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• Better Alumni Participation
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  • Colgate University Donor Participation Rates
  • Governance in Higher Education
  • Dartmouth roadmap for reforming trustee governance
  • Alumni Elections at Colgate University
  • The Alumni Council
  • The Case for Reforming Governance at Colgate University

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Better Accountability at Colgate University

What’s the downside to allowing alumni, the primary constituents, financial resource and “shareholders” of the Colgate University Corporation, a vote for who sets the academic, financial, social and residential education policies at the school? 

A Better Colgate advocates for the election by alumni of a meaningful number of the 35 members of the University Board of Trustees.  This allows the administration to recruit a majority of the others with specific skill sets or diverse qualifications, or to reward significant donors.  

Currently, all trustees are chosen in a secret nominating process and voted only and unanimously by the other Trustees.  

Colgate’s other Board, the Alumni Council, which has no policy-making authority, nominates six of its members to serve on the Board of Trustees.  Alumni Trustees serve for limited terms.  Like the Board of Trustees, a closed nominating committee slates members of the Alumni Council onto its ballot.  

The Board of Trustees is a very elite group, unaccountable to the alumni, students and parents who finance the school, with no transparency in policy-making. 

More and more alumni agree that reforming governance at Colgate is an idea whose time has come.  It’s time to open the doors of the currently closed Trustees’ secret selection process.  By allowing alumni to elect a significant number of the 35 trustees, there would be sunshine on the thinking behind policy decisions and disclosure of the rationale for spending and pricing decisions. 

Open elections of a meaningful number of trustees would restore confidence in alumni who are continually asked to send money and to students and parents who see the cost to attend climb every year.