[Trustee Stephen] Smith accused Kim of supporting [Trustee candidate] Replogle's campaign, as Kim's visits to alumni clubs across the country coincided with Replogle's appearances at the same clubs. In a letter to the Editor of The Dartmouth, Smith added that he was "very distressed" to see Kim getting involved in the election.

Kim refuted the accusations.

"The notion that I was campaigning with specific candidates is absolutely false," Kim told The Dartmouth on April 1. "I have been asked on many occasions whether I support one candidate or the other and I have said explicitly every single time that I do not." [Emphasis added]

A little background is in order. When I announced that I was going to run for a seat on the Board, the heavy guns of negative campaigning were wheeled in from the other side. Starting in February, the charge that I would be a micromanager was repeatedly voiced by my opponents and by the boosters on the Alumni Council working in close concert with them. Somehow, it seemed, a deep knowledge of the College, wide contacts within it, and the aquaintance of people who work with Dartmouth, made me unfit for office. The word micromanager was used over and over again.

A few days before the March 10 start of voting, the following appeared on the websites of my opponents, and in campaign paper and e-mailings sent to alumni by them and their supporters:

Last Wednesday night (March 3) President Kim met with some 700 alumni at the Dartmouth Club of New York. When asked in the public Q&A session what qualifications he'd like to see in Trustees to be elected by alumni beginning March 10, President Kim [replied,] "I think we need someone who is wildly successful in his career, who would bring to the Board a wealth of experiences that would help us to take Dartmouth to new heights. I also think that what we don't need is someone who wants to second-guess everything we do and get involved in micromanaging our administration around operational details that are really my responsibility. The Board needs a big thinker who is an accomplished, proven leader, and I need a true partner whose counsel I can seek. I've developed that relationship with many on the board who are world-class leaders of global companies and I think that's a great model." [Emphasis added]

In my campaign, I also emphasized the importance of at least one Trustee living in Hanover and being close to the daily life of the College in order that the Board have a perspective on Dartmouth independent of the Adminstration. Two weeks into the voting, the following vignette was broadly distributed by the same means as the above quotation:

Before the largest crowd in the Dartmouth Club of DC's history, President Kim responded on Wednesday (3/24) to an alumna's question about the optimal Trustee qualifications as follows: "This is not a management job - it's my responsibility to manage the College. We need someone with wide experience across a broad career, who will come in for the five annual meetings and focus on the critical strategic challenges we face. And I need someone who can provide real expertise when I want to reach out for counsel. How great is it that when questions come up on human resources challenges, or other important matters, I can tap into the expertise of someone like Jeff Immelt (CEO of GE), who can give me the benefit of what he's doing running a big business right now." [Emphasis added]

Not to put too fine a point on it, but while President Kim did not endorse my opponents by name, any attentive voter could easily see where his sympathies lay. Imagine the Pope coming to America just before an election and emphasizing to Catholics their duty to actively oppose abortion, or an international leader speaking out prior to American voting about the importance of universal healthcare. Nobody would fail to understand their underlying political message. Certainly my opponents knew what President Kim was saying; they broadcast his remarks far and wide.

President Kim will speak in Moore Theater on Thursday on the habits of mind that are "essential for your success as students and for a lifetime of leadership." I wonder if he will address the subject of veracity?

Note: Moore Theater's capacity is only 481 people, yet there are over 700 students in attendance this summer. Why would President Kim's speech be booked in such a small venue, rather than in Spaulding Auditorium (capacity: 900)? Answer: Turns out that the group Rusted Root is playing in Spaulding tonight.

President Kim could learn real lessons from this experience. The College's exceptional students, facilities, faculty and reputation can draw the finest administrators to Hanover. Kim has no need to settle for the Upper Valley lifers who currently populate his Administration.

Experienced and successful leaders would not only bring programming innovation with them, but also cost-cutting ideas and the taste for excellence that has too often taken a second place to bonhomie among College staffers who have worked together for decades.

