Back for the weekend, alums reminisce

More than 1,000 alumni flocked to campus with family and friends on Feb. 20 for Alumni Day, a fixture in the Princeton calendar since its inception in 1915.

Unlike Reunions, the event gives alumni the opportunity to observe the campus while classes are in session and campus life is in full swing.

“This is the best day of the year,” returning alumnus William Reid Pitts, Jr. ’63 said. “The P-Rade is for all the hijinks of Reunions ... This is a whole different kettle of fish.”

Alumni Day offers a jam-packed schedule on par with Princeton Preview weekends.

Upperclassmen presented their independent work, prominent alumni Gen. David Petraeus GS ’87 and former U.S. Rep. Jim Leach ’64 received awards and delivered speeches, and administrators honored top students with the Pyne Prize and Jacobus Fellowships.

But the core of Alumni Day is the opportunity for reminiscence among classmates of a bygone era.

The campus has changed substantially since many of these alumni graduated.

Pitts, a biology concentrator who now practices urology in New York City, highlighted the University’s decision to go co-ed and the transition to the residential college system as two of the most positive changes.

“Residential colleges changed the whole landscape,” he said, praising the new system for its ability to break down the student body into smaller, more socially manageable pieces.

He noted that, in his time, undergraduates of all classes were scattered across campus in various buildings as if they were “out on an island.”

Other alumni also cited the University’s decision to admit women in 1969 as the most drastic change since their time here.

“It certainly is a different dynamic,” Eric Johnson '69, whose daughter Ashley graduated from the University in 2008, said. He noted that the inclusion of women allows for “more on-campus fraternization,” since men no longer have to arrange to bring their dates to campus on weekends.

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“Socially, I think it’s been overall good for the male students,” he added.

“It was an inevitable thing,” Edward Duffield ’58 said. “It had to be done. The social atmosphere was getting weird with just guys.”

Steve Alfred ’56 noted that academic changes also accompanied those in the composition of the student body.

“Certainly, there’s a much greater diversity of courses; there’s a much greater diversity of students,” he said.

Alfred’s daughters graduated from the University in 1980 and 1983, and his granddaughter, Jennifer Monson ’11, is concentrating in the Wilson School, as Alfred did more than five decades ago.

Alumni debated, though, whether the academic pressures have significantly changed over the years.

Reflecting on his workload at Princeton, Alfred said, “It’s hard. You work very hard here.”

He recalled telling his granddaughter, “When you get out and look back, that is why you will see you have such a strong bond to the University.”

But George Gallup ’53, a religion major whose father introduced Gallup polling in 1935, said he believes the academic standards have shifted since his time here.

“I’m sure the rigor of the disciplines is stronger now than it used to be,” he explained. Gallup, who attended Deerfield Academy for high school, noted changes in the admission process as well.

“In those days, you were sort of on a conveyor belt,” he said, referring to the relationship between elite private schools and colleges.

Most alumni fondly remembered the camaraderie and the pranks from their days as undergraduates.

“We cut some capers,” Johnson said.

He recalled an incident in which he and his friends convinced a female undergraduate from Hollins University, whose car had broken down, that their dorm room in Dodge-Osborn Hall was a hotel room.

To complete the act, one friend pretended to be the manager, while another impersonated a bellhop.

Gallup remembered driving cars across the tennis courts with friends, while Pitts recalled an incident in the spring of 1963 in which his friends rented horses, dressed up as bandits and rode out of the woods intending to hold up the Dinky.

When the conductor tried to reverse the train, he said, the engine burnt out.

In addition to reliving past days of youthful mischief, though, Alumni Day offered classmates a chance to share the stories of their lives after leaving FitzRandolph Gate.

“It’s amazing how well these folks turn out,” Pitts said. “Princetonians really are in the nation’s service.”