On Friday, the Dartmouth Chairman of the Board Ed Haldeman responded to my open letter of last week.
His statement simply does not respond to the concerns that I raised in my letter. Here’s what I said: “There you have it: I was denied reelection either because of the content of my speech or for some unnamed reason for which I received no notice or opportunity to respond.”
In his statement, Haldeman describes the process of trustee review in detail: an initial meeting with the Chairman and the head of the governance committee and an opportunity to speak to the full board and address the issues that the trustee is aware of. I was aware, of course, that my controversial speech would be an issue and I took time before the board to express my regret for the harshness of the language and content in the speech. At that point, however, I left the room and the board went into a secret executive session where new matters and charges can be raised to which I was given no opportunity to respond.
So my central point remains unanswered by Haldeman’s letter: either they threw me off the board for the content of my speech–the only tangible issue I knew of and had an opportunity to address–or for some other reason arising for the first time in secret executive session of which I was not aware and to which I could not respond.
In a house editorial on Friday entitled “Wrongful Termination” the Editors of The Dartmouth (who have been far from fans of the petition trustees’ efforts) wrote:
Assuming that no egregious act remains undisclosed (and there has been no indication that this is the case), Zywicki
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