This is an effective formula if all you are seeking is popularity in Hanover. The gladhanders who are everyone's friend rise up, and all staffers can believe that a top job will be theirs one day if they dutifully serve their time.

To date, the only new administrators that Jim Kim has brought to the College have been his longtime confederates Steven Kadish and Linda Snyder; all other appointments have been internal. And the pattern is set to continue in filling the V.P. of Alumni Relations job that David Spalding vacated when he moved up to become Kim's Chief of Staff this spring.

It seems that some kind of formal Alumni Relations search is ongoing, but a search committee has not been named publicly. A quick poll of prominent alumni confirms that no general notice has been given to alums that the position is open. And while rumor has it that the search will be conducted by the headhunters Isaacson Miller, the firm that handled the recent presidential search for the College, the only Dartmouth-related position mentioned on that firm's website is for a Vice President for Finance.

The front runner for the Alumni Relations position is Patricia Fisher '81, Acting V. P. of Alumni Relations. Patsy has been at the College since 1988 and in her 22 uninterrupted years of service in Hanover, she has worked on all manner of alumni-related projects. By all accounts she has been an able administrator and a cooperative colleague. But what exactly will she bring to the table as a leader?

Longtime Dartblog readers will recognize this profile. In fact, it matches that of Acting AD and heir presumptive Bob Ceplikas '78 (31 years in Hanover), newly appointed Dean of the Faculty Mike Mastanduno (23 years), Provost Carol Folt (23 years), Director of Admissions Maria Laskaris (23 years), Director of the Office of Institutional Diversity and Equity Holly Sateia (36 years), Director of Outdoor Programs Dan Nelson '75 (23 years), V. P. for Advancement Carrie Pelzel (13 years), and so on.

As always, lest I incur the wrath of the bien pensant feel-gooders out there, let me state that the above folks are quite personable when you chat with them at the Canoe Club or at a cocktail party. But goodness has little to do with effective hiring, dearie. Jim Kim should be bringing strong, experienced people to Hanover, folks whose real world achievements as senior executives give them the vision to break old patterns and improve the College. There is enough groupthink around here without promoting more people from the in-group.

Our local propane supplier has been unsuccessfully searching for two years to find enough drivers for its propane delivery vehicles. The job requires a commercial driver's licence, which the company will help you obtain, and it involves delivering propane to commercial and residential accounts. At each stop, the driver disembarks from the truck, drags a hose to a storage tank, and then fills the tank. Pay ranges from $15.50-$27.00/hour based on experience and years on the job (a more experienced driver can service more accounts). The workload is light in the summer months when propane consumption is down, but during the winter there is plenty of opportunity for overtime. Some new drivers make close to $50k/year; experienced drivers can pull in $70-80k.

In contrast, after running ads for office workers -- customer service reps -- in the Valley News and other local papers, this same company found itself with 110 resumés. In a CSR job, you sit in an office all day answering the phone in response to customer calls. Hourly pay: $10.25 with virtually no available overtime. Respondents to this ad were evenly divided between men and women.

What is going on here? Is there such a prejudice against work that involves a semblance of physical labor that people are willing to take a large pay cut for the pleasure of sitting in a cubicle answering the phone? And how many people are sufficiently comfortable receiving their newly extended unemployment benefits that they will not even apply for a propane delivery job that can pay an annual salary that will put them in the top quartile of all Americans?

NEWS: Effort to Unionize DHMC Resumes Lebanon-- After hearing complaints about a lack of raises, loss of vacation time, hospital overcrowding and mandatory overtime, union officials are making another bid to organize nurses at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center.

As I wrote regarding the Hanover Inn, "Don't get me wrong, I am no supporter of labor unions, but I believe that the old saying is accurate: management gets the union that it deserves."

