Board of Trustees of Dartmouth College - Nomination of Alumni Trustees - Recent Controversies

Recent Controversies

In 2004, T. J. Rodgers sought the alumni nomination as a petition candidate and won the balloting, after which the Board elected him as its newest trustee. His nomination by petition was an unusual occurrence, since alumni candidates are typically nominated by the Alumni Council. The only previous petition candidate to successfully be seated on the Board was John Steel in 1980. In 2005, petition candidates Todd Zywicki and Peter Robinson similarly won nominations to the Board. Because they were critical of the College administration and were described as "outsiders," the conservative student paper The Dartmouth Review called their election "The Lone Pine Revolution" and described it as "the most significant event in recent history." Stephen Smith, the fourth petition candidate, also critical of the direction of the College, won the nomination in 2007.

In 2006, an Alumni Association committee proposed a new version of the organization's constitution that would have altered the process of nominating trustees, in part by re-incorporating the Alumni Council within the Association. The proposal was debated fiercely, with opponents arguing that it would tilt the election rules in favor of candidates selected by the Alumni Council or its successor and against petition candidates. Proponents argued that the constitution would solve longstanding organizational problems for the Association of Alumni and the Alumni Council. Amid significant voter turnout, a majority of alumni voted against adopting the new constitution, which would have required a two-thirds supermajority for passage.

In 2007, the Board announced that its Governance Committee would complete a periodic review of the Board's practices at the Board meeting of early September. Some alumni took this and other announcements to mean that the Board would reduce the number of alumni trustees or ask the Alumni Council to alter its nomination process, and a new controversy erupted. Newly-formed groups created websites and took out advertisements in The New York Times and elsewhere meant to influence the Board's decision.

In September 2007, the Board decided to amend the Charter to add eight new trustee seats, expanding the size of the group from eighteen to twenty-six seats. In deciding how the new members would be nominated, the Board stated that it would retain the existing number of eight alumni trustees and make all eight new members charter trustees. Thus, the proportion of alumni-nominated trustees would fall from 44.4 percent of the Board to 30.7 percent, dropping from half of the elected trustees to one-third.

The Board's decision sparked controversy among alumni. The majority of the Association's Executive Committee sued the Board in an attempt to block the change, although the new set of officers elected in June 2008 withdrew the lawsuit. New Hampshire state Representative Maureen Mooney (R-Merrimack) drafted a bill that would force the Board to cede some control over the amendment of its Charter to the state, although it was not the Charter amendment itself that was controversial. As introduced into committee, the legislation would have repealed an act of 2003 that finally gave the Board the right to amend its Charter without consulting the state. Mooney stated that the recent governance changes at the College were a reason for her sponsorship of the bill. In February 2008, Mooney's bill was voted down in the commerce committee, and the New Hampshire House of Representatives voted against the bill on March 5, 2008.

In September 2008, the Board began the expansion announced the year before by electing five alumni to the Board as charter trustees.