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ALUMNI COUNCIL REPORT, FALL 2008
Chris Robinson '86

Hello again! It's November already and the last leaves are falling from the trees. As your New York representative to the Alumni Council, I'll be heading up to Hanover again for the 197th meeting of the council in December. In the meantime, there were a few things I wanted to write you about.

First, I'd promised some more details on what went on at our May meeting. The official minutes of the last council session can now be found online, here: http://alumni.dartmouth.edu/default.aspx?id=1097 and I wanted to recap some of the things I found to be of particular interest.

In the admissions update, Dean of Admissions and Financial Aid, Maria Laskaris '84 went over the numbers for the class of 2012. Dartmouth offered admission to 2,190 applicants from a pool of 16,536, the largest ever and a 16.6 percent increase from the year before. While the incoming class is the most diverse ever, with increased numbers of Native Americans, Latino and African American students, but also has the highest number of legacies (11.2 percent) in recent memory.

New Dean of the College Tom Crady spoke on his first six months as Dean. Crady spoke in favor of a "realistic" alcohol policy for students (word is we will hear more about this in 2009) and noted that dry campuses have higher binge drinking rates (56 percent vs. 42 percent) than non-dry ones. Jeff Crowe '78, the parent of two daughters at Dartmouth, noted that the number of women rushing a limited number of sororities led to an unwieldy rush process and pledge classes of as many as 50 women. "We need more sororities," answered Crady. "They need to be able to go local, [and thus not be "dry"]. "Dartmouth is a space-challenged campus," said Crady, pointing to the need for social spaces in addition to Greek houses. (These points came up as well in the student-alumni discussion group on gender equity and social spaces; the College's current insistence that new sororities must be national rather than local needs to be revisited, as most nationals have clauses that require them to be "dry" -- hence they are unable to host parties and must co-sponsor events with fraternities.)

The panel on "Greek Letter Organizations at Dartmouth Today" featured a good mix of students from fraternities, sororites, and coed houses, as well as long-time AD house advisor John Engelman '68. Complaints about national sororities being unable to bend their no-alcohol policies came up again, while Engelman mentioned that the ultimate effect of the Student Life Initiative had been to strengthen and improve the Greek system, as the College has loaned considerable amounts of money to privately-owned houses for renovations.

The report from Martha Beattie '76 and the newly-formed Alumni Liaison Committee spoke of their goal being to "distill and distribute alumni sentiment" and report this sentiment to the board of trustees. Last year the committee received over 700 e-mails from various alumni forwarded by alumni councilors from their constituents.

Those are at least the major points worthy of note as I saw them. If you're looking to know more, please look at the minutes. This fall, I'll be moving from my position of vice-chairman of the communications committee to chairman. As always, we'll be trying to strike a balance between reporting back to alumni effectively and inundating you with too much information. The various elections of the past couple of years have certainly seen a lot of mailings! A summary of last spring's committee meeting, where I was still vice chair, can be found here: http://alumni.dartmouth.edu/default.aspx?id=373

You've probably heard the results of the most recent Association of Alumni election, so I won't bother rehashing any of the details on that. You should, however, have received an e-mail this week about a proposal from the executive committees of the Alumni Council and the Association that will be brought before alumni this spring. Essentially, the proposal would simplify trustee voting by replacing the "approval" method with a simpler one person, one vote procedure and institute a runoff election in case no candidate receives a majority. A full copy of the amendment can be found at http://www.alumni.dartmouth.edu/aoa/proposedamendment/ We're going to discuss the amendment at our December meeting and, since this is an Association of Alumni question, all alumni will have the opportunity to vote on it in the spring of 2009 at the same time as the annual Association of Alumni elections.

I'd be happy to respond to any questions or comments you might have on this or other topics. As always, feel free to write me at Chris.Robinson.86@alum.dartmouth.org. In the interest of providing improved feedback, I will also pass along comments I receive to the council's Alumni Liaison Committee, unless you'd prefer to keep those comments confidential.

Best,

Chris Robinson '86