By Frank Gado
Crossing the snow-covered Dartmouth green one night, I stopped, looked around, and asked, "Who owns this place, and by what right?" More than half a century later, I have still not resolved a complete answer to that question. But I can give you my short-form response: A small group of willful people, mostly money men disdainful of undergraduate education, have stacked the board of trustees, made an unannounced decision to convert a liberal arts college into a major research university, and "earned" themselves huge commissions on sales of their own securities to the college's endowment while keeping details of the transactions secret.
A note on the history: Most of America's early colleges were founded by church denominations, whose control gradually weakened as costs and instructional quality rose. The pivotal stage in this history occurred in the decades following the Civil War, when alumni, having assumed the major burden of support, began asserting claims for seats on the board of trustees. Dartmouth alumni battled longest and won the most significant concessions in 1891. Responsibility for the college was to be vested in each and every alumnus; excepting the ex officio members (the state's governor and the college president), half the trustees would thereafter be elected directly by the alumni body, and the other half by the entire board.
The system worked very well at Dartmouth, but in the wake of the Vietnam War, the administration and faculty turned sharply left, and so did the political class of alumni officers. A large number of dissenting alumni grew restive, and elected an independent candidate though a petition process. An attempt to deny the victor his seat failed, but the establishment rejiggered the rules to make repetition of this "dangerous precedent" less likely.
In response, the alumni movement focused on electing trustees through the petition process, taking aim at campus speech codes, the bloated administration, overcrowding and hostility toward a core curriculum. By May of 2007, an unbroken string of four petition candidates filled half the eight alumni board trusteeships. At a gloomy meeting of the Alumni Council (by now wholly a creature of the administration), the head of the nominations committee rose to express futility and to state that there was no point in naming candidates only to have them humiliated in an election. But the next speaker, outgoing Chairman of the Board William Neukom, could not resist leaking an intimation that the cavalry had mounted: "Don't despair," he announced. "Rescue is on its way." And indeed, alas, it was.
Meanwhile, a second approach by reformers pressed for democratization of the Alumni Association by enabling all alumni to vote in its elections without having to be physically present in Hanover. After years of meeting dogged resistance, this reform succeeded, and in the very first election in which many thousands could cast ballots, insurgents captured a majority of the Association's Executive Committee. No election since 1891 would prove as consequential.
Neukom's "rescue" was simple: he and his allies packed the board with eight additional trustees, creating a supermajority that rendered the four elected trustees utterly impotent. In court, a New Hampshire judge rejected Dartmouth's motion to dismiss our suit, but then we faced a greater hurdle: a new election. Aware of what was at stake, the college threw its resources behind an opposition slate which freely misrepresented, smeared, and lied its way to victory. Eight minutes into its first meeting, without discussion, the lawsuit was not only withdrawn but withdrawn with prejudice -- meaning it can never be revived. The 1891 accord was dead.
Only a few years later, what was afoot in this nasty game played by the board has become apparent. Responsible to no one, a small group consisting almost exclusively of money manipulators has hijacked a college. Unchecked, they have sold their own securities to the college's endowment while keeping details of the transactions secret and failing to comply with state laws regarding conflict of interest. In gratitude for their predatory access, they have crowded the campus with ugly or just dull buildings serving their vanities. Far worse, they have rapidly advanced the transformation of a liberal arts college into a research university without ever opening the question to a careful analysis of the disadvantages as well as the presumed advantages of that metamorphosis.
Their previous choice for president, Jim Yong Kim, was a thoroughly materialistic utilitarian who consistently displayed ignorance of the shaping forces of Western Civilization. To him, the value of the arts lay in stimulating the brain to breakthroughs in other fields; somehow linked with the liberal arts, they constituted the "special sauce" of Dartmouth's undergraduate education. But the Big Mac on which he and the board cast a lickerish eye was a Dartmouth University with a health care nexus. And now that miraculous transport on Obama's angelic wings has raised Kim to the World Bank, nothing is to change. Both the composition of the presidential search committee for a successor and public statements by its heads and the board chairman who appointed them loudly proclaim, the next president must, above all, promote the interwoven interests of the medical school, doctoral studies in the life sciences, and the new emphasis on the public health program.
Why should we believe that is the road best taken? No prick of compunction moves the board to explain. Simply, it doesn't have to. Indeed, if any trustee were to be so wayward as to disclose any portion of the board's deliberations, he (or she) would be in violation of the Trustee Oath all must swear as a condition of installation -- a sacred pledge befitting La Cosa Nostra more than stewardship of an academic institution.
It may well be that the alumni of a college, like the citizens of a republic, lack the knowledge and sophisticated judgment to best chart a course for the future, but recent history should alert us that trusting in the money changers is not necessarily the mark of superior wisdom.
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Frank Gado is secretary of The Hanover Institute, a Vermont-based organization concerned with alumni matters at Dartmouth.
