CW: How has your relationship with Dartmouth changed since you graduated?
SS: It's evolved. I love the school and that love only gets stronger over time. I've been troubled by the direction the College has taken since I left. It seems that the two most recent administrations have been changing what makes Dartmouth special: its emphasis on well-rounded students, a vibrant student social life, and undergraduate teaching versus becoming a research university. A case in point is the infamous Student Life Initiative, which aimed to end the Greek system as we know it. I'll never forget sitting in the Dartmouth Club of Washington, meeting and hearing then-new President Wright talk about how fraternities were poisoning the Dartmouth experience. I couldn't believe what I was hearing.
[But I'm very grateful for the privilege of having been able to go to Dartmouth and for what the College did for me in terms of making my dreams of becoming a lawyer come true. I got a great education and it opened doors in terms of going to a great law school, having an opportunity to clerk on the Supreme Court, and now being a tenured law professor at a "Top 10" school-all of these opportunities grew straight out of my experiences at the College. I'm eternally grateful for that.]
CW: What's the greatest challenge for the Trustees, and what's your motivation for seeking a place on the Board?
SS: The Board of Trustees needs to be a lot more proactive in its stewardship of the institution. Trustees can't just defer blindly to the administration. It's the responsibility of the Board to set the tone and the mission and priorities of the College, and then to hold the administration accountable for making measurable progress towards making Dartmouth the best college in the world.
I've talked to a lot of alums who are unhappy that the administration has dropped any pretense of impartiality and is spending time and College funds politicking and trying to influence what ought to be a matter solely left to the alumni to decide, namely, who will represent them on the Board of Trustees.
[I think the challenge of the Board of Trustees is to adapt to the changing needs of today's students while preserving the essence of the Dartmouth experience. This involves making sure that teaching excellence is supported-not just in rhetoric but in actuality-and that the vibrant social life that has been characteristic of Dartmouth is preserved. Preserving the special jewel that is the Dartmouth experience doesn't preclude change; it just means that when we do make changes to meet the needs of future generations of students, we need to be careful to preserve what's special about Dartmouth. We need to let Dartmouth be Dartmouth because Dartmouth is great when it dares to be different, not when it follows the herd.
Once we say this is a priority for the College, the Board needs to ask itself and the administration, over and over, "how are we doing in terms of achieving that priority?" What are we doing to reduce class sizes and restore the "small college" academic experience for which Dartmouth is famous, and what are we doing to reward excellent teaching? What are we doing to promote excellence in research? What are we doing to allow all of our student-athletes to achieve the success for which they strive? You can and must measure these things and not just take assurance from the administration that we're making good progress and that everything is great at the College. There are lots of great things at the College, but the job of a Trustee is to probe—to ask tough questions, to be willing to rethink and reject the party line, and to pay attention to "measurables," as people in the business world would say.
In terms of why I want to be on the Board, I want to take an active role in preserving what distinguishes us from, and makes us better than, our competitors. As a tenured professor myself, I know that a key distinguishing factor separating Dartmouth from the rest is its aspiration to provide a "small college" environment—an environment in which unparalleled excellence in undergraduate education is the highest institutional priority. I seek to ask the tough questions necessary to make sure that we live up to our high billing on the "small college" front and do what's right for our students. If elected, I won't be a "yes man" for the administration or a "yes man" for the independent Trustees, but rather a truly independent Trustee who will support the administration when it's right and stand up, respectfully yet resolutely, against the administration when it's wrong.]
CW: What's the most positive development at Dartmouth in the past decade?
SS: The strength of the student body and of our faculty is the most positive development. Another has been enriching the intellectual life of the College by supporting research. Teaching and research are not opposed to one another. They go hand in hand. Excellence in research leads to excellence in teaching, provided we give the same emphasis to both, as we must. Right now, I fear the balance is skewed too heavily in favor of research.
[We're better off being a school where great, cutting-edge research is going on, not just in the sciences or the Medical School, but throughout the College. The College as a whole is very strong, but it can be much better. It's not enough to take assurance in the fact that we're a great school already. We are, but we can be much better, and that's what we ought to aspire to-to make Dartmouth the very best college in the world.]
[CW: Can you give me a specific example of a policy of the Board or administration that you object to, or a case in which they could have implemented a policy that would have improved the College but didn't?
SS: Yes, I can give you several. One is the Student Life Initiative. That was a bombshell among students and alumni yet the Board of Trustees went along with President Wright in that attempt to radically restructure social life at the College. There didn't seem to be any push-back, as far as I can tell, on the Board. If anything, the Board was in lockstep with the administration on that issue—and far out of step with student and alumni sentiment.
