“Concerned Stuyvesant Alumni” Boycott Alumni Association Over Issues of Transparency and Accountability

Concerned Stuyvesant Alumni (CSA), a forum of alumni, announced a boycott of the Stuyvesant High School Alumni Association (SHSAA) during the SHSAA’s Annual General Meeting on May 3, to protest an alleged lack of transparency and accountability. The forum is calling on alumni to donate directly to the school instead of through the SHSAA.

The SHSAA, a non-profit organization, funds programs and events within the Stuyvesant community, and holds events for alumni, primarily reunions. The SHSAA consists of alumni members who pay dues and have the right to vote and serve on the board, and basic members, alumni who do not pay dues but can take part in committees, without the right to vote or serve in leadership roles.

Tensions amongst alumni arose in 2013 and 2014 when two former alumni groups, the Friends of Stuyvesant (FOS) and Campaign for Stuyvesant (CFS), began efforts to merge with the SHSAA to form one alumni association for the school. During this period, the SHSAA adopted new by-laws related to the governance of the organization.

After the announcement of the merger process, many alumni began discussing their shared concern about the future of the organization. “[Our] efforts really began three years ago as more and more of us realized that we weren’t having a positive experience with the Alumni Association,” CSA member Nicholas Griffin (‘80) said. These alumni decided to create an informal forum, known as the CSA, where they could propose reforms and push for information about the by-laws. The CSA is not an actual organization with official members, and alumni associated with the forum primarily use Facebook to communicate with each other.

Many alumni contend that the merger negotiations were conducted without their knowledge and that the by-laws failed to increase transparency within the SHSAA. “SHSAA directors adopted new by-laws on September 11, 2013, and kept them secret until May 2014,” CSA member Dr. Jeff Golland (‘57) said in an e-mail interview. “These by-laws created an endowment and a board of trustees to run it within the SHSAA, but with nearly no accountability to the trustees. [...] Who the negotiators were was never made public.”

The SHSAA, however, claims that negotiation meetings were made public and that a lack of initiative on the part of certain alumni contributed to much of the confusion. “When we had an agreed upon framework, the representatives of the Association brought it back to the Board and membership for discussion and debate. That took place over a number of open and public Board Meetings. Our meetings are open to all members and non-member alumni [...] I don’t recall any of the dissident members ever having come to a board meeting,” SHSAA President Soo Kim (‘93) said.

The CSA argues that further attempts to discuss the merger process were rebuffed by the directors of the SHSAA. “Those trustees were the leaders of the Campaign for Stuyvesant, and so when we discovered that, we [said] [...] that’s fine but give us more information about these trustees,” CSA member Neal Wilson (‘81) said. “The board got very tight-lipped and refused to answer any of our questions.”

The SHSAA responded by stating their procedure for electing trustees. “[The trustees] serve a longer term—six years as opposed to directors with three. They have a self-selection process that you might see in many non-profit bodies, such as the Harvard Corporation or most non-member charities. If the committee does not assent, the trustee candidate cannot serve," Kim said.

Further scrutiny by the CSA into the operations of the SHSAA prompted new concerns over the association’s budget and the allocation of funds. The SHSAA diverted funds from the funding of school clubs and teams in order to fund the establishment of an endowment. “We were confused, if the Alumni Association was not helping out with needs of the school, what were they doing?” Wilson said.

Although the SHSAA releases financial reports in the form of IRS 990C forms, as it is legally obliged to do, many alumni believe that the association should strive for greater accuracy and transparency. “IRS 990C forms are usually a year or two behind because they need to be based on audited financial information, and that takes time to complete. Volunteer organizations typically distribute (and often publish) a current financial report, and that’s what we have been asking the board to do,” CSA member Dr. Beth Knobel (‘80) said in an e-mail interview.

The CSA has also expressed dissatisfaction with the nomination and election process for leadership positions in the SHSAA. Current SHSAA board members are responsible for nominating future candidates, with each board member serving a term of three years.

“Applicants have to be dues-paying members of good standing, and must acknowledge they’re willing to meet our criteria for participation, giving, and best practices. They are evaluated on a number of criteria, [including] [...] how much they give in terms of time, how much they give in terms of money, and what they bring in terms of gravitas and experience, ” Kim said.

The CSA takes issue with this process, because they believe this allows the Board of Directors to eliminate candidates who disagree with the management of the association. “There was no competition, they could have been elected with one vote according to the bylaws. They had 850 votes out of 350,000 living alumni, and there was no one running against them,” Wilson said.

This year, SHSAA board members selected seven nominees for seven vacant positions. Members are also able to stand for elections by submitting a petition signed by a minimum of 50 alumni members or five percent of the total alumni members. No candidates, however, used the petition process this year.

