Explaining young alumni trustee elections

This year's young alumni trustee election has raised several questions about the policies and procedures that govern these elections. Let me try to clarify some of them.

The young alumni positions were created by the trustees more than 35 years ago to ensure that the board would always include four members with recent experience as undergraduates. As explicitly stated at the time and reaffirmed ever since, young alumni trustees have the same rights, powers and duties as all other trustees and take the same oath to "faithfully, impartially and justly" perform the duties of their office. While they are elected by a defined subset of the alumni body (the junior and senior classes and the two youngest alumni classes), their "constituency" on the board is not their electorate, but the University as a whole. Like all other trustees, their first obligation is to best serve the longterm interests of the University as they understand them after weighing all the evidence available to them.

The trustees have the final responsibility for all trustee elections. They elect charter and term trustees but delegate responsibility for alumni trustee elections to the Alumni Council. In doing so, they provide several guidelines, including the expectation that candidates will not campaign in trustee elections. This guideline arises out of two principal concerns: one for the effective workings of the board and one for the effectiveness of individual trustees.

The board works best if every trustee comes to each issue with an open mind, the ability to consider all evidence and an overarching commitment to arrive at the best decision for the University as a whole, not as an advocate for a particular constituency or point of view. Obviously, each trustee is shaped by his or her own experiences, both at and outside Princeton, which is why the election ballots provide biographies of the candidates. But trustees who arrive on the board having already staked out positions on issues without access to full information can undermine both the workings of the board and their own effectiveness if they are perceived as beholden to a position they took while campaigning or to a particular constituency that is expecting them to hold to that position.

The board has a long history of benefiting greatly from trustees who bring intelligence, curiosity, integrity and a deep commitment to Princeton to their service on the board, and from the candor, trust and mutual respect that characterize trustee discussions. In the board's experience, partisanship detracts from this sense of shared responsibility and thus is detrimental in both the election process and participation in the board.

The specific procedures for conducting trustee elections are determined by the Alumni Council but, again, with several guidelines from the trustees. The nomination process for the nine alumni trustees who are elected by the full alumni body is conducted by an Alumni Council Committee to Nominate Alumni Trustees. This hardworking committee considers many potential candidates, conducts interviews and ascertains whether potential nominees firstly are prepared to make the significant time commitment necessary to serve effectively on the board and secondly are prepared to accept the guidelines that govern the election process and service on the board.

While the trustees have, on occasion, considered using a similar process for the young alumni trustee election, this election has been conducted without a nominating committee from the beginning. For this election, there is a primary in which the electorate is the senior class and any senior gathering 50 signatures is eligible to participate. The assumption is that seniors will know their classmates well enough to be able to determine for themselves which three candidates would most likely be effective members of the board. Without a nominating process, there is no committee to determine whether candidates are prepared to adhere to the guidelines for the election and for service on the board, but, to my knowledge, this has not been an issue in the past. Each year, the Alumni Council meets with all interested candidates and explains the board's expectations for the election and for board service. Potential candidates who are not willing to meet these expectations have chosen not to participate. While this process may not be perfect, for more than 35 years, it has produced young alumni trustees who have justified the confidence their classmates placed in them and have served this University exceedingly well. Robert K. Durkee '69 is the University Vice President and Secretary. He can be reached at durkee@princeton.edu.