Welcome to the Club
Last
weekend, I attended a meeting of the Trinity National Alumni Board (NAB). For the past six years I’ve been a member of
this group of alumni volunteers, meeting three weekends a year and working on
projects to support and advance Trinity in-between those meetings. We’re just a small part of the 26,000
existing Trinity alumni, many of whom are members of local chapters around the
country, or merely volunteers who help Trinity find and attract students,
assist current students to begin their careers, pursue graduate or professional
education, guest lecture in classes, and represent and help our University in
myriad other ways.
Six
years is the usual term for someone to serve on the NAB, so this was my last
meeting as a member. Without fail, every
time I’ve met or worked with other Trinity alumni I’ve come away thinking,
“What a wonderful group of people.”
They’re smart, engaged, generous – with well-balanced lives. They’re committed to their communities, their
families, their passions, and, of course, to Trinity. In short, they’re people just like you.
At
the end of the year, you will be joining this group. It’s a large, but selective club. Instantly, you’ll have a common experience
with people engaged in every conceivable endeavor, of all ages and types. The differences between you won’t matter; all
that will count is that you both went to Trinity. Whether the alumna you meet graduated from
the Woodlawn campus in 1950 or the “Skyline Campus” in 1969, you’ll have an
instant supporter. Maybe the alumnus at
your office insists that Miller fountain was on the east side of Northrup, and
that Northrup is only two stories high.
It won’t matter that your campus had the fountain on the west side of a
4-story Northrup.
Whatever
you think will separate you, one important thing will bind you: a shared love
for the kind of place Trinity is – and always has been. Long before the CSI was imagined, before East
and South became Witt and Winn, when the Storch Library overlooked the only
tennis stadium on campus, Trinity students enjoyed the small liberal arts
classes taught by dedicated scholars who were committed to helping students
become fully formed, well-educated members of society. And they succeeded.
Those
are the people you’ll be joining when you become alumni. But they’re really the same kind of people
you are now.
Geary Reamey
Alumni Sponsor
