About 18,000 expected for Reunions Weekend.
By: Jeff Milgram
Princeton University is throwing a party for itself, its alumni and their families, and about 18,000 people are expected to attend.
The highlight of Reunions Weekend, which starts Thursday and ends Sunday, will be the P-rade, which wends its way through the campus beginning at 2 p.m. Saturday.
Workmen have been setting up tents and erecting signs for reunion assembly points. There will be extravagant receptions, faculty and student arch sings and performances by the Triangle Club, the University Orchestra, Theatre Intime and Quipfire! on Friday and Saturday, as well as a fireworks display about 9:30 p.m. Saturday.
"What I love about reunions is that this is a celebration of a community that doesn’t have an equal anywhere," said Adrienne Rubin, associate director of class affairs for the university’s Alumni Council.
Reunions Weekend takes between 18 and 24 months to plan, Ms. Rubin said.
This year’s expected 18,000 visitors would tie last year’s record-setting total, she said.
Ms. Rubin said the younger alumni are just as eager to return to campus, and as many as 50 percent of the youngest return for their first and fifth reunions.
The themes this year show the traditional Princeton wit and whimsy: for the class of 1998 "Going Bacchus to Nassau Hall"; class of 1993 "A 93-Hour Tour," a takeoff on the "Gilligan’s Island" theme song; and class of 1978 the 25th-year reunion "Midlife at the Oasis."
The theme for the 50th anniversary class 1953 is "50 Years of Adventures."
Princeton University’s Reunions Weekend is not all fun and games.
Sure, it’s a chance for the alumni to dress in outlandish orange and black outfits and meet their classmates. And sure, it’s a chance to drink massive quantities of beer. But there will be some serious lectures and discussions taking place as well.
At 9:15 a.m. Friday, Frederick P. Hitz, a lecturer in public and international affairs and one-time inspector general of the Central Intelligence Agency, will moderate a discussion on homeland security in McCosh 10.
At 10:30 a.m., Anne-Marie Slaughter, dean of the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, will moderate a discussion on "America, Alone at the Top: Balancing Responsibility and Temptation as a Superpower," also in McCosh 10.
At 9 a.m. Saturday, there will be a 3-mile fun run starting at Murray-Dodge Hall and an estate-planning seminar in Room B of the Frist Campus Center.
At 9:15 a.m., a panel discussion will take a look at Princeton’s role in the future of genomics in Richardson Auditorium.
At the heart of the reunions is the unusual relationship between the university and its alumni.
"The loyalty and dedication some might say, fanaticism of Princeton’s alumni are extraordinary," wrote Don Oberdorfer in his book, "Princeton University: The First 250 Years."
Some 76,000 graduates belong to Princeton University’s Alumni Association. "Whether the personal contact is frequent or infrequent, these are often relationships of such enduring quality that they can be picked up at almost a moment’s notice where they were interrupted months, years or even decades before," wrote Mr. Oberdorfer, who graduated from Princeton in 1952.
He called reunions the "ultimate expression of Princeton camaraderie."
"Some alumni, especially those living near Princeton, attend their class reunions annually, and many more attend the larger reunion celebrations at five-year intervals marking significant anniversaries of their graduation," wrote Mr. Oberdorfer, who worked as a journalist for The Washington Post before retiring in the 1990s.
The origin of reunions and the P-rade are, frankly, lost in the fog of time and Princeton myth.
Reunions began before the school was called Princeton University. Mr. Oberdorfer traces reunions back to the days of the College of New Jersey, when graduates would come back at commencement time to visit their favorite professors and their friends.
"By 1826, when James Madison was named the first president of the newly formed alumni association, the steward of the college was serving a special dinner at commencement to alumni guests," Mr. Oberdorfer wrote. "By the turn of the century, reunions had become a major event, sometimes beginning as long as a week before commencement."
The P-rade, the annual procession of alumni classes, dates only from 1906, according to Mr. Oberdorfer. "It has become the dramatic and often emotional high point of reunions weekends," he wrote.
The P-rade is a slice of Princeton University history, Ms. Rubin said.
The FitzRandolph Gate will be ceremonially locked, the sound of the bell atop Nassau Hall will be heard and the gates opened. The P-rade will be led by grand marshal Charles Rose, a member of the Class of 1950.

