Boston Globe: Sides Duke It Out Over Dartmouth

Parents Forum
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According to one faction, a shadowy cabal of conservatives is waging a war of misinformation to take over the board of trustees of Dartmouth College.</p>

<p>According to the other, devoted alumni are fighting an administration that has neglected undergraduate education in favor of research, let athletic teams languish, and cracked down unfairly on fraternities.</p>

<p>Voting begins this week for an alumni representative to the board, the latest battle in a fight that may prove influential around the country. Is Dartmouth the first domino in a national war on the allegedly liberal, politically correct Ivory Tower? Or is it an inspiration to alumni not to stay on the sidelines?

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<p><a href="http://www.boston.com/news/globe/city_region/breaking_news/2007/04/sides_duke_it_o.html%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.boston.com/news/globe/city_region/breaking_news/2007/04/sides_duke_it_o.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

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<p>When two outsider candidates, conservatives Peter Robinson '79 and Todd Zywicki '88, were elected to Dartmouth College's Board of Trustees, the liberal newspaper the Dartmouth Free Press' opined that "this decision could not be more hurtful to the College." The right-wing Dartmouth Review's called the candidates' victory "heartening."</p>

<p>The Lone Pine Revolution</p>

<p><a href="http://dartreview.com/archives/2005/05/14/the_lone_pine_revolution.php%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://dartreview.com/archives/2005/05/14/the_lone_pine_revolution.php&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>Two bespectacled, suit-wearing academics make for unlikely revolutionaries. However, the election of Hoover Institution fellow Peter Robinson '79 and George Mason University law professor Todd Zywicki '88 to Dartmouth College's Board of Trustees, announced Thursday, is perhaps the most significant event in the institution's recent history. </p>

<p><a href="http://www.dartmouth.edu/%7Ethepress/read.php?id=779%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.dartmouth.edu/~thepress/read.php?id=779&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>Rebels for a Lame Cause
The Trustee Insurgency? </p>

<p>Anyone with the foresight and intelligence God gave tree bark should have been able to see this one coming: Peter Robinson ?79 and Todd Zywicki ?88 were elected to the Board of Trustees by alumni voters last week. This marks the second and third times in two years that alumni voters have shunned the candidates nominated by the Alumni Council in order to select two individuals running as independent petition candidates. Robinson, Zywicki, and their supporters hail this event as a mandate from College alumni for the conservative pursuit of a better Dartmouth and representative of severe alumni discontent with the Alumni Council?s clandestine process of nominating candidates, wherein the council chooses its nominees without an application process and prohibits its candidates from communicating with voters. But whatever the claims of this being a directive from alumni voters, sadly, this decision could not be more hurtful to the College.</p>

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Robinson campaigned on three issues: smaller classes (paid for by eliminating superfluous bureaucrats); freer speech; and stronger athletics.

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<p>That's funny. The alumni didn't seem to be all that much in favor of free speech when the Dartmouth admissions dean's private letter to Al Bloom at Swarthmore about football came to light. They practically ran the poor guy out of town, making him all but grovel for his job -- all because he expressed an opinion in a letter.</p>