Time for a Bigger Tent

Like so many things, Dartmouth handles reunions in its own unique fashion. Should we try a different approach?

IN JUNE 2008 I WENT TO MOORE THEATER IN HOPKINS CENTER TO SEE the puppet show put on by Dan butterworth ’68, a world-class solo performance paid for as a gift to the entire College community by his classmates during their 40th reunion. It wasn’t my reunion year, but I live near Hanover, Dan was in Theta Delt with me, and I knew that all the ’68 brothers who had come back to campus would be there, too. They were, a dozen or so, some of whom I hadn’t seen since our undergraduate days, gathered in a loose house block as I walked in before the lights dimmed.

“gray!” said one of them as he jumped up to shake my hand. “What are you doing here?”

Good question. Until 2012 I’m an uninvited party-crasher at reunions.

At most colleges and universities graduates are invited back only for their fifth, 10th, 15th and so on until their 60th or 65th. Among the Ivies, all but Princeton and Dartmouth adhere strictly to this “every five” model. Dartmouth applies a hybrid, clustering its reunions into groups of three for the first 20 years, inviting adjacent classes at the same time—ninth, 10th and 11th, for instance. At 25 the Dartmouth clustering, unique among the Ivies, ends.

Princeton takes the standard model two steps further, adding an official one-year reunion and inviting every other “non-five” class to join the weekend festivities as a “satellite.” In short, every alum is invited back every year, with each year’s major focus, including housing priority and class-dinner venue assignments, given to the first and the “fives.” The result is unmatched—20,000 Princeton alums and guests return to campus every year and they’re all together for the same long weekend, marching classby-class in the traditional, raucously costumed “P-rade.” by comparison, Princeton’s two closest Ivies in size, Dartmouth and Brown, host fewer than 4,000 alums and guests. (Dartmouth drew 2,375 graduates and their guests, a total of 3,800 people, in 2008.) Larger Yale hosted a total of 6,300.

Everyone wants to maximize reunion attendance. So, the obvious question: Why not adopt the Princeton model?

“We’re always thinking about ways to enhance the reunion experience and increase attendance,” answered David Spalding ’76, vice president of alumni relations, when I asked him. “That’s why we’ve expanded the offering of the Alumni College at reunions to include speakers from outside just the reunion classes themselves. And of course the social aspect of reunions—the beer tentsis and always will be important, too. But you have to face your limitations. For us in Hanover it’s beds, and flat floor space for functions like class dinners. And I think we’ve about maxed out the places where we can erect class tents. There’s no way we could house Princeton’s 20,000. They book hotels in New York and Philadelphia and provide a complex bus service.”

That’s true enough. but in the last 10 years the available housing in and around Hanover has expanded considerably. There are now more than 1,000 hotel rooms within 20 minutes of campus, far more inside the hour-plus circle that Princeton uses to include Philadelphia and New York in its planning. For on-campus housing this year Dartmouth provided 1,349 beds. Princeton allocated 1,960. That’s not a substantial difference.

At both Princeton and Dartmouth the returning “fives” hold their class dinners and other functions in officially designated traditional venues. Reunion committees for those classes at Princeton can choose to include or exclude their adjacent satellite classes from the major class functions, depending on whether there is room (and a desire) to be inclusive. The class tents are required to be open both to the nominal “fives” and their adjacent satellites. Everyone pays to be there, including satellite alums.

Until urban blight hits the Hanover Plain, there won’t be room for 20,000 Big Green alums and their guests to gather at the same time, but even a third of that crowd would be a doubling of the College’s current turnout. Since that number didn’t seem unreasonable to me, nor did the idea that every Dartmouth alum should be welcome every year during reunions, I asked Spalding what he thought about the possibility of altering the current system.

“my objective is for Dartmouth alums to have the best reunion experience in the world,” he replied. “We don’t assume that what we have now meets that goal. everything is on the table. We’re open to suggestions, as always.”

So, in response to that open invitation from the boss and as a way of passing it along to the rest of us, here’s my proposal:

1. Invite all alums to reunions every year. Give priority to the fives in housing and College-provided facilities. Book every available room in the Upper Valley and hand them out based on the same priority. Push creatively for additional beds.

2. lose the clusters. They’ll be moot under the new system anyway.

3. Relocate all the class tents to the Green, lined up in class sequence around the perimeter and up the middle. There’s plenty of room there. Dartmouth may not have a P-rade, but the resultant days-long “green gathering” could be even better.

4. Erect an overlapping set of large tents on Memorial Field to feed the satellite attendees. Invite non-College vendors to provide the fare on a pay-per-serve basis. (Think airport food court here.)

5. Finally, borrow a really good idea from Brown: Make the first official reunion, the fifth, free of charge except for accommodations. “Free trial” is about as tried and true a marketing concept as there is.

It’s time to bring reunions up to date. I’ll look forward to seeing you there someday, no matter what class you’re in.

ED GRAY has a lot of classmates. He entered Tuck with the class of 1969 but had to leave after one year to fulfill his Vietnam-era military obligation. Thus he has three class reunions every five years. Look for him at your next one.

Everyone wants to maximize reunion attendance. Why not adopt the Princeton model?