Saturday’s P-rade is traditional highlight, but plenty more is on the schedule.
By: Jeff Milgram
Nassau Street will be awash in orange and black this weekend as Princeton University plays host to an expected 18,000 alumni and their families for the annual Reunions Weekend Thursday through Sunday.
The highlight, as always, will be the annual P-rade through the campus, which begins with the ringing of the Nassau Hall bell 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, Theatre Intime and Quipfire!, as well as a fireworks display about 9:15 p.m. Saturday.
The Reunions staff has been working 12-hour days and logging in time during weekends, said Kim Breiland, who is in her first year as Reunions coordinator.
"It’s a pretty busy time," she said Monday.
This year’s reunion will have countless uninvited guests 17-year cicadas.
"We’re just cleaning up as their carcasses fall," grounds manager James W. Consolloy said Monday. "We’re sweeping them up, sucking them up."
Grounds crews are trying to protect young trees, which can suffer damage from cicadas, Mr. Consolloy said.
"We’re running our lawn sweepers … constantly now," he said.
It takes between 18 months and two years to put together the Reunions, Ms. Breiland said.
The P-rade will enter the university through FitzRandolph Gate at Nassau and Witherspoon streets behind grand marshal Charles Rose, a member of the Class of 1950.
It will wend its way through the campus and end at Poe-Pardee Field.
"They have an enormous pride and tradition," Ms. Breiland said of the alumni who come back for Reunions Weekend. "Every alumnus is proud to be a Princeton graduate. They keep coming back year after year."
Princeton University’s Reunions Weekend is not all fun and games.
The serious stuff begins at 12:45 p.m. Thursday with an alumni careers program at the Frist Campus Center. At 8 p.m., Theatre Intime presents the U.S. premiere of "The Master and Margarita" at the Hamilton Murray Theater.
At 9:30 p.m. Thursday, the FitzRandolph Observatory will hold an open house.
Sociology Professor Miquel Centeno will moderate a program on the No Child Left Behind Act at 10:30 a.m. Friday in McCosh 46.
At the same time, the future of varsity intercollegiate sports at Princeton will be the subject of a panel discussion in McCosh 10.
A program on the search for life on other planets will be held at 1:30 p.m. Friday in Room 101 of the Friend Center.
Sen. William Frist (R-Tenn.) and Sen. Paul S. Sarbanes (D-Md.) will take part in a program on Princeton graduates who have dedicated their lives to public service at 2 p.m. Friday in Alexander Hall.
Princeton alumni who have served in Afghanistan or Iraq will discuss their experiences at 2 p.m. Friday in Whig Hall.
The Princeton Triangle Club will present "For Love or Funny" at 8 p.m. Friday in McCarter Theatre.
At 10:30 a.m. Saturday, university President Shirley M. Tilghman will have her fourth annual "conversation with alumni" in Richardson Auditorium, Alexander Hall.
At the same time, Professor Christopher Eisgruber will lead a discussion on the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks and their impact on the law.
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.