Balkinization: (Alumni) Democracy at Dartmouth

(Alumni) Democracy at Dartmouth

Mark Graber

The most recent issue of the Dartmouth Alumni Magazine has two two page advertisements urging alumni to vote for and against the new Alumni Constitution. I have received several mailings urging me to vote for and against, and read a number of prominent blogs on the subject. Even the New York Times appears to be taking some notice. Both sides insist that a correct vote on the Alumni Constitution is necessary to ensure "democracy at Dartmouth" and "an effective alumni voice." Neither side, nor any other alumni association that I know of, seems that concerned about the problematic nature of alumni democracy.

Alumni democracy is highly likely to be bad democracy. Alumni have almost every characteristic that bodes ill for democratic governance. Most of us are poorly informed about the issues facing our alma mater, get what information we have from very biased sources, do not spend a much time becoming informed about the issues, and have little material incentive in the outcome of university controversies. In short, it is hard to think of an association more ripe for takeover by groups with unrepresentative agendas than an alumni democracy. Maybe I should form an association of Dartmouth alums in the teaching business that, in the guise of complaining about educational standards, would force Dartmouth professors to assign more of our writings. Would not be all that hard to do, which is one thing wrong with alumni democracy.

More significantly, alumni democracy is not democracy. A central feature of democracy is that the people whose lives are affected by the policy get to vote for the people who make the policy. Democracies are hardly perfect in this sense. Consider how many Iraqis got to vote in the 2004 election, even though the results may have been more important for their lives than most Americans. Still, the notion of alumni democracy seems akin to granting all Americans who served at least a year in Iraq a permanent vote in Iraqi elections. My life is insufficiently affected by what goes on at Dartmouth to justify my having an effective voice in college policy. As alumni, we ought to be more concerned about having an effective voice where we are, not where we were. It is as if the only persons allowed to vote in Maryland elections were people who left Maryland. Of course, one may want to involve alumni because they make donations, and people who donate like to have a say in what they are paying for. Whatever the virtues of that argument, however, that is not an argument commonly used to justify democracy.

If I had unlimited money, I would be tempted to buy a two page advertisement in the next Dartmouth Alumni Magazine proclaiming: NONE OF OUR BUSINESS: LET STUDENTS, FACULTY, ADMINISTRATIVE, AND STAFF DECIDE WHAT DARTMOUTH WILL BE TODAY. The Dartmouth I went to had much good and some bad. Nothing I can do will change that past. But outside of giving advice, I think the present of Dartmouth and other universities should be decided by those who are there, not by those of us who want to impose unrepresentative agendas on young men and women.

Posted 3:27 PM by Mark Graber [link]

Comments:

People who give substantial sums of money have an incentive to verify that it is spent wisely, which furnishes some justification for allowing alumni a role in university governance.

There was an interesting post and discussion of this issue on Richard Posner's blog a while ago. Posner made the same argument matt davis makes above, but many commentators disagreed. The problem, I think, is that universities are so sui generis that other governance models don't fit well. Is a university like a business corporation? And if so, is it the alumni who are analogous to shareholders, or is the university like a closely-held corporation with the trustees being the "shareholders"? Or is a university more like a law firm, such that the faculty (or at least the tenured faculty) should be in charge? A university isn't exactly like a church, because the attenders (students) are charged for what they receive, and there is a separate class of donors (the alumni), but even if it were like a church, should it be governed like a congregational church or a Roman Catholic church? Etc.

In practice, universities tend to be governed in much the way that many leftists wish business corporations were governed, with each of the constituencies being given some formalized political power. Interestingly, the students' power mostly comes in two totally disparate forms: (i) pure consumer sovereignty power, when they choose where to attend and (ii) pure street politics, manifested occasionally by sit-ins and other protests.

What I have never seen is any theory that proceeds from first principles to construct a theory of university governance, which is the sort of thing that is often written for business corporations and churches, as well as, of course, for nation-states and other political (in the narrow sense) entities.

# posted by

sean : 5:20 PM

As a recent Dartmouth Alum ('05), I am in general agreement with Mr. Graber.

The reasons I support his position are that (a) I am less informed now than I was when I graduated and my information will only continue to decline, (b) there are good people either in charge or entrenched within the university instituional structure, and (c) the Graber principle of alumni participation is the approach that I argued for as an undergraduate, and the approach that holds true for my coed fraternity.

If I truly believed that there were not good people in charge of the university, I am not sure what I would believe.

# posted by

John Stevenson : 9:40 PM

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