{"id":561,"date":"2006-05-30T09:28:48","date_gmt":"2006-05-30T13:28:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/shermandorn.com\/wordpress\/?p=561"},"modified":"2006-05-30T09:28:48","modified_gmt":"2006-05-30T13:28:48","slug":"on-the-limits-of-reunions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/?p=561","title":{"rendered":"On the limits of reunions"},"content":{"rendered":"

Since my previous entry on Bryn Mawr’s reunion<\/a> drew a few responses, I should note that the entry wasn’t about the broader reunion (of which I saw little) but more about folk cultures on residential campuses. I didn’t see who showed up at every event, but I think that those alumnae who came back were disproportionately white compared to the graduating class as a whole—if my impression is correct, it is something that should worry a college in terms of having alumnae feeling connected with a college. That doesn’t have to be the case—I know of several majority-white colleges where minority alumni networks are active. And I know that Haverford has an active gay\/lesbian alumni network.
\nThen there is the other limitation of my observations, about the class makeup of a residential liberal-arts college. Bryn Mawr and Haverford have students disproportionately from wealthy families, which is both an inevitable dynamic and also a problem. Private colleges need money and thus have legacy admissions. They also need diverse student populations to work well. I know this from my own teaching—a class of reasonably well-off 20-year-olds learning about the history and organization of schools does not work nearly as well as a class where at least 4-5 students are over 30, where at least another 4-5 students are from the first generation in their family to go to college, etc.)
\nWhat happens to a campus culture as the population shifts is an interesting question. I don’t know if anyone has studied that, but it would make for a great dissertation or book.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Since my previous entry on Bryn Mawr’s reunion drew a few responses, I should note that the entry wasn’t about the broader reunion (of which I saw little) but more about folk cultures on residential campuses. I didn’t see who showed up at every event, but I think that those alumnae who came back were […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_hide_featured_image":false,"_jetpack_featured_image_duplicate_dismissed":0,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-561","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-random-comments"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pag0MB-93","jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/561","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=561"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/561\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=561"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=561"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=561"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}