Dartmouth's Wright Says He Won't Resign in E-Mail (Update1) 2007-03-08 12:45 (New York) (Updates with alumni in fourth paragraph.) By Brian K. Sullivan March 8 (Bloomberg) -- Dartmouth College President James Wright said that while he may eventually be toppled if dissident alumni manage to take control of the Board of Trustees, he won't resign before then. In a Feb. 28 e-mail sent to faculty, students and alumni obtained by Bloomberg News, Wright said assertions that the new trustees will name a new president ``will likely prove to be correct -- someday.'' ``For now though, to paraphrase Mark Twain, reports of my retirement are premature,'' Wright, 67, wrote in the 1,868-word e-mail that covered a variety of other topics from visiting veterans to the school's proposed mission statement. ``While I may look my age, I am not yet ready to act it. So let us hold off on the transition planning.'' Alumni of Dartmouth, founded in 1769, include chief executive officers of some of the world's largest companies. Jeffrey Immelt, 51, chairman and chief executive officer of General Electric Co. is a 1978 graduate, and U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, 60, who previously ran Goldman Sachs Group Inc., graduated 10 years earlier. Alumni elect half the trustees, who have final authority over the Hanover, New Hampshire school, the smallest of the eight Ivy League institutions. Dartmouth's Alumni Council offers a slate of candidates for election, and any alumni dissatisfied with that slate are allowed to run for election if they can get 500 peers to sign a petition on their behalf. In past elections, three petition candidates have defeated those endorsed by the council. Call for Resignation In March 2006, alumnus Joseph Asch wrote a column in the student-run The Dartmouth calling for Wright to resign. ``The trustees must then put into place a confident, forceful president and a lean administration made up of men and women who are able to keep good faculty,'' wrote Asch, a member of the class of 1979. Asch, who has supported petition candidates, declined to comment today. Dartmouth spokesman Roland Adams said Wright wasn't immediately available for comment. In the e-mail, Wright inserted himself into this year's election by directly challenging claims by current petition candidate Stephen Smith, a University of Virginia law professor, a dispute reported by The Dartmouth. Other Candidates Other candidates include Richard Alderson, chief executive officer of Major League Baseball's San Diego Padres; Sherri Oberg, co-founder, president and Chief Executive of Watertown, Massachusetts-based pharmaceutical company Acusphere Inc., and John Wolf, president of Eisenhower Fellowships. ``It does not, however, advance the college to make allegations or misstate the facts,'' Wright wrote, without naming Smith. ``Dartmouth classes are getting smaller; faculty are as committed to teaching students and to teaching as they have ever been; the Greek system is thriving.'' On his Web site, Smith has criticized the administration's support of athletics, dedication to free speech and the size of the school's bureaucracy, among other issues. Dartmouth has the 21st-largest endowment in the U.S., according to the National Association of College and University Business Officers, which tallies the school's fund at $3 billion. In addition to its undergraduate school, with about 4,100 students, Dartmouth is also home to the Tuck School of Business, Thayer School of Engineering and its medical school. --Editor: Holdcraft. Story illustration: For the Web site of Dartmouth College, see http://www.dartmouth.edu. To calculate the cost of a college education, see {EF }. For education-related functions, click {EDUC }.