Despite the Valley News' particular emphasis on the material side of the nurses' grievances, any experienced manager can see that the problem here is a lack of job satisfaction. Employees care much less about "a lack of raises, loss of vacation time, hospital overcrowding and mandatory overtime" than they do about being listened to, respected, appreciated, and given credit for their contributions to an institution. People want to work at a place that they value for its intelligence, efficiency, and effectiveness in making the lives of its customers better.

Want proof? At my own business, I have several former employees from the College and DHMC. They left those places despite receiving salaries and benefits in their new jobs that are a fraction of what they would have received from Dartmouth. Why would they do that? See the above.

Note: One other reason for rampant job dissatisfaction in these institutions is their "no fire" policies. When poor-quality workers are making as much money as high performers, the quality folks come to feel like chumps. Either they slack off, or leave, or simply believe that they are working for a lousy employer. At that point, a labor union starts to seem attractive.

Note: The Valley News story makes the following observation:

Workers are also unhappy that they're losing one pay period's worth of "earned time," which amounts to between 10.5 and 13.5 hours for every two-week pay period they work. The hours are used for vacation, illness or holiday time off.

If you run the math on these figures (and if the VN and I haven't made errors here), you conclude that for every year of work (26 two-week pay periods), an employee earns between 273 and 351 hours of time off. That's between seven and nine weeks of paid time off each year (not counting statutory holidays.

Safety Concerns about Swimming

As many of you may be aware, the swim docks were not installed on the riverfront this summer for safety reasons. A safety review revealed a combination of variables at the swim dock that pose potential risks to students, e.g. a water depth of 18 feet which quickly drops off to 25 feet, unpredictably swift currents, very low underwater visibility, and underwater debris.

In a joint message to students on Friday afternoon from the Dean of the College and student leaders (Student Assembly and Class Council), students in residence this summer were informed that we have reviewed alternative proposals and do not have viable alternatives for safe swimming at the swim dock location for this summer. We will be working with Student Assembly to form a Task Force to identify a long term solution. In the meantime, we have arranged for students enrolled this summer to have free access to the facilities at Storrs Pond, and are running regular shuttles on weekends. With the support of the Ledyard Canoe Club, students also have free use of canoes and kayaks through the end of the summer term.

The Task Force will need the support of staff and faculty with related expertise. Please email Campus Life at Campus.Life@Dartmouth.EDU, if you are interested in participating or have ideas the Task Force should consider.

Posted by Dean of the College, Dean.of.the.College@Dartmouth.EDU

However, nobody can say that the College is not responsive. A Task Force is working "to identify a long term solution." Perhaps there is an agreeable body of water within walking distance of the campus that we have all overlooked during the past decades.

Still to come: Are there any statistics (any at all!) regarding health hazards encountered at the Sophomore Dock? Perhaps our data-driven President will conclude that after an over-30-year experiment in swimming in the Connecticut, the river is safe after all.

Note: Amazingly, the Dean of the College has not blamed the College's insurance policy's liability coverage for this change in policy. That strategy is a tried and true out for administrators casting for an excuse to justify a silly decision motivated only by a desire to save money.

The subject of Italian gelati is one close to my heart: each year over the past couple of decades, I have spent 2-4 weeks in Italy, chiefly in the Chianti region of Tuscany, on the Amalfi Coast, or in Milan at the home of the family with whom I lived for the better part of my senior year. Thorough sleuthing into the best local gelaterie has been a continuous part of my rigorous cultural investigations -- though never more than two visits each day. A man has to have discipline in this kind of thing.

Conclusion: Gelato Morano of Hanover would be a credible presence in any Italian city. You should pay the shop a visit to find out if you agree.

Note: The above picture of a gelateria in Sorrento on the Amalfi Coast well illustrates the heights to which Italians can take this kind of thing.

