Alumni relations

Parents Forum
1

<p>I read a comment on Facebook from an alumna of a particular school who mentioned that there wasn't anything planned for her class at Homecoming '09 by the Alumni Office since no graduate had stepped forward to help with an event. This was from someone in the class of '84, so her 25th reunion should have been last fall.</p>

<p>I find this astonishing, as my alma mater has an iron grip on its alumni. The red carpet is rolled out every Homecoming for the classes celebrating reunions ending in 0 and 5. The phonathon begins months in advance. There are prizes and receptions and badges and a parade and lots and lots of singing. Way too much singing.</p>

<p>Can we draw any conclusions from this scenario?</p>

2

<p>There are some schools where reunions are very big and some well not so much. H attended one of the military academies, they have reunions every 5 years and it is a very big thing. There is a lot of class unity. OTOH, my school was very heavily greek and many of us who were part of that identify more with our sororities/fraternities than with our classes. Many of my friends were either a year or two ahead of me or a year or two behind me.</p>

3

<p>Fallgirl, does that mean you wouldn’t be inclined to plan and/or participate in such events or that they don’t happen at your school?</p>

4

<p>They do have reunions for the 50th year classes (I’m not there yet :slight_smile: ). I would be more inclined to attend a reunion if it were for multiple classes around my graduation year. But just my class? No.</p>

5

<p>Or you can be like my alma mater and have 4 day long reunions every year! (and you even get a parade and fireworks)</p>

6

<p>“Can we draw any conclusions from this scenario?”</p>

<p>That if it’s a private school, it may need to do far more to connect with alum so that alum will provide money to allow the college to survive.</p>

7

<p>My undergrad is from a large public university that typically graduates 7000 students a year. I don’t feel any great affiliation with my particular graduating class, though I still got a great education and still donate every year.</p>

8

<p>My graduating class had a big reunion this year. We were told we had the largest percentage ever to return to campus. Despite this the alumni magazine had one photo of one graduate. I wrote to the alumni office and told them this was a shabby way to treat us. The answer was there was too little money and no more room to use additional photos.
I was an alumni relations director and I know from experience how important it is to cultivate alumni. Too bad my alma mater doesn’t.</p>