Bill McGurn provides an overview of the current Dartmouth election in yesterday’s Wall Street Journal:
If you think Hillary Clinton has been slow to accept the results at the ballot box, meet the folks who run Dartmouth College.
Like Sen. Clinton, the powers that be at Dartmouth have been getting trounced at the voting booth by an opposition campaigning for change. Like Sen. Clinton, Dartmouth’s establishment has responded with increasingly desperate attacks. And like Sen. Clinton, its hopes of victory now depend on increasing the power and influence of unelected officials.
In Mrs. Clinton’s case, these are called superdelegates. In Dartmouth’s case, they are the self-perpetuating members of the Board of Trustees. In little more than a week – on June 5 – elections will close for the leadership of Dartmouth’s Association of Alumni. If the establishment slate wins, the board will eviscerate a progressive, 117-year-old arrangement that makes this college in Hanover, N.H. one of the few where alumni have a real say in the way the school is run.