In the first few hours of my 25th (and first-ever) reunion, I kept remembering a scene from Beetlejuice, a schlocky movie of the 80s. The villain wreaks his fury on the hero and heroine by rapidly aging them, and before our horrified eyes, Geena Davis and Alec Baldwin crease, pucker, wrinkle, bag, and sag.
Beetlejuice took the dismal process almost as far as it can go, but under the blue and white striped tent on Old Campus, my classmates and I had stopped at the paunch-and-crow's-feet stage. It was far enough. Every time I met someone I hadn't seen in 25 years, it took a second or two for my neurons to reconcile reality with memory. Then I'd recover and realize that my middle-aged classmate was staring at middle-aged me in the same state of shock.
But I got over it. By the time the reunion was over, middle age looked normal again, even -- surrounded as I was with so many beaming and interesting examples of it -- delightful. The experience of spending a few free days talking to the people one entered adulthood with is a rush. I met or remet an acupuncturist, an assistant attorney general, a homemaker, a venture capitalist headquartered in Hong Kong, an obstetrician, a specialist in children's arts education. Everyone is disposed to be friendly, no one has anything to do except converse and sample Yale lectures, and the whole experience is charged by the memory that it was in this same place, with these same people, that we shot through the emotional rapids of youth, now blessedly far behind.
As alumni, Yale graduates are unusually active. Almost every school in the university holds reunions. Law and nursing school alumni can attend a reunion every single year if they wish; some of them ask for more. Student publications, secret societies, and music groups hold reunions. Yale historian George McCorkle '42 once wrote that Yale alumni were first or early in organizing a reunion system (early 1820s), an alumni association (1827), and regional alumni associations (Cincinnati's was the first, in 1864). Students and alumni founded this magazine in 1891, which is why Yale alumni are still served by a news source editorially independent of the university.
Yale has tolerated, even embraced, alumni initiatives, and not exclusively for fund-raising purposes. The university devotes considerable staff at the Association of Yale Alumni (AYA) and the professional schools to supporting alumni activities. Yet the AYA isn't part of Yale's fund-raising operation. It reports to the secretary of the university, Linda Lorimer '77JD, who also oversees communications. The phrase administrators often use of alumni is "ambassadors for Yale": Yale wants the good will and outspoken support of its alumni, wealthy or not, in their communities around the world.
Hence, the blue and white tent. Hence the organic meals, the 24-hour reunion headquarters, the final dinner in Commons, the group photo too huge to make out most of the individuals.
So, thanks, Yale and AYA; thanks, reunion chair Jeff Manning '81 and all the others who worked extravagant hours on this event. Now that I've finally experienced a reunion, I understand what all the fuss is about. I've heard the Stones and the B-52's blasting at midnight from a dance floor in the middle of Old Campus, and I know now why old alumni want to come back and dance to the outdated music of their youth. I'm one of them. And I recommend it. 