The Council elected to nominate only one candidate for each open position on the Board for the spring 2010 trustee race in order to better facilitate competition with petition candidates, Tom Daniels '82, chair of the Alumni Council Nominating and Alumni Trustee Search Committee, said in a previous interview with The Dartmouth.This sounds like China: the leaders choose the unopposed candidates and because there is voting, we call it democracy.
December 4, 2009
Sounds like elections in China
The Dartmouth reports that Morton Kondracke ’60 of Newsweek and John Replogle ’88 of Burt's Bees have been nominated to be the Alumni Council candidates for the upcoming trustee elections. As to why only one candidate was chosen for each of the two seats, The Dartmouth reports this:
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ReplyDeleteMy perspective is hugely different from that of AT above.
ReplyDeleteThere are two openings for (alumni nominated) Trustee positions. Acting as my *elected representatives* (unlike the Chinese process, the Alumni Council Nominating Committee solicited nominations in a very broad process (also unlike China) and has proposed 2 distinguished alumni as candidates for the two openings. Any of us who would prefer different candidates can nominate petition candidates (yet another difference from Chinese elections) who can run as equal candidates (again, unlike Chinese elections).
The key is that this is not a case of 'the leaders' choosing unopposed candidates. This is a case of our elected representatives nominating two people to be part of a field that is open to nominations by petition.
Peter Elias has it partly right. Dartmouth is not China, but the alumni council is not "our elected representatives". They have chosen only one candidate per opening because they think it gives them the best chance to defeat petition candidates. It's as simple as that.
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