Stephen Smith — Petition Candidate for Dartmouth Trustee

As of yesterday, April 1st, balloting has begun to fill the one current vacancy on our College’s Board of Trustees.  Thanks to the thousands of individual alumni who petitioned the College on my behalf, my name, Stephen F. Smith ‘88, appears on your ballot as the sole independent petition candidate for Trustee.

By now, you should have received your ballot in the mail from the Alumni Relations Office.  If you haven’t, I would recommend that you contact the Alumni Relations Office immediately to request a replacement ballot.  Alumni Relations can be reached by phone at (603) 646-2258 or by e-mail at Dartmouth.Alumni.Relations@Dartmouth.EDU.

Undoubtedly, you’ve received all sorts of instructions from Alumni Relations and other inside sources about “approval voting.”  A number of you have asked me whether that method of voting merely allows you to vote for multiple candidates or requires you to do so.  This is an excellent question, and it’s important for alumni voters to be absolutely clear on this issue.

You can vote for just for one candidate, if you wish.

As always, I have total confidence in the intelligence and fairness of my fellow Dartmouth alumni.  I know they will weigh the issues with care, look beyond mudslinging and personal attacks, and choose the candidate with the energy, ideas, and independence necessary to make a difference on their Board of Trustees. 

What is the role of free speech at Dartmouth?

In setting out to answer this question, I found–as I often did as a student in his “History of the American West” class many years ago–that I couldn’t improve on the answers given by President Wright.  In his 2004 Convocation address, President Wright gave an excellent speech on the value of free speech at Dartmouth that, in my opinion, everyone in the Dartmouth family should read.  (You can find the speech here: http://www.dartmouth.edu/~presoff/speeches/2004/0921.html).

In that speech, Wright offered the following assessment of the role of free speech at Dartmouth as an institution of the mind:

“An academic community - indeed a free society - rests on the freedom to think and to speak out. The free expression of ideas is a bedrock principle, even though not all that is thought or said is equally valid or true. The corollary of the freedom of speech is the freedom to criticize that which is said. And sometimes this freedom to disagree becomes an obligation. If politeness and civility and mutual respect form the basis of our community, so too do engagement and debate and, assuredly, disagreement. Academic communities at their best are places that challenge more than they reinforce.”

Wright went on to say that, although we all rightly strive at Dartmouth to preserve our sense of community, “politeness and tolerance need not lead to a sort of intellectual or moral relativism that discourages [students] from challenging ideas with which [they] disagree.”

I couldn’t agree more with these views.  We should work very hard to promote the close sense of community at Dartmouth, but not through the suppression of free speech.  As I’ve said before, the proper response to speech that offends others is counter-speech pointing out the errors in what the speaker had to say, coupled with education for all students about the responsibility for civility in discourse.

At times, respecting the freedom of expression may result in some degree of tension on campus, as it does in society at large.  That is an unfortunate byproduct of an open, vigorous marketplace of ideas.  Nevertheless, as President Wright himself noted in his Convocation address, “we would lose something critical to our intellectual purpose and to our core institutional values” if we were to “restrain[] the right to the free expression of ideas.”

This discussion should be kept in mind during the closing weeks of this race for Trustee.  Free speech is not a “conservative” or “libertarian” issue, as some administration supporters puzzlingly claim.  If it were, President Wright wouldn’t have gone so strongly on record in his 2004 Convocation address in favor of free speech.  Free speech benefits everyone, regardless of ideology.

Although President Wright and I have some disagreements, we are in complete agreement on the value of free speech at Dartmouth: to be true to its educational mission, Dartmouth must fully protect the freedom of expression on campus.  One of my priorities as Trustee will be to ensure that the administration lives up to its pro-free speech rhetoric in practice.

So far, I’ve been focusing on current issues at the College, and I will continue to do so. As a History major, though, I know that we ignore the lessons of the past at our peril. As the saying goes, “those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”

In that spirit, the following heartbreaking op-ed by an ‘03 is instructive. It was published in The Dartmouth on May 27, 2003, and it gives us some valuable insights into the disillusioning effects that the current administration’s policies have had for recent Dartmouth students — and therefore can have, absent a new direction charted by the Board of Trustees, for tomorrow’s students as well.

The student, obviously torn between his love of the College and his disapproval of the current administration, wrote the following:

“I have not graduated, but that has not stopped the Office of Alumni Relations from treating me as though I have…. We have been inundated with calls to give money to the College, from faceless administrators, from alumni and — most cleverly — from our friends who have been enlisted by the College to help with this endeavor. Despite these efforts I have reached a conclusion that would have been unthinkable to me four years ago: I will not be giving money to the College, under its current management.