Another issue is the Alumni Constitution of last year. The administration was strongly in favor of making the independent petition process for Trustee much less less likely to result in the election of independent Trustees. Only the independently elected Trustees voted against the proposed new constitution, which the Board endorsed by a vote of 14-3. Although the Board vote was lopsided in favor of the administration, we know this issue deeply divided the alumni. In a record turnout, 51 percent of the alumni rejected the proposed constitution, which fell far short of the necessary two-thirds majority. So, again, we had a clear disconnect between the administration and the Board of Trustees, on the one hand, and the alumni, on the other.
I would say the growth of the College bureaucracy is a third example. We've seen more and more deans and administrators get hired over the last few years, at great cost to the College. The College's own budget shows that between 2000 and 2005, the amount spent on administration increased by 72 percent—almost six times the total inflation over that period. As the bureaucracy has grown, it's not only become very expensive; it's become far less effective, with students and employees alike expressing confusion as to how key decisions are made and who makes them.
The growth in bureaucracy is documented in the publicly released portions of the report prepared by McKinsey & Company, at President Wright's request, on the state of the administration at Dartmouth. The report found that the ranks and salaries of administrators has grown more than the faculty of Arts and Sciences has grown. According to the McKinsey report, from 2000-05 we added "111 new administrative positions" as "compare[d] to an increase in Arts and Sciences faculty of 50 new positions." During the same period, the report finds, "[a]dministrative compensation grew more quickly than . . . faculty compensation." In my view, this is crazy at a time when budgets are tight and when students are complaining about being shut out of courses in Arts and Sciences due to over-enrollment and about large class size. Only now, in the wake of the McKinsey Report, is the administration taking a look at ways to improve the operation of the bureaucracy.]
[CW: Describe yourself as a Dartmouth student.
SS: I think I was a pretty typical student. I was a member of the freshman football team, and I dare say that nobody rode the bench better than I did. I was a member of Sigma Nu fraternity and was elected to a variety of offices in the House, including Lieutenant Commander. I majored in History and Philosophy. I loved my majors but, in all candor, wish I'd worked a little harder in academics at the beginning of my career. As a sophomore, I left the football team so that I could spend more time on my studies. I just loved every aspect of life at the College, except, of course, the winter weather. Even in the winter months, though, I had a great time: I learned a lot inside and outside of the classroom, made close, lasting friendships, and grew a lot as a person. By my junior year, I was already married, and we had our first child during my senior year. Dartmouth literally changed my life.]
[CW: You're a petition candidate. Do you feel that the institutional deck is stacked against you?
SS: Unfortunately, yes, I do think the deck is stacked against me as a petition candidate. Most alumni are very happy that the independent process is still available, but obviously the administration couldn't be more opposed to independent Trustee candidates. President Wright gave a speech to the Alumni Council in December of 2006 and said he wasn't going to sit on the sidelines during future Trustee races. He pledged to do whatever he could to elect one of the Alumni Council nominees-in other words, to defeat any petition candidate who might step forward to run. And, sadly, we've seen President Wright follow through on that pledge. This year, we've seen an unprecedented breach of the tradition at Dartmouth of the administration staying out of Trustee elections and letting alumni choose their own representatives. By rule, the administration appoints half of the Board of Trustees on its own; there's no justification for the administration to try and exert control over who gets to serve on the other half of the Board, which is for the alumni to decide for themselves.
The Dartmouth Alumni Magazine has really done unfair profiles of the Trustee candidates. A recent issue talked glowingly and at length about the Alumni Council's nominees while trivializing and indeed grossly distorting my positions. They even gave me, the one petition candidate on the ballot, no more prominence and space than they gave to a single-issue petition candidate fresh out of the College who failed to gather enough signatures to appear on the ballot.
Given the extreme lengths that the administration and College publications are going to this year to defeat my candidacy, I think the vitality of the independent petition process is really up for grabs. The alumni turned out in droves last year to preserve a viable independent petition process for Trustee, and yet the administration has decided this year to change the rules, to weigh in, to spend College funds and administrators' time to defeat petition candidates who have the temerity to offer alumni an alternative to the nominees hand-picked by an official committee.]
CW: What haven't I asked that you'd like to answer?
SS: One question is: What might I add to the Board? My independence would be a strong asset. I clerked for Justice Clarence Thomas at the Supreme Court; he always said he respected the fact that I think for myself and didn't hesitate to disagree with him. I'm also a full-time educator, and I think it's important for an educational institution to have Board members who are educators-people who are committed to and know the value of, excellent teaching and research.
[I'm convinced that everyone on the Board is trying to do what's right for Dartmouth, but it can be hard at times for Trustees to ask tough questions, criticize administration initiatives, and cast dissenting votes. Still, I think it's absolutely essential to have Trustees who are willing to do just that if Dartmouth is to be the strongest, best institution it can be.]
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