Departments
|
Week of 12 May 1998 |
Vol. I, No. 31 |
Feature
Article
Oldest and newest events frame this year's reunion weekend
Save for move-in weekend, the Charles River Campus is never as busy as it is for the annual mid-May Commencement exercises. But a good percentage of the 5,000 or so people expected here later this week are not new graduates and their families: they're old graduates and their families. Commencement weekend is also reunion weekend.
And the numbers of alumni attending BU reunion events has been growing steadily in recent years, says Scott Troppy, assistant director of the Reunions Program. "More and more people seem to be happy to come back to campus to renew their friendships with classmates, meet faculty, and just have a good time," says Troppy.
He points out that another reason for this year's boost in attendance may be the fact that the University's Web site contains information about reunion weekend and a reservation form. "We thought the Web site would be viewed mostly by young alumni," he says, "but in fact we have had many older alumni reserving places for events in this way, even an alumnus from the class of '33."
|
Ongoing during reunion weekend:
|
"BU Night at the Pops at Symphony Hall is definitely the most popular event, and it was booked up a month ago," he says. "We split the hall fifty-fifty between alumni and parents and allocate tickets on a first-come first-served basis." The annual concert tradition began in 1914 -- a full 16 seasons before Arthur Fiedler became Pops conductor. (See "BU Yesterday," at right.) Although the music program is generally kept a secret, one of the traditional highlights is a performance by a School for the Arts student soloist, selected through competition. This year, flautist Boaz Meirovitch (SFA'99) will be taking the stage with the orchestra on Saturday night.
Back to college
College reunions are common, but Reunion College
is unique. A series of presentations by guest lecturers and
University faculty from almost every school and college, it
has little in common with the purely social activities that
are traditional reunion fare.
"We have offered some seminars in years past," says Troppy, "but only a handful -- maybe four or five. This year we've renamed it Reunion College, and there will be nearly 20. We've tried to target every school at the University, to get the very best speakers, and to present a wide range of seminar topics that are applicable to today's hot issues."
Faculty taking part in Reunion College include UNI Professor Alan Wolfe, author of One Nation, After All, a widely acclaimed study of middle-class morality; Mark Carter, COM associate professor of broadcast journalism and director of strategic planning at CNN, who will discuss journalistic ethics; 1997 Metcalf Cup winner Tom Underwood, CGS assistant professor of humanities and rhetoric, who will discuss the rhetorical styles of Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, and Martin Luther King, Jr. (GRS'55); and UNI Professor Rosanna Warren, who will give a poetry reading.
Unlike many of the presenters, Warren is a veteran of the reunion weekend seminars. She says the events give a point of entry to alumni who want to interact not only with their former classmates, but also with the University's current scholars.
"It's a particular kind of occasion," she says, "where the University tries to knit its past constituency to its present constituency, to see itself as an entity with an ongoing history. It seems to me that the University is trying to make evident the various intellectual activities that it fosters, and I'm pleased that poetry is one of those."
While Reunion College is a new enterprise, Saturday night's Comedy Club is a mainstay. The perennially popular event will again have as headliners two alumni now working the national comedy circuit with considerable success. Jeff Ross (COM'87) and Greg Fitzsimmons (CAS'89), Troppy says, have packed the house each of the past six years.
Although the occasion compels Ross to modify his act for the alma mater crowd, he says, the BU gigs are by no means more challenging that his club performances.
"They're easier," he says. "Much easier, because it's like talking about your family. It's totally home. It's not like I'm wandering into some strange atmosphere, and I have to get a feel for it. Greg and I always do inside jokes about BU and the campus. Alumni eat that up."
Ross, who didn't begin doing comedy until after his graduation from BU, says he unwittingly learned his comic chops in the booth at WTBU, where he worked as music director and hosted a show devoted to humorous music. That experience, he says, continues to inform his comic style, which is often improvisatory.
"I talk to the crowd a lot," he says, "especially when they're a familiar crowd, like BU students, their parents, and alumni. They speak my language. I always bring my basic act to the stage, but I tend to go a little wild."
A more sedate event, which was introduced last year and proved highly successful, was a reception at the home of President and Mrs. Westling for 25th, 50th, and 50th-plus reunioners, Troppy notes. "The reception was very well received by the alumni, and President and Mrs. Westling wanted to offer it again this year. We have sent out personal invitations to the classes of '48 and '73, and the response has been wonderful."
Like the rest of the weekend, the celebratory activities of these few days are supported by an intense period of preparation and work. "We've already booked space for events in 1999, 2000, and 2001," says Troppy. "We have to, because Boston has very limited event space. In fact, my staff -- Michele Gagné, reunion coordinator, and Jocelyn Kraus, program coordinator -- and I have already started coordinating Reunion '99."