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President's Letter, February, 2010

 

I don’t promise to write a winter letter every year, but there’s a lot going on for the Class right now so here goes. First a snapshot of upcoming events:

 

February 20 – Alumni Day Class dinner at the McCarthy’s home at 87 Ettl Circle in Princeton beginning at 6:30 pm, with special guest speaker, Politics Professor Robert George. This one is upon us, so if you want to come and haven’t already signed up, please send me a quick e-mail (bcharrier@comcast.net).

 

March 19 – New York regional dinner beginning with a private tour of the Lincoln in New York exhibition at the New York Historical Society. The tour will be led by exhibition curator Harold Holzer, one of the world’s leading authorities on Abraham Lincoln, who will join us as dinner speaker after the tour. A regional e-mail will announce the details when firmed up.

 

May 27-29 – ‘69’s 41^st reunion. This year we will return for our Saturday Class meeting and dinner to the Class of 1956 Lounge in the stadium. Watch for a mailing in the early spring.

 

September 17-25 – ‘69 Invades Europe. The registration package for this very special 8-day mini-reunion is enclosed. Note that we will begin accepting e-mail sign-ups at noon on February 22.

 

We are in the process of re-activating the Class regional organization and plan to have several further dinner/speaker or similar events spotted around the country in the next year. If you are interested in helping to organize one of these, let me know.

 

Next, I am delighted to announce that Professor James M. McPherson has been elected an honorary member of the Class, joining our distinguished role that includes Lynn Shostack Gardner, Seva Kramer, Muffin Slonaker and Professors James Billington, Paul Muldoon and André Maman. Jim has led three mini-reunions for us at Civil War battle sites to date and has agreed to be our historic guide once again in the fall of 2011 for a broader look at the Lincoln presidency and the social and political turbulence leading up to the election of 1860. With this one we begin ‘69’s westward march, first stop, Springfield, Illinois.

Perhaps the most important developments for the continuing legacy of the Class are those affecting the Class of 1969 Community Service Fund and its flagship program, Princeton Internships in Civic Service. Picking up from the report in my September letter, CSF board chair Chuck Freyer reports that in November the University accepted the Class proposal to integrate student administration of the PICS program into the Pace Center while retaining the balance of program planning, funding and execution with the CSF board. Our program director, Laura Spence-Ash, was hired by Pace as a University employee and in December began the relocation of the student administrative functions from 12 Stockton Street to the Pace Center in the Frist Building on campus. Taking advantage of the central campus location and Pace’s infrastructure as a clearing house for student civic engagement opportunities, PICS experienced an impressive 20% increase in the number of applicants from last year and a 26% increase in total applications. Clearly the decision to go forward with the integration has met our expectations in terms of increased visibility of the program to the students.

 

Now the challenge is to realize the board’s objective to make the program even more of a multi-class, multi-generational institution than it has already become, and begin to close the gap between the 418 students that have applied for a PICS internship for the summer of 2010 and the 63 that we can offer. Now that the administration of the student side of the program is lodged in Pace, PICS is well on its way to being structured as a "plug and play” opportunity for other classes and Princeton regional associations to sponsor their own internships under the umbrella structure that our Class has created. We are still working on a final revised operating agreement between CSF and the University, and when that is complete we will be ready to launch into this next phase of program development and expansion in earnest.

 

If you would be interested in creating and mentoring an internship for summer 2011 for a non-profit with which you are involved, please contact Chuck (cfreyer@scppartners.com; 610-254-4242), or Bruce Hillman who heads the Internship Development Committee at CSF (bjh8a@virginia.edu; 434-831-2335). Legal and medical internships are currently the most popular among the undergraduates.

 

And finally, a dues reminder from our Treasurer, David Pensak. You don’t want to hear from him again, do you? If you haven’t already sent them in please do so. If you can’t remember whether you sent them in or not (sound familiar?) David will be happy to tell you. His particulars are on the masthead.

 

Hope to see many of you on February 20.

 

Warm regards to all,