Facebook makes, not breaks this class reunion
Recently, numerous articles have lamented the death of high school(HS) reunions due to Facebook(FB) and the current "always connected" culture. We perpetually stay in touch with our friends, so why try to get everyone together? In fact, if you graduated after 2004 (Facebook's first significant year), the chances of having a 10-year reunion are slim to none.
So, this is old news, right?
Not so fast. As the point person for Maine West's Class of 1978 40th reunion, these gatherings make sense to us. We're planning a big party yet this article isn't about promoting the party. We already have 150+ paid ticket holders 3 months from the July event and expect many more. This thing is going down.
This is about meeting face to face and talking to your original social network. The pretense of money or status is a distant memory. It's about looking people straight in the eye and saying, "Hey, I'm glad you made it!" It's about hobbies and grand kids not jobs or affluence. We hear very little about occupations or material items. The closest thing you'll see is the occasional cool vacation pics which personally I enjoy viewing. Facebook enabled us to gauge the interest in the reunion before embarking on our planning. The reunion committee leveraged FB to cut communication costs and allowed our classmates to be polled on several event topics. The feedback revealed that a school tour, and an informal and semi-formal event would cater to nearly everyone's interests. In fact, many of us now communicate regularly with HS classmates that we didn't even know in HS. We have a common history.
Facebook's dark side
So, let's talk about the elephant in the room. The last few years have been hard on FB friends that differ politically. This event won't fix that but our social DNA was created a long time before our recent bipartisanship. We need to be reminded of the civility of conversation and the 48 classmates that didn't make it this far. We're at a point where we need to dance both philosophically and literally. So, reunions really aren't a quaint thing of the past. They are an important reminder of a simpler time when we passionately listened to music, calmly discussed our thoughts, and yes, danced!
For more information, please go to www.mainewestalumni.org