“I am sorry to have to deliver this news,” read the email from a staffer in Yale’s general counsel office.

About 40 minutes later, another email to Yale graduates from senior trustee Catharine Bond Hill, former president of Vassar College, outlined the board’s decision to remove its 92-year-old petition process enabling alumni to join the university’s board. The email said the board, which formally operates as Yale Corp., voted May 18 to amend the university’s “miscellaneous regulations” and eliminate the alumni petition process, effective immediately.

Several Yale alumni interviewed for this story described the decision as shocking and abrupt. The alumni and faculty members are frustrated — some outraged — comparing the removal of the petition process to voter suppression and authoritarian states. They say the move eliminates both transparency concerning key decisions at the university and accountability to Yale’s legions of alumni and its surrounding community in New Haven, Connecticut.

“This antidemocratic and secretive policy change speaks ill of a board charged with overseeing an institution devoted to enlightenment,” Yale’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences Senate wrote in a May 28 statement.

Yale’s petition process attracted something akin to corporate shareholder activism in recent years, allowing alumni candidates to run on issues ranging from Yale’s relationship with New Haven to equity on campus to divestiture from fossil fuels. Yale’s decision to stop the petition process took away the opportunity for alumni to directly influence their alma mater’s policies and decision making, critics say.

The situation underscores tensions buildings on campuses nationally as students, faculty and alumni have increasingly levied demands concerning a range of social and economic issues that often conflict with traditions at a given university. Likewise, schools have been put in the unenviable position of balancing those efforts without alienating donors or losing sight of their founding missions.

Yale makes a break

Before May 24, alumni could petition for a seat on the corporation, an influential body charged with selecting Yale’s president, determining tenure and overseeing the university’s operations. Petition candidates needed to raise north of 4,000 signatures to show they had broad-based alumni support before they were placed on the ballot for vote by alumni.

Going forward, Yale said alumni candidates will be selected by the board, and their views on issues affecting the university will not be made public. The petition system allowed up to three alumni candidates per year, although few names have been submitted for much of the past century.

That changed last year, when there were two petitioned alumni who made their way to the election ballot. One stepped away to take a role at the White House while the other lost his election. This year three candidates announced their intent to run campaigns for the 2022 election.

Alumni will now vote on the alumni fellows nominated by the board based on their resume and biographical information. The election of six alumni fellows was added to Yale’s charter in 1871. Each serve six-year terms. The board includes Yale President Peter Salovey and 18 trustees, including six alumni fellows as well as the governor and lieutenant governor of Connecticut.

On its website, Yale said it has been reviewing the petition process and ultimately determined that it is “no longer consistent with good governance.” The governing body in particular frowned upon “issues-based candidacies, with intense campaigning by petitioners.”

Yale declined to comment for this story beyond the statements on its board’s website.

“There is also concern that those who come to the board having won an election based on a particular platform, aimed at a specific constituency, and backed by organized campaign machinery, will feel obligated to advocate for special interests in the boardroom,” the corporation wrote in a memo explaining the decision last month. “Trustees who arrive with these commitments will be challenged to do the work of a fiduciary – to represent all of Yale’s constituencies, to be open to changing one’s mind, and to participate in the deliberative process that yields the best decisions, in the service of all of Yale.”

Larry Ladd, senior consultant with the Association of Governing Boards Universities & Colleges, estimates roughly a third of private colleges have some system where alumni choose alumni board members. He said few use a petition process along the lines of what Yale just eliminated.

“The alumni, I suspect, really think they own the university, but they don’t,” Ladd said. “Alumni are important constituents of the university, but they aren’t the only constituents. This is why legacy admissions is an issue.”

Few have successfully landed on Yale’s board through the petition process over the years. However, at least two successful petition candidates increased the board’s diversity, said Victor Ashe, former U.S. ambassador to Poland and Yale graduate who petitioned to join the corporation last year but lost his election this spring.

Ashe, who ran on a campaign of increasing transparency and improving university relations with the city of New Haven, said that the first Jewish and female board members joined through the petition process.

“They decided that they don’t want to hear contrary points of view or views which point out the corporation’s secrecy,” Ashe said.

Hightower, the city councilor in Burlington, Vermont, who was notified by email of her losing bid to join Yale’s board, said she planned to run her campaign on the topics of clean-energy investments and social justice. She was backed by Yale Forward, a nonprofit group of students and alumni who advocate for the university to take a leading role in climate change.

“I was ready to run a campaign and get signatures to be on the ballot,” Hightower said. “As the first woman of color to be a petition candidate and given everything going on in our country at the same time — it’s fairly upsetting that this is the moment they chose.”