously doing tasks by hand that other schools has long ago automated at great savings?

I have never before seen ignorance celebrated at Dartmouth, and I definitely have never heard it regarded as a job requirement anywhere. However, I can see why certain people deem it important: such an assertion is in their self-interest, for ignorance is a quality that they possess in abundance.

Note: I have written here and here about the need for the Trustees to educate themselves about the daily life of the College, and I’ve pointed to Williams College as a good example to follow. When will they ever learn?