Letter from the Board of Trustees

Dear all,

The Board of Trustees read and carefully considered your email of August 25 regarding the elimination of five varsity teams. We appreciate your heartfelt candor, the depth of your frustration and disappointment, and, above all, your love of your sport and your teammates. It is clear how much being a member of the Swimming and Diving team meant to you and how much it enriched your Dartmouth experience.

While it may not alleviate the disappointment, we want you to know that the process that led to this decision was thorough and methodical. The athletics leadership team embraced a comprehensive approach that considered multiple factors that led to the final decision. Before implementation, the conclusions were considered at length by Dartmouth Athletics, the Dartmouth Athletics Advisory Board, institutional leadership, and trustees.

We respectfully disagree with your assertion that the decision was discriminatory. The decision-making process involved the consideration of many factors, and was not biased against Asians, Asian Americans—or, indeed, any race.

The board was, and remains, supportive of the decision. We are confident that these actions are in the long-term best interest of the institution, and the board will not initiate an external investigation as you have requested.

We hope you take some degree of comfort from our explanation that the final decision— however much you disagree with it—was made with great care and concern, and we sincerely hope that you and other affected student-athletes who Dartmouth invited to join the community because of your extraordinary promise and range of talent will choose to remain as valued leaders of our community.

Sincerely,
The Dartmouth Board of Trustees