Faculty governance report is released

The Faculty Ad Hoc Committee on Governance, set up last spring in the wake of the reinstatement of ROTC on campus, released a report in early January citing a "sense of widespread unrest" among the faculty. The report opined that "inadequate leadership places the College in real jeopardy, if it is to advance or even to maintain its reputation as an institution of higher learning."

Last spring, the Faculty of Arts and Sciences voted 167 to 2 to form a special committee "to review and make recommendations on the governance of the College." Chaired by David Sices '54, professor of French and Italian, the eight-member committee conducted its inquiry through the summer and fall. Their report was unanimously endorsed by the faculty on January 27 but has met with mixed reviews within the administration.

The main points of the report are: "the style and pace of decision-making on the part of the president have resulted in a sense of recurrent crisis"; faculty views are not listened to, are sought after a decision is made, or are requested with deadlines that don't permit proper study, denying the faculty "its traditional, proper, and necessary role in the governance of the College"; the administration "is insensitive to, and not knowledgeable about, educational concerns"; there are procedural problems in the governance system because of "a failure on the part of the president, the provost, and the Board of Trustees to make proper use of the system"; and the Trustees have grown "distant and remote from the faculty, and thereby from the running of the institution itself."

Among examples cited in the report were the ROTC decision, the decision to purchase an IBM mainframe computer, and the decision to institute an institutionwide planning assessment for the year 2000.

The recommendations of the report included: urging the president to consult more frequently and openly with the faculty and its committees; calling for a stronger faculty executive committee; restructuring and increasing faculty representation on the Council on Budgets and Priorities; asking for greater faculty involvement in the presidential selection process; having increased communication between the Trustees and the faculty; and including on the Board of Trustees at least one person active on the teaching faculty at an institution comparable to Dartmouth.

"What we most hope to convey to the Dartmouth community," wrote the committee in a cover letter to its report, "is the sense of urgency which we have increasingly felt, in examining the situation in which the College finds itself. We are convinced that real action will be required, in order to restore the institution to a state of constructive balance and harmony."

The next step after the report was released was a review by the executive committee of the faculty. That body brought the issue before the full faculty, proposing several motions, including endorsement of the report's specific recommendations. The faculty, meeting on January 27, endorsed the report by a vote of 143 to 0. However, before the motion dealing with the recommendations came to a vote, biology professor Melvin Spiegel introduced an amendment calling for a vote of no confidence in the president. After lengthy discussion, during which President McLaughlin answered a number of questions from faculty members, the faculty voted overwhelmingly by voice vote to reject the amendment - thus keeping the no-confidence issue itself from coming to a vote.

David Sices, who chaired the Ad Hoc Committee, termed Spiegel's amendment "counterproductive and against the spirit of the report." He said the committee had decided not to have no-confidence be part of its report and instead to try, "for a last time, to see whether some real improvement might not be made in the governance of the institution."

The January 27 meeting adjourned until the following week, on February 3, when the recommendations passed unanimously, with relatively little discussion.

Faculty dean Dwight Lahr feels the report the committe came up with "reflects the view commonly held by the faculty about its role in the governance of the College" and he said that's a view he agrees with."The message to the president and the administration is quite clear," Lahr said. "The faculty needs to be more central to the decision-making ing processes of the College." He said the faculty's feeling is, though, that "the president should be given some time to make the changes necessary to correct those problems."

Provost Agnar Pytte, however, called the report "unbalanced" and "full of inaccuracies." He said that "in spite of the fact that it claims not to be an evaluation of the president, in fact . . . that is the way it is being treated, and as an evaluation of the president it is totally unfair." He felt the report should have looked at achievements of McLaughlin's administration such as restructuring the Dartmouth Plan, addressing deficiencies in the residential life area "that had been pointed out by at least two faculty committees," and greatly increasing the endowment.

Lahr's feeling, though, is that the committee met its "vary narrowly prescribed charge" to look only at problems in the governance of the College. "It's very obvious," he said, "that [President McLaughlin] has done wonderful things for the institution. Any member of the faculty would admit that. The committee was only asked to examine the role of the faculty in governance, and it did that. But if the report had been an evaluation of the president's record, it would have taken a different form."

President McLaughlin himself told the faculty at the February 3 meeting that he "took the report as a challenge to address the faculty's needs more directly. I plan to go more than half-way," he stated. But he also noted his feeling that the faculty would have to do its part as well in bettering communication. Commenting later on his reaction to the report, he said he didn't think the faculty was trying to "run the College" or "usurp Trustee responsibilities."

"It isn't," he said, "that [the faculty] are looking for more quantity in terms of involvement because most of the things that they were critical of did go through the right procedures. What they really want is the quality of the dialogue. They want a qualitative involvement with the issues that are important to the College and they want time to reflect on those issues. ... I think baically they were saying, 'Let us be a better partner in this process.' " He concluded by expressing optimism. "While it was an unpleasant experience to go through," he said, "the good intentions of all parties are still very much intact and the common purpose which is the institution is still foremost in our minds."

are merely verbalizing the same concerns that are a problem with our retention rate. This is a terribly important issue."

Shoveling snow is a high-level task for Mike Ignjatovic, onthe edge of Dartmouth Hall's roof, and Richard Berry, who'sholding a rope firmly attached to his co-worker. Both workfor the College's carpenter shop.

One of the minor triumphs of Dartmouth's unique academic calendar is that it manages to eliminate from the academic year one-half of the month of March. March is, let's face it, in New England, awful." - Former dean of freshmen AL Dickerson '56, in a March 1972 letter to freshman parents