Robert noted that Dartmouth’s Association of Alumni recently elected new officers who ran on a platform of dropping a suit against the college’s board of trustees — thus opening the way for the board to choose a majority of its own members instead of having them selected in alumni elections. This in turn will effectively marginalize and perhaps bury the criticism directed by several elected trustees at the Dartrmouth administration.

To be exact, these challengers had the temerity to oppose efforts by the forces-that-be to turn the campus into a research-intensive, as opposed to primarily undergraduate, institution; they also resisted the establishment of a code that would restrict free speech.

Status-quo board members, reports the New York Sun, accused the trustee-challengers of intending to “turn back the clock” and draping itself in the language of “democracy at Dartmouth,” all the while “working with national groups that have a clear ideological agenda for the College.”

Irony abounds. Maintaining parity between appointed and elected trustees is, in fact, democratic. Keeping a campus focused on and fostering intellectually diverse undergraduate studies in this day and age is visionary, as is protecting unfettered freedom of speech. And, if anyone is “ideological” at Dartmouth, it’s the dominant factions. If these efforts by the brave trustee-critics constitute “turning back the clock,” let the turning begin.