“My decision not to support the College is irrelevant in terms of the amount it would have added to the College’s coffers. As a recent graduate about to embark on a Peace Corps assignment, I am not the sort of person the College would spend much time courting. But at the philosophical level I believe my decision, difficult as it was for me to make, is significant. Why? I loved the College, and I continue to love it. But I do not like the current administration, nor do I trust that the money I might give would be spent wisely by it….

“Our school spirit is not as strong as it once was four years ago — perhaps because of increased regulation of student activities or well-intentioned programs that only end up balkanizing the campus — but we would still have to atrophy a great deal more before we approached the apathy of Brown students. As a result, I am conflicted. I like the essence of the College, but I cannot support the direction in which it is heading. Some may discard my view as simply an anti-authority perspective of a man relatively unschooled in the workings of major corporations, which Dartmouth College in many ways resembles. The problem with this criticism is that I am not, unlike my parents’ generation, reflexively hostile to authority….

“Dartmouth’s administration, by contrast, has virtually no transparency. This, I believe, is the source of many of the budget shortfalls we are currently facing. As I have detailed in past work [published in The Dartmouth], the performance of the endowment over the past five years has been strong, relative to the market. But because so much of the budget is hidden from view, there was never an opportunity during the good times to questions new expenses. Consequently, we are saddled with the burden of liabilities assumed in much better fiscal times — and even now we cannot discuss them honestly because so little of Dartmouth’s budget is open to public view. A budget is a reflection of an institution’s priorities and values. When the breakdown of important parts of the budget is unavailable to the public I question what the administration’s true priorities are and, more importantly, why they will not divulge them.

“The plight of anthropology professor Hoyt Alverson has been a particularly revealing one. Mr. Alverson has been attempting for the past six months to find one number: the amount the College has spent on the Student Life Initiative since its inception. He published an open letter to President Wright seeking this information. He confronted Provost Barry Scherr only to be stonewalled…. “In my time at Dartmouth, I have learned about the way institutions and organizations operate. One of the most important lessons is that checks and balances are essential, particularly when large sums of money are involved. This need is accentuated if the leadership’s priorities or values differ from the consensus of the larger organization. My quarrel with the current administration is twofold: they refuse to yield to reasonable requests for information, and their priorities do not match mine to a large extent. But because there is so little transparency, it is impossible to debate priorities because the facts are unclear. I have looked at the College’s financial reports for the past three years, and they are so broad as to be worthless for ascertaining priorities. Numbers have been aggregated to the point where all relevant detail is lost. I love the College, but I have little faith in the administration. Until that changes I will not be giving any money to the College. I may give to organizations associated with it, but not into any fund over which the administration has control….”

http://www.thedartmouth.com/article.php?aid=2003052702020

Here is the text of a letter I sent today to a reporter with The Dartmouth in response to another Trustee candidate, who has unfairly called my independence into question.

“Dear [Reporter for The Dartmouth]:

“You sent me a list of questions about the financing of my campaign for trustee. My answers appear below—and I’ll be posting them on my website. Since this will be my final comment on the subject, I reply at some length. Most alumni, I believe, want me to keep doing what I’ve been doing throughout this campaign–namely, talking about what needs to be done to make our College an even stronger institution, academically and otherwise. For the remainder of this campaign, I’ll do just that.

“I don’t fault you or ‘The Dartmouth’ for raising these questions, but I do question the motives of those who insist on spreading rumors about who might or might not be funding my campaign. As far as I know, none of the other candidates has disclosed, or has even been asked to disclose, the sources of their own funding. I deserve equal treatment. Unfortunately, however, I have been subjected to innuendo suggesting that I’m somehow a stooge for hidden conservative forces. It is disturbing how quick some are to assume that a black man who comes forward to offer his vision for the College can’t possibly be thinking or speaking for himself.

“I am, in fact, a truly independent candidate. No one and no group–liberal, conservative, or otherwise–is controlling or bankrolling my campaign. I wasn’t ‘recruited’ by anyone to run for trustee. The decision to run and the positions I’ve taken are mine and mine alone, and I alone am responsible for my mailings and website. I am running to make certain that alumni have a viable alternative to the candidates hand-picked by the Alumni Council’s nominating committee–a committee that, according to one of the nominated candidates, has shied away from picking anyone deemed ‘independent-minded.’ I have sought no endorsements save from my fellow alumni, and literally thousands–including, I am proud to say, each of the three independent trustees currently on the Board–have endorsed my candidacy by signing petitions to have my name added to the ballot.

