Board of Trustees of Dartmouth College

The Board of Trustees describes itself as having "ultimate responsibility for the financial, administrative and academic affairs of the College".

The Charter mandates that the Governor of New Hampshire always be a trustee ex officio, and the Board traditionally makes the current President of Dartmouth College a member in a similar capacity.

Vacancies were rare at the time, however, and the number of alumni seated was small; most of the members of the Board were still elderly non-alumni clergymen who were seen as theologically and educationally conservative.

The nomination process would be handled by the Association of Alumni of Dartmouth College, of which every matriculated student becomes a member automatically upon graduation.

In 1961, the Board permitted the Association to nominate a further two alumni, and it added a third (reaching the present total of eight nominees) in 2003.

In 2004, T. J. Rodgers sought the alumni nomination as a petition candidate and won the balloting, after which the Board elected him as its newest trustee.

In 2005, petition candidates Todd Zywicki and Peter Robinson similarly won nominations to the Board.

[9] Stephen Smith, the fourth petition candidate, also critical of the direction of the College, won the nomination in 2007.

[10] Amid significant voter turnout, a majority of alumni voted against adopting the new constitution, which would have required a two-thirds supermajority for passage.

Newly formed groups created websites[13] and took out advertisements in The New York Times[14] and elsewhere meant to influence the Board's decision.

The majority of the Association's Executive Committee sued the Board in an attempt to block the change, although the new set of officers elected in June 2008 withdrew the lawsuit.

As introduced into committee, the legislation would have repealed an act of 2003 that finally gave the Board the right to amend its Charter without consulting the state.