Annual election for open positions on the board of trustees to begin April

Beginning in April and continuing until May 15, University alumni will vote in the annual election of trustees.

Every year the election is held for two positions. This year there is one regional and one at large, said Kathryn Taylor '74, director of the Alumni Council. In addition, every four years a third trustee position is open to an alumnus or alumna of the Graduate College.

Though current University students are not eligible to vote in the election for the general alumni trustees, there is a simultaneous election for one young alumni trustee. Young alumni trustees have the same rights, privileges and responsibilities as other members of the board, associate secretary Ann Halliday said.

The young alumni election is open only to members of the graduating class, although members of two preceding classes and the following class are allowed to vote, said Adrienne Rubin, the associate director of class affairs within the Alumni Council.

Only seniors, however, were allowed to vote in the primary elections, in which Chuck Brown '02, Joe Kochan '02 and Lisa Lazarus '02 were chosen as the candidates. In the primary, 547 of 1,170 seniors voted, a rate slightly higher than average.

The board of trustees is a prominent force in determining the course the University takes, as nearly all of the major decisions go through the trustees in some form or another.

Lydia Osborne, assistant to the director of the Alumni Council, explained that this year the election is for a trustee from Region Three, which includes most of the Midwest and extends northward into the Manitoba and Ontario. There are no geographical restrictions for the at-large candidate.

The Alumni Council administers the elections for alumni trustees. The council heads the Alumni Association, which includes the nearly 73,000 people who have matriculated at the University.

When the time comes to determine the winner, the University will use a system to help ensure that the candidate with the most overall support wins.

Rather than take a simple majority, the council asks voters to specify the order of their choices. If no one wins the election outright, the person with the least votes is eliminated, and his votes are redistributed among the remaining candidates.

Election results will be announced near the time of Reunions in late May or early June.

The board is composed of 40 trustees who meet five times a year. Two positions, the president of the University and the governor of New Jersey, are ex-officio trustees, Halliday said. Of the remaining 38, only 13 are elected as alumni, though the vast majority are alumni nevertheless.

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"It's not an easy job. It's really like [POL 315: Constitutional Interpretation] with a vengeance," Rubin said. "It's for people dedicated to being of service and what's best for Princeton."

In addition to determining the operating budget, deciding when and where to erect new buildings and managing a host of other administrative tasks, the board grapples with some of the most difficult problems that face the University.

Major decisions of past boards include the switch to coeducation in 1970 and the recent adoption of the Wythes Committee report, which supported the expansion of the student body and the addition of a sixth residential college.