“Although the three independent Trustees signed my petition, none has given me money or, for that matter, anything at all other than their occasional advice and good wishes. Trustee Todd Zywicki–a fellow member of the Class of 1988–has been a friend since Dartmouth, but he would be the first to say that no one tells me what to think or do. The truth is what I told ‘The Dartmouth’ weeks ago, before this latest line of attack was unleashed against me: ‘I’m not running to be a yes-man to the administration or a yes-man to the independents.’

“The free speech issue is a case in point. Trustee T.J. Rodgers ‘70 advised against raising free speech as an issue. In his view, the College has made progress since he joined the Board. I disagreed and raised the issue anyway. In my view, the College still has a long way to go before students are as free on campus as off to express their ideas and beliefs. An institution that elevates the ‘feelings’ of others over the freedom to express ideas that some find ‘offensive,’ and that allows ‘offensive’ speech by students or fraternities to be punished as ‘harassment,’ does not fully respect freedom of speech.

“Judging from the way this race has been conducted on all sides so far, I’m the only candidate willing to criticize administration policies, fighting for smaller class sizes, expanded curricular offerings so that students aren’t shut out of the courses they need, and Committee on Standards reform. Several of the nominated candidates have professed their ‘friendship’ for President Wright, and one has even gone so far as to disclaim having a ‘checklist of things that need to be corrected’ at the College. To anyone who shares my conviction that the Board of Trustees is more than just a honorary body designed to rubber-stamp decisions of College administrators, these statements should give serious pause.

“Literally hundreds of alumni have donated to my campaign. Some have written checks; others have provided cash or in-kind donations; still others, volunteer assistance of one sort or another. Even students have even done their part, with my fraternity brothers at Sigma Nu having taken out an ad in ‘The Dartmouth’ on my behalf.

“In the end, I don’t think the outcome of this election will be determined by the amount the candidates or their supporters spend. Although this is the first trustee race to be conducted after the repeal of the ‘no-campaigning’ rule, we do have a recent precedent for open campaigning: the 2005 vote on the proposed alumni constitution. From what I can tell, supporters of the proposed constitution vastly outspent opponents, yet the measure was soundly defeated in an election with record-high alumni turnout.

“Dartmouth alumni aren’t stupid. They vote on the merits.”Judging from the fact that some of my opponents in this race are spreading false rumors about who’s paying for my campaign instead of engaging me on the issues, it would unfortunately appear that my confidence in the judgment of Dartmouth alumni voters isn’t universally shared.

Sincerely,

Stephen F. Smith ‘88″

Just a few years after the College sparked a firestorm of controversy by proposing to drop the Dartmouth swim team–one of the oldest, continuous swim teams in the entire nation–the team’s woes unfortunately continue.  Outcry from alumni and student-athletes may have forced the administration to reinstate the swim team, but it hasn’t gotten swimmers anything approaching fair treatment or meaningful support from the College.

An obviously anguished parent of a Dartmouth swimmer wrote the following in the January 31, 2007 issue of The Dartmouth:

“The [swim] program faces hurdles that no other athletic program at Dartmouth has endured.  These include a recent administration attempt to end the program, no college money for the program, arguably the worst facilities that any Dartmouth Division-1 team sport must tolerate and inarguably the worst acquatic facilities in the Ivy League and among the worst in D-1 swimming.

“The program has faced challenges, but not because of the coaches or student-athletes.  The College has made it impossible for the program to succeed.  Stellar student-athletes well qualified for admission with high school credentials well above Dartmouth medians have not been admitted, while Harvard and Princeton have been more than happy to take them.

“How can you ask coaches to recruit athletes when they cannot promise the program will even exist, when all they see is neglect from the president, the athletic director, [and] the admissions office. . .?

“Add to that the administration’s decision to close the pool off and on for a good part of the last three years.  It’s hard to run a program when you can’t get into the water or have to drive halfway across New Hampshire to find a place to practice.

“Dartmouth athletics are not about winning or losing; hard work, dedication, competitive spirit and character building are.”

I believe our student-athletes on the swim team are entitled to better treatment from the administration.  Excellence in athletics should be supported at Dartmouth no less than excellence in other worthwhile pursuits.  It is unfair to discriminate against members of the Dartmouth swim team and against academically qualified applicants who are competitive swimmers.  Swimmers at the College and their dedicated coaches should be as fully supported in their quest for excellence as other Big Green sports teams.