Pix From the Reunion – Montermoso
Here are some photos from the reunion:
So What’s All This We Hear About the Schwarzman Center?
In the course of our 50th Reunion activities, we were reminded in casual but animated conversation during our Class Dinner, that University Commons is being completely renovated into a campus-wide student center, including its traditional role as the principal dining hall for the university. First, some history. University Commons (1902) is part of the Yale Bicentennial buildings that include Commons Dining Hall, where we were required to take most of our meals as lonely freshmen…
Pix From Reunion – Tufaro
Thanks go to David Tufaro, who was the first classmate to respond to the request to send in pictures or videos from the reunion. Please send in any you have and share with the rest of the Class! (Use the contact form or email us directly.)
Reflections on Charlie Reich and Reunion Weekend
The recent passing of Charles Reich and an experience in Claudia Rankine’s poetry seminar during our 50th Reunion a few weeks ago prompt these thoughts.
The Charlie Reich seminar of which I speak actually occurred in the law school, but undergraduates had the run of the campus, and it was widely attended by them.
WYBC ’69ers Create Another Program — This Time For The Reunion!
When our class of ’69 arrived at WYBC, the big attraction for many of us was hosting rock and soul shows on WYBC 640 AM, closed circuit to the Yale campus. Over the spring break of our freshman year, though, we who heeled WYBC helped build a new state of the art stereo FM studio for what had been an educational, show tunes, and classical station. The inevitable happened. By summer of 1968, a small…
Charles Reich dead at 91
Charles A. Reich, who as a 42-year-old Yale Law School professor swapped button-down Brooks Brothers shirts for hippie beads and vaulted to intellectual celebrity by venerating the counterculture in his manifesto, “The Greening of America,” died on Saturday in San Francisco. He was 91.
FOR GOD, FOR COUNTRY AND FOR THE PLANET: Ten Classmates Lead Reunion Discussion
Had any of us been thinking 50 years ahead as we graduated, we probably would not have guessed that one of the defining issues of the next half century would be the challenging relationship between people and the planet. It turned out that 1969 marked the beginning of what is commonly thought of as the modern environmental era. Since then, many of our classmates have been directly involved in addressing environmental issues in a variety…
Yale ’68 Black Power Salute – Call for Information
Several discussions at our 50th Reunion touched on two memorable themes from our senior year: the Black Power movement and the football team. These themes intersected in historic fashion at the Dartmouth game at Yale Bowl on November 2, 2018, when our two black cheerleaders stood at the front of the cheerleading squad during the national anthem with heads bowed and arms raised in a black power salute. See also the brief discussion about this…
Classbook Errata and Mea Culpas
The ClassBook was a big hit, with the accent on big! Over 800 pages, 8 pounds, 530 personal essays, obituaries, and 12 longer essays offering broader, deeper looks at our experiences over the past 50 years. Yet, sadly mistakes were made.
John Waldman was one of the first classmates to submit his essay online, and yet, …
Calling All Reunion Attendees!
Everyone Contributes – Let’s Document What Just Happened.
We need to document what happened at the reunion, mainly for the many classmates who could not attend for medical or other good reasons. Volunteers are writing up reports on events like Classmates In Concert and the Class Survey presentation. But we need MORE of you to volunteer and help document the …Silliman Wins the St. Croix Trip
The final numbers are in from the YAA, and Silliman outpaced everyone, holding off late surges by Morse and Branford. Final results (classmates attending divided by living classmates per college):
What Is This Place?
My contact with a broad swath of Yale ‘69 preparatory to our 50th revealed widespread unease with what Yale now appears to “be.” This disaffection was repeatedly invoked as the source of decisions not to attend the Reunion – prompting our Reunion Committee to assert that the Reunion would be about renewing connections between classmates, not an expression of loyalty to our alma mater. This estrangement has little to do with how much we loved,…
Our Newest “Commencement”
Editor’s Note: Bill Newman was one of the reunion co-chairs. For so many classmates who attended our reunion, the event was a beginning for us and even more so a celebration of that beginning. We collectively kicked off a new phase for the Class, one where there are new friends, and we rekindled old relationships. It was an opportunity to catch up with people we may have seen relatively recently, say, over the past 25…
Yale Elects First-Ever Black Student Body President
YALE UNIVERSITY has elected its first-ever black student body president.
Kahlil Greene is the first black person appointed to the role in the prestigious university’s 318-year history.
As the president of the student body, Greene will be responsible for addressing issues faced by undergraduates on campus.
Why I Interrupted Schwarzman
Classmates, Those of you who attended our reunion dinner heard me interrupt Steve Schwarzman’s rambling, self-aggrandizing talk by shouting, “That’s enough Steve: You’ve dispossessed tens of thousands of people out of their homes…” Undoubtedly I should have risen magisterially from my seat and addressed a few more temperate but still-critical words to him and the rest of us. But: 1. Steve had just insulted President Salovey as the latter stood (almost obsequiously) a dozen feet…
50th Reunion Essays Now Online!
Don’t pack that 8-pound ClassBook for the Reunion! First, we’ll have some copies in the Davenport Common Room. And second, all of the essays are now online.
If you want to read anything in the ClassBook, just whip out your phone/tablet/laptop, log in to Yale1969.org, type the name into the search bar at the top, and proceed. If you want to see your essay online, just go to your profile page. It’s linked there under …
