REPORT OF COMMITTEE ON ALUMNI TRUSTEES

At the annual meeting of the Association of Alumni of Dartmouth College held in Hanover, June 18, 1923, a committee of five men, Charles M. Hough '79, chairman, John K. Lord '68, John Abbott '91, Henry K. Urion '12, and Allan L. Priddy '15 was appointed to study and report on the present method of nominating trustees and alumm councillors. The report of that committee has been forwarded to the MAGAZINE so that it may be studied preliminary to the meeting. The committee will report as follows:

Pursuant to a resolution passed 18th June, 1923, the President of the Association of Alumni of Dartmouth College appointed us a Committee:

(1) To study the method of trustee nominations and to present one or more methods for such nominations to be considered at the Annual Meeting to be held in June, 1924.

(2) Also to consider and to report upon the present method of nominating alumni Councillors.

We report as follows:

We have felt that oiir duty was to ascertain what objections existed to our present system, consider whether objections made were well founded and propose such modifications as to us appear desirable and feasible.

The starting point or foundation of our present system of Alumni Representation is the selection of Councillors. Any qualified graduate may be chosen, who is nominated by twenty-five of his fellows; but the number who may be elected from any given part of the country is restricted.—yet a voter living in Massachusetts may cast a ballot for or against candidates from Illinois or California. (Council Constitution, Art. V, Sec. 3).

Upon the Councillors thus chosen falls the duty of selecting a candidate for Alumni Trustee; but the same twenty-five graduates who can nominate a Councillor may also by petition or its equivalent put up an opposition candidate for the trusteeship; and the name or names thus entered are subject to general vote of the Alumni (Alumni Const., Art IV, Sec. 4; Art. V, Sees. 3 and 4).

There is nearly always a difference between the theory of an operative method and its practical working. Our theory is that of ..representative government. The Councillors are chosen by popular vote, and they present one man for a trusteeship;— whose nomination becomes an election unless a candidate by petition can arouse the voters to support himself.

In practice the nomination of Councillors is a function of those whohold official positions in the alumni associations centering in the large cities. The general, widely scattered and -not very attentive mass of graduates, learn for the first time that a Council election is due when they receive the ballots containing names about which they have certainly not been consulted, and of men whom quite probaibly they do not know at all.

The Councillors thus chosen select a candidate for Trustee, and nomination bjr petition for that office being rare, to say the least, the mass of alumni are presented with an opportunity of casting a ballot which in effect merely ratifies what the Council has done.

The objections to this system have been voiced' in one way by the Association of Class Secretaries, who at their meeting in 1923 agreed that casting a ballot of ratification for one man as Trustee was an "uninteresting and perhaps irritating process."

The broader criticism of some alumni is thus put: We do not doubt that good men have been chosen in the past; such men, and many of them, have been found when the Trustees filled vacancies only by cooptation, and any conceivable system would always find loyal and able men willing to serve our College: but the main object— indeed the very purpose of Alumni Representation as such is to arouse and maintain in the general body of graduates an abiding interest in collegiate management and to make them feel that what they say by a ballot really counts:—and the objectors conclude by asserting that our present system as it works out practically encourages the belief, in the average voter, that he has no more than a choice between ignorant acquiescence in a cut-and-dried "slate" and hopeless opposition after the slate has been arranged.

Upon careful consideration of these criticisms we are not disposed to recommend any change in our theory of Alumni Representation, but do think that some changes in its operation or application would be beneficial.

We continue to believe in representative government, which for us means to choose our Council in a democratic way and then leave the Councillors to represent us and choose for us so far as obtaining Trustees is concerned.

Any recurrence to elections for Trustees with a uniform plurality of candidates would be going back to a method discarded in 1916. The experience of years before that date proved the difficulty if not the impossibility of procuring the requisite number of candidates who would contest with each other. No man liked to be a candidate only to make a show, yet those who consented to be put up with every prospect of getting few votes, sometimes felt a little hurt even when the expected happened. The office of Trustee i3~- not a prize, political or otherwise; it is a duty, solemnly undertaken, often at much sacrifice of time and ease; few men will make a campaign for it, and those few are not infrequently not the kind of men w-e want.

Again it is to be remembered that the central executive of the College is located in Hanover, a place pleasant but somewhat remote, and vested in the President, his immediate advisers and certain committees of the Trustees.

This central body can know and meet the Councillors, and the latter are not too numerous to know each other and to know the executive. There can be no conferences between the mass of graduates and the College authorities; and we should prefer to act through our chosen representatives in the traditional American fashion. We are much too big and too scattered for a town meeting or any equivalent thereof.

We therefore recommend that our theory of selecting Alumni Trustees remain as at present, but we recommend that changes in method be made as follows:

(1) Let the Council's choice for Trustee be final and not submitted to the Alumni for ratification, unless

(2) A rival candidate or candidates be nominated by petition, which petition, however, should require the signature of many more graduates than twenty-five,—we suggest a hundred.

Our reasons for these recommendations are that we believe the act of voting merely to ratify what our own Councillors have done is an illogical, unnecessary and annoying proceeding. Further, the decreasing numiber of ballots cast of late years seems to show that our fellow graduates think as we do.

The number of names necessary for a nominating petition was fixed years ago when our numbers were far less,—and we were older. We Dartmouth men have grown younger of late years, and just now our average age is under thirty-five. With so youthful an electorate of nearly six thousand, we think an hundred none too many to initiate a contest for a trusteeship.

As to the methods of selecting Councillors, we think they could and should be improved.

It is in the election of these officials that the popular vote ought always to be sought; and every effort should be made to draw it out of the careless seclusion it is wont to seek. Every graduate should be made to feel that he has a direct influence in choosing Councillors from his own section of the country. The money and effort now directed to asking every man to vote for one already chosen as Trustee could much better be expended in advising every alumnus of vacancies in the Council and urgently requesting individual nominations for the Councillors to be chosen from his own section.

From, the nominees so presented, those most numerously named (say three or five) could be put on a ticket and that ticket be submitted to the voters in an appropriate section of the country. We see no advantage in or reason for a Bostonian voting for a man who will represent alumni of the Pacific Coast.

A council so chosen would (it seems to us) be truly representative, would command the respect and confidence of all of us, and constitute a body much better able to find men fit and willing to bear the burden of a trusteeship than any widely scattered body of alumni can ever be.

By the foregoing we do not mean to assert or suggest that our present Councillors or their predecessors have not been fit men, devoted to the interests of the College, but we are attempting to emphasize our opinion that while in theory the election of our Councillors is democratic, in practice it is not.

We believe that the plan suggested would far more nearly than at present align our practice with the theory of which we wholly approve. Respectfully submitted, CHARLES M. HOUGH '79 Chairman JOHN K. LORD '6B JOHN ABBOTT '9l HENRY K. URION 'l2 ALLAN L. PRIDDY 'l5.