The Colgate Alumni Council
In a February 2008 conversation with Alumni Council President
Ron Joyce and the Board of Directors of A Better Colgate, the
following question was posed:
A Better Colgate: “In
the March 2008 Colgate Scene, the Alumni Council advertises the
right of an individual to petition onto the ballot as
an independent candidate for the Alumni Council, as required
by the Council By-laws. Do
you have an obligation to treat all candidates fairly, to
not campaign for or against specific candidates, and to give
all candidates equal access to the alumni?”
Ron Joyce: “No, we
have no responsibility toward petition candidates. We’d
be a pretty bad organization if we chose alumni for our slate
and then didn’t support them exclusively.”
The Colgate Alumni Corporation, now branding
itself as the Alumni Council to avoid confusion over the similarity
of its name to the Colgate University Corporation Board of Trustees,
is a 55-member board that serves primarily to support the efforts
of the trustees and administration by engaging alumni in
Colgate activities and through fundraising. The
Alumni Council has no policy-making authority for the university.
Six members are nominated by their Alumni Council peers to serve
on the Colgate Board of Trustees. Terms of office for these
alumni-elected members to the Board of Trustees are limited to
two consecutive three-year terms.
Alumni may place their names in nomination for a seat on the Alumni
Council. More than 300 nominations were received for the
2008 elections. The Nominating Committee selects
the nine names that will appear on the ballot, one candidate
for each ERA, a period of time including one-seventh of the total
living alumni, plus two at-large candidates. According to the Colgate
Scene (March 2008), criteria for selection includes “varied
Colgate volunteer service, meaningful personal or professional
accomplishments or contributions to the greater community, a readiness
and willingness to become more involved on behalf of the university,
and a consistent history of giving financial support to
Colgate.”
The ballot is assumed to be unanimously approved by the
alumni, unless written petitions with 75 signatures
are received by a certain date; this year there was 30-days notice
given to prospective petition candidates.
In 2006, eight independent candidates successfully petitioned
onto the Alumni Council ballot. Colgate refused
to grant them access to the alumni database in an electronic
form and refused to allow the independent candidates to pay the
college to send out a mailing so that access to the database
would not be an issue. Candidates were allowed to come
to a university office in Hamilton to look at, and hand-record,
alumni names. Needless to say, for candidates living all
over the country, this was not a viable option.
In that 2006 election, Colgate University and the Alumni Council
sent out at least five mailings supporting their slate. The
rules around voting were made cumbersome and disenfranchised many
alumni. For example, the rules for receiving a replacement
ballot were posted on an obscure website, or on the mailed ballot
package itself. An arbitrary rule was imposed that required
anyone asking for a replacement ballot to make the request no less
than 30 days before the election. Voting at Colgate
on Election Day was prohibited, except to those who brought
their original ballot to Reunion, barring many alumni attending
Reunion Weekend from exercising their right to vote.
Most alumni, who had never experienced the opportunity
to vote on leadership at Colgate, had no knowledge that there
was an election, nor did they have the information necessary
to vote.
Even with impediments to voting, more
than 34 percent of those returning a ballot gave their vote to the independent
candidates.
Clearly, alumni want a voice in Colgate’s future.
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