President Kim, who recently completed his first year in office, launched the lecture series to "supplement the classroom experience with real-life lessons on innovation, collaboration, and leadership." Kim will speak about "habits of the mind" in the second lecture on July 29, 2010. [Emphasis added]

Our dear President should try to be more thoughtful in his choice of words. He already has a brewing problem with the faculty, who increasingly feel cut out of the search process for senior administrators and other decisions where consultation should be the order of the day. If Kim is now going to characterize faculty members and the subject of their teaching as something other than real life, well, he is going to ruffle more feathers.

Of course, I am not going to defend abstruse theories of literary interpretation as being derived from close observation of the human condition, but there is plenty of research and teaching done at Dartmouth that is drawn from down-and-dirty investigation and that has direct application to policy and innovation: for example, Danny Blanchflower of the Economics Department did an extraordinary job of economic forecasting on the Bank of England's Monetary Policy Committee just last year, and other Econ profs have held serious jobs in Washington; Hany Farid has developed revolutionary methods in digital forensics for authenticating paintings and understanding the modification of images; and Victor Petrenko's understanding of ice will soon have wide-ranging ramifications. This list goes on in any number of areas; understanding the real world and the human condition is what faculty members at a liberal arts institution do, or at least perceive that they do.

For President Kim to voice the trope of the ivory tower, absent-minded professor who cannot teach "real-life lessons" does not do justice to our faculty; in fact, it will rile them up. In future, Jim Kim should take more care in his phrasing and thinking, lest he acquire a reputation for unreflective glibness.

In any event, it seems that the Benzes are owned by consultants who are in town to work for the College. Needless to say, upon learning this fact, I became concerned that they were rented vehicles whose cost was being passed on to the College as an expense (I had some experience with this type of scurrilous behavior in the 1980's Decade of Greed). However a close inspection of the SLK55 showed no evidence of rental tags.

On to weightier matters.

It never fails to amaze me when the two best people in the entire world for important positions at Dartmouth always just happen to be married to each other! I think that that would make for an interesting statistic and something I'd volunteer to help research - the number of "couples" at Dartmouth occupying exempt salaried positions - I can think of several off the top of my head.

While it is true that the College has a good many husband/wife hires, I disagree with the principle underlying my correspondent's comment. In the modern world it is often necessary to find a position for a spouse if an institution wants to attract a strong outside candidate to a senior position. This necessity applies in spades to Dartmouth given our location in rural New Hampshire; the narrowness of the Upper Valley job market often puts us at a disadvantage in hiring good people vis à vis schools in cities.

That said, this courtesy should only be extended in nation-wide searches to strong candidates who have competent spouses. Regrettably, the College too often follows Steve Jobs' axiom: "A" people hire "A" people, and "B" people hire "C" people. With a resolutely "B/C"-level administration, it too often occurs that poor quality people are hired for political reasons and they are accompanied by an even weaker spouse.

Note: To all appearances, the above argument does not apply to Team Kadish/Snyder. Not only do they bring to Hanover real discernment in their choice of motor cars, but their resumés are infinitely deeper than the people that they replaced.

Another Note From a Friend and Scholar: "We can take the Steve Jobs' quote farther back. It was a favorite quip of Sterling Dow (1903-1995), one of America's greatest Greek historians and her greatest Greek epigraphist, who was the John E Hudson Professor of Greek Archaeology at Harvard. His version ran as follows: Alpha men pick alpha men; beta men pick gamma men."

These two Mercedes roadsters are not standard CLK55 and SLK55 models; they are the customized versions from AMG -- Mercedes motorsport workshop. Equipped with 5.4 liter V8 engines, the little beauties have a top speed of over 150mph; with options they can cost close to $100k each. The rumor mill has these his and her luxury cars belonging to President Kim's principal lieutenants: cost-cutter Stephen Kadish and buildings czarina Linda Snyder. However the popular notion that the letters SLK are Steven Kadish's initials is dead wrong: his middle initial is "N."