Comments (9)
I note that the original charter of Dartmouth College (http://www.dartmouth.edu/~trustees/docs/charter-2010.pdf) contains the following articles:
"[10] KNOW YE THEREFORE, that We considering the Premises and being willing to encourage the laudable & charitable design of spreading Christian Knowledge among the Savages of our American Wilderness and also that the best means of Education be established in our Province of New Hampshire for the benefit of said Province, DO of our special grace certain knowledge and mere motion by and with the advice of our Council for said Location of School, by these Presents WILL, ordain, grant & constitute that there be a College erected in our said Province of New Hampshire by the name of DARTMOUTH COLLEGE
"[11]for the education & instruction of Youth of the Indian tribes in this Land in reading, writing & all parts of Learning which shall appear necessary and expedient for civilizing & christianizing Children of Pagans as well as in all liberal Arts and Sciences; and also of English Youth and any others,"
Of course, the Dartmouth webpage now omits the phrases concerning God and Christianity in its quotation, "That charter created a college 'for the education and instruction of Youth of the Indian Tribes in this Land ... and also of English Youth and any others'" and the link to the original charter is dead (http://www.dartmouth.edu/home/about/history.html)
You refer to the corruption of the moneychangers, whom Jesus expelled from the Temple. You should also, however, notice what Jesus said later in those same temple courts: "Give to Caesar what is Caesar's, and to God what is God's."
Remember also that Jesus said in his Sermon on the Mount, "You cannot serve God and Money." By long, long ago abandoning all pretense of serving and obeying God, the whole community of Dartmouth College firmly latched onto the only other master there is: materialism, and began its worship of Mammon/Money/The Economy. The recent actions of the Trustees only made this allegiance official.
Dartmouth College made its bed, and now it is going to sleep in it.
Posted by Dean from Ohio | June 6, 2012 9:19 AM
Posted on June 6, 2012 09:19
Lots of problems afflict higher education; but the interests of reform are not served by wild and confused ad hominem posts, specifically:
- Gado is implying corrupt financial benefits on the part of particular Dartmouth trustees. These are serious charges and he should detail them if he can. If his argument is large donors are using their financial support to drive an institutional agenda he dislikes and believes objectively bad for Dartmouth, he may be right on the merits ; but not necessarily on the imputation of wrong-doing in its implementation.
I agree with Gado alumni have a legitimate interest in their almas mater; and should elect a meaningful portion of trustees; if only to limit the insularity of administrations and their hand-picked boards. Elite institutions which cavalierly blow off their alumni at a time when they will need generous alumni support to maintain the tremendously high cost and labor-intensive campus experience which is their distinctive offering won't be able to sustain their elite status indefinitely. We can try to push these institutions into a different balance (and truly greater intellectual and cultural diversity in the faculty on campus); but these battles won't all be won , and when we lose them, it is time to move on and support different and more meritorious institutions.
Posted by paul isaac | June 6, 2012 11:44 AM
Posted on June 6, 2012 11:44
Interesting but confusing and poorly written. Gado starts with the charge about money men but moves immediately to his beef with the alumni role in governance. How that fight connects with the money men is not made clear, other than to say that "what was afoot" has "become apparent". In the sixth paragraph, he suddenly discusses the dismissal of "our suit" without previously mentioning the suit (context, please?) or even what he means by "our". The criticism of Kim and the movement in the direction of a research university is made without engaging in the substance of the ideas.
There may be a good article in there somewhere. But if I were Gado's professor I'd sent it back to him for a rewrite.
Posted by fenster moop | June 7, 2012 11:06 AM
Posted on June 7, 2012 11:06
Reference to the charter shows that the trustees alone were authorized to elect their successors in 1769. They have been so authorized ever since, as that clause has never been amended or stricken by a court.
While there are schools where alumni directly elect trustees, it is false to claim that Dartmouth is one of them.
Posted by Critical thinker | June 7, 2012 5:00 PM
Posted on June 7, 2012 17:00
Mr. Gado has thrown so many geriatric gripes into the pot that it's hard to tell what he thinks is important. Did he invent the quotes from William Neukom? Does he have any proof that trustees received commissions on investments Dartmouth placed with their firms? Why does he think the trustees would allow direct elections by alumni in spite of their charter and resolutions? Why doesn't he mention his use of his simultaneous officerships in the Association and the Institute to promote the lawsuit against the board? What "lies" were needed to win an election where the only issue was the withdrawal of an unpopular lawsuit for which Mr. Gado never sought alumni approval in the first place? Not the most qualified advisor on nonprofit conflicts of interest, let's put it that way.
Posted by Scott | June 7, 2012 10:07 PM
Posted on June 7, 2012 22:07
From an outside (UK) perspective, it seems that if the alumni don't like what is going on at Dartmouth, they should stop giving Dartmouth money?
Posted by Simon Newman | June 8, 2012 3:32 AM
Posted on June 8, 2012 03:32
The state of freedom of speech at Darmouth:
http://thefire.org/article/14555.html
http://dartreview.com/dartlog/2012/4/18/cemetery-of-the-innocents-under-assault.html
Pretty sad.
Posted by Dean from Ohio | June 8, 2012 10:42 PM
Posted on June 8, 2012 22:42
@Dean. The Fire post calls it "Dartmouth University," which is not an endorsement of its credibility. By the way, Dartmouth is one of the few schools to hold a "Green Light" rating from Fire, a rating it received for censoring two apparently offensive letters (offensive to Fire, anyway) by pulling them from its website, at Fire's request.
Posted by Anonymous | June 18, 2012 11:24 AM
Posted on June 18, 2012 11:24
I don't know if this editorial passes the academic integrity smell test. Fabricating quotations? Slandering administrators? Inventing historical "facts"? Is the author bound by any academic rules?
Posted by Academe | June 21, 2012 8:41 AM
Posted on June 21, 2012 08:41