Εδώ - Anatolia College

Institutional Governance and the Trustees of Anatolia College 67
Anatolia, with which a minority of Trustees will not be in agreement, the spirit of
civility and mutual respect is such that these Trustees, with very few exceptions,
will accept the decisions of the majority and will continue to contribute to the efficient
functioning of the Board.
Evolution and stability, disagreement and eventual synthesis of views or maximum
possible consensus for significant decisions and the collective spirit that allows
for such interactions: This is the biggest lesson that I learned as a Trustee
of Anatolia and which is applicable to any form of collective action and certainly
in public life.
This lesson naturally does not come with a manual, the instructions of which
one learns by heart, but is communicated by specific personalities of the Board.
Here I would like to praise the tact with which Members of the Board would communicate
their disapproval on such occasion when one of us, no doubt out of the
passion that he had for the School, defended and promoted his views in a way
that, even unintentionally, undermined the collective spirit of the Board or the
processes on which the Board relies upon for its successful functioning. Particularly
the US Members of the Board, on the basis of my own experience, balanced
in an admirable fashion the need for an always honest and robust discussion with
the understated but convincing censure of behavior that, were it to be left
unchecked, would compromise the Board’s ability to fulfil its mission. Nonetheless,
I am convinced that the now substantially bi-national Board, Greek and American,
is converging around a common culture due to the fact that its Greek Members
have accumulated such professional and other experiences, in Greece and abroad,
that it enables the Board to ‘speak the same language.’
There is, however, one area where the Board should and can improve spectacularly
its performance. In my present capacity, as simply one of the 9,000 plus
alumni of Anatolia, I can say that the Board must communicate, with much greater
force than it has done in the past, to each and every one of us how fragile an institution
like Anatolia is, and how it can only survive with the maximum care and
support. The Board, in other words, must be much more bolder, much more ambitious,
and much more persistent in convincing more of us, the alumni, to relate to
Anatolia like every Trustee does and support, materially and intellectually, the
mission of our School.” (on the fundraising challenge see note 49 infra.)
24. the recommendations provide for a formal orientation process on campus,
distribution of materials such as the “Trustee Bible,” and for older trustee mentors.