Note: No word yet on how a full-time employee of the College gets away with having California plates on a car that has resided in the Upper Valley for over a year. Even at 150mph, it would be tough to go back to California each weekend. Let's offer the benefit of the doubt here and hope to see local plates (and local taxes paid) on the little gray bomb as soon as possible. Otherwise, the Hanover Police could be around soon with the flatbed tow truck.

Update: An anonymous tipster has written in as follows: "By the way, Steve and Linda walk to work every day. Those aren't their cars. Not their style either." Anyone know better?

At one point, Magdalen College at Oxford contemplated auctioning off an Assyrian relief which had been given to it in the 19th century. The relief was worth millions. But after sober consideration, policymakers there realized that such a sale would have a long-lasting chilling effect on non-cash donations -- which over the centuries had been the source of some of Magdalen's greatest treasures. Donors, it seems, do not want to think that the institution to which they just gave their First Folio might flog it for cash at a later date.

Additionally, while the College has been unimaginative in its use of Minary, the Center has nonetheless been a vital off-campus meeting ground for faculty and administrators. Professors and deans bunk together, brainstorm, get to know each other, and generally think creatively about the direction of their respective departments, programs and the College itself. At an institution that has been bereft of creative inspiration over the past decades, Minary could be used to re-start the flow of ideas from professors to the Administration.

Finally, as I wrote the other day, the current real estate market for luxury properties like Minary is mixed at the very best. In the present climate, large corporations are loathe to splash our money for ostentatious retreats, and the private equity world is spending cautiously. A professional in the luxury property field tells me that the College will probably get one or two low-ball offers for Minary in short order, but then bidders will fold their arms and wait for the asking price to come down. In the end, Dartmouth could lose an irreplaceable functioning asset for an embarrassingly low price.

Take a look at the real estate ad for the Minari Center, one of the College's most beautiful properties. As you can see from the below, this type of place is clearly out of synch with the spirit of modern Dartmouth.

Note: Quite amazingly, I have never seen any kind of advertisement offering the Minari Center for rent. A little commercial energy goes a long in seeking to make a place like this pay for itself.

Regrettably, even if predictably, it seems that the benefit of all this investment will not accrue to this year's sophomore class. As a cost-saving measure, Dartmouth's air conditioned dorms have been closed to students this summer, or in the case of Hitchcock and New Hamp, the air con simply has not been turned on. That said, in response to the extreme heat, one cannot say that the College hasn't been caring:

Date: Fri, 09 Jul 2010 16:20 EDT
From: "April Thompson"
To: Undergraduates in Residence:;
Subject: Heat Relief and Cooling Location

Due to the prolonged heat and humidity, the college has identified the air conditioned Novak Cafe as a student "heat relief" and "cooling station."

The cafe has been equipped with 50 cots for sleeping (20 have been set up in Novak room 60). Additional cots can be set up in the main area of Novak as needed. Novak is open and available to students 24 hours a day and will be staffed from 11PM to 8AM each night this weekend by Safety and Security personnel. Students who are in need of a cool place to sleep or who are looking for a comfortable space to study or just cool off should use this space during this heat wave.

No word has been received to date as to whether the College will be providing heat to dormitories and classrooms this winter.

Actually, this comment is only slightly facetious. The administration has made a choice here: cutting costs such as air conditioning for students is a way to save money in order to support the administration's bloated staffing levels (up 40% since 1999), and the most generous employee wage and benefits package since pre-bankruptcy General Motors. That may be President Kim's idea of social justice, but it ain't mine. If the College were to pay market wages to its staff, and content itself with a benefits package that wasn't the richest in the Ivy League, we'd have money left over to make students' experience over the summer a comfortable one, and the College could even pay for lifeguards on the Connecticut River. Instead, sophomores are telling prospies that summer in Hanover definitely has a serious downside.

Note: If you are at the College for the Classical Association of New England's Summer Institute 2010 or one of the Rassias Center's ALPS language sessions, you will benefit from air conditioning in a Dartmouth dormitory. Once again, the administration's choices illustrate its real priorities.