In response to this criticism, the SHSAA noted that it reserved the right to determine the qualifying criteria for its leaders. “Every group has a right to enforce its own standards and that’s what you’re seeing. Our volunteers work hard, they spend a lot of time and effort, and they enforce standards of the same high level of volunteerism amongst anyone [who] wants to join. Before you can express your opinion as to what you think will be good for the Association, you have to show that you contribute to the Association [...] and this is not about money, because by far the most valuable contribution is time,” Kim said.

Notwithstanding the claims of election malpractice, alumni currently associated with the CSA, including Dr. Knobel, have been elected to the Board of Directors in the past. Knobel resigned halfway into her term, however, to protest the SHSAA’s alleged attempts to prevent reform. “In my year and a half on the board, I tried to help the SHSAA improve. I ran the Communications Committee, and tried to improve newsletters and social media communication with alums,” Knobel said. “Those efforts were met with open hostility. I was badmouthed and even bullied for my efforts. One board member actually told me he hated me because I was pressing for the SHSAA to change.”

The CSA also argues that these restrictions on elections have been detrimental to the Alumni Association. “This is a public high school [...] Everything needs to be done in the light of day. If they were to adopt better practices with regard to nominations, access to the board, leadership; if they went beyond the nickel and dime attitude, they would actually be able to expand their membership. Their membership has actually been going down,” Griffin said.

Though the discourse between the two groups started with the CSA creating petitions and attending SHSAA meetings, hostilities heightened when the CSA began to make comments on the SHSAA Facebook page. The SHSAA responded by censoring the CSA’s comments. “I'm not allowed to post any comments on their Facebook page, as are all CSA people. All of our comments need to be approved before they're posted, and they don’t approve any of our comments, they leave them in pending status,” Wilson said.

This led to the creation of the CSA’s own Facebook page and website. Kim has joined the CSA’s Facebook page twice, in order to respond to concerns raised by the CSA. “[Kim] didn’t answer our questions. [...] He joined the page for a week, essentially and created a lot of storm and controversy, and then quit the page, and then came back a few months later and did it again,” Wilson said.

The SHSAA justified their decision to remove select CSA members from their Facebook page, stating that the CSA had launched spam attacks on the page. “They have launched coordinated efforts where 20 of them repeat posts [...] on the Facebook page and what they’re trying to do is get us to delete their stuff or warn them and then ban them. We’ve fallen for it and we’ve banned them for violating the group rules and then they use that to say that we’re censoring them,” Kim said.

Tensions came to a head this month when the CSA decided to announce a boycott to protest the SHSAA. “We avoided this step for a long time [...] After three years trying to negotiate, we decided that there is a culture in the organization that is allergic to change,” Griffin said. “Three years is enough time to show their good faith and they haven’t [done so].”

The CSA called all members to divert funds from the SHSAA to other associations, such as the Parents’ Association, following an annual general meeting held on Wednesday, May 3, 201. “We are encouraging financial and other support [...] directly to the school, its departments, or individual student organizations. We plan to keep at it until SHSAA returns to collaboration with its active membership, especially established reunion leaders.” Dr. Golland said.

Senior board members of the SHSAA are also beginning to resign from their positions. “About a whole dozen of board members [...] have walked out the door because they don’t like the way things are being run,” Wilson said. The petition on the CSA website, which asks signees to divert donations and end their membership until the SHSAA implements change, currently has 204 signatures.

The CSA hopes that the SHSAA will soon be able to agree with their proposed reforms regarding accountability and transparency within the association. “[We want the SHSAA to] propose regular public reporting on dues and fundraising. If fundraising is successful, leaders should want that to be known. The silence suggests failure,” Dr. Golland said. The CSA would also like less money to go toward overhead such as salaries, which right now, makes up more than a third of donated funds

Regarding the election process, members of the CSA would like the SHSAA to have several more candidates than vacant positions. “Giving alumni choice of candidates to be their representatives is standard operating procedure at most alumni associations. Many of its own procedures, particularly the checks and balances [were] put in place by previous boards and legal counsel[s] to ensure good management,” Knobel said.

The SHSAA plans to move forward from this divide and continue to encourage alumni to give back to the association. “We have tried for years to engage them, as we have seen how schism and multiple organizations can hurt the community, but it has been fruitless. I don’t know if it’s possible to make them happy. I try to tell everyone in the Association not to take it personally and that is the nature of leadership and organizations," Kim said.

Despite the rift, the CSA looks forward to sitting down with the SHSAA to tap into the resources offered by Stuyvesant’s alumni. “There is so much more that can be done with the great people who have gone through 15th Street and Chambers Street over the decades that we can and should be doing,” Griffin said.