Woodstock School Alumni Magazine Vol CIV, 2011

10 - Quadrangle
Her strategy clearly paid off. One of her
classmates recently told her that she once
felt none of her accomplishments were up
to Quadrangle standards. Now she and her
classmates “are getting comfortable talking
candidly about our successes and our
failures, about some of the really difficult
choices we’ve made in our lives, and how
we’re coping with the outcomes. I’ve drawn
great strength from these honest and very
personal conversations.”
Develop a voice.
Sometimes all it takes is one person to get
things started. One class secretary told me
that he set the ball in motion nearly 20 years
ago. “My class notes were boring. There
was a real sameness about them. At school
what I loved about my classmates was
how bright they were, how much fun they
were to be around. But that wasn’t coming
through in their notes several decades later.”
He sent a message to his classmates suggesting
that people “start opening up and
reflecting on their lives more, as opposed
to filing news of changed demographics
and vital statistics.” With some prompting
they complied. “After a year or two, they
didn’t even need the prompt,” says the
secretary. “The changed tone and content
of the column carried itself, and we feel
far more connected in each other’s lives.”
A class notes column should have a distinctive
voice and a clear sense of audience. For
us, the best columns read like a conversation.
“I try to give the column a real sense
of the contributors’ voices,” says another
contributor. “If someone writes me a letter,
I try and include the news in their voice so
that everyone could get a sense of reading
the same letter I read.”
Be inclusive.
All too often, class notes focus on a single
clique: Each year readers get an update
on the doings of only the class secretary
and his friends, to the exclusion of other
classmates. Some of the most meaningful
jottings come in from those class secretaries
who keep track of both frequent contributors
as well as those that parcel out their
information gradually. Others target certain
classmates or those that live in a different
country - “lost” alumni - with special
notes or an explicit invitation to write.
Attitude is often more important than action.
Saying “we want to hear from every one of
you” and backing it up with a diverse mix
of contributors, can go a long way toward
reaching the silent masses. “If you see a
person in the magazine who doesn’t usually
contribute, it can inspire others to write in,”
says Li Chu. “It really snowballs.”
Ask questions.
You may be surprised what people will tell
you if you ask. Everyone has an opinion,
and most people like to share them. That’s
what class secretary Beth Norford ’80
learned when she decided to solicit book
recommendations from members of her
Woodstock class. More than recommendations,
she received critiques, analyses and
meditations on classmates’ recent reading.
“Asking questions opens the door for people
to say more than what jobs they have, what
their children do, or what their husband
does. That narrow focus puts some people
off,” Norford says. “This just gives another
way for people to relate to each other.”
Spurred by a similar idea, Mary Self
Skarsten, ’69 has successfully queried
her classmates on topics like “on turning
50” and “what would be the top 3
things you would like to do if we go
back to Mussoorie”. The initial responses
have generated more responses until it
feels like everyone has something to say.
If you’re worried that asking a question
might preclude the exchange of personal
news, don’t be. These class secretaries have
found that sharing opinions and experiences
related to certain topics seems to elicit more
personal information. Another approach to
soliciting more participation is to start a
dialogue across the years. We are currently
exploring if we could match up members
of this year’s graduating class with some
alumni from the class of 1961, hoping that
the more seasoned class will have some
words of wisdom for students who graduated
50 years later.
Make contributing easy.
Both class secretaries and contributors have
heavy demands on their time. As an alumni
relations team, we should make it as easy as
possible for alumni volunteers to participate.
This year at Woodstock we are about to make
a concerted effort to offer class secretaries as
much support as possible. For the Class of
2012, the class secretaries will go through a
formal two-hour training session on campus
shortly after they’re elected in which we tell
them about our deadlines, give them advice
on newsgathering and warn them about the
dangers of using secondhand information. We
also are starting to create a comprehensive and
user-friendly handbook detailing the obligations
of and guidelines for the job. Once these
are ready we are hopeful that we can share
these resources with other class secretaries
around the world, accompanied by a conversation
on Skype. And the commitment is that
as an alumni relations team, we will make
ourselves available via phone, fax, email and
snail mail and respond quickly to questions -
which is just basic customer service.
We encourage class secretaries to find other
efficient ways of soliciting information,
such as creating Facebook pages, starting
an email directory for the class or just making
sure that they are able to attend regional
gatherings near where they live. Please
drop me a note at alumni@woodstock.
ac.in; we would love to publish some of
your ideas in our Letters to the Editor
section in the next issue of the Quadrangle.
Letters to the Editor
Is there something in this issue of Quadrangle that you would like to comment
on? Did one of the stories ring a bell and make you want to share your
experience? There are two ways in which you can respond:
• Email us at alumni@woodstock.ac.in. Letters received will be published online
in the Quad section of the Woodstock website, and the most relevant will be
published in the next edition of the Quad in Spring 2013.
• Share Your Story is a new section of the alumni website designed to help you..
share your story. Go to www.woodstockschool.in/share.