AAWC President’s Report

Greetings Alums One and All!

The calendar may still say it’s Winter, but Reunion doings have been busying your Alumni Office and the AAWC Board since well before Christmas.

This year’s Reunion theme, “Honor the Past, Embrace the Future,” well describes our efforts, both in reference to Board doings and Reunion planning itself.

With respect to the Alumni Board, we are great respecters of the past, but we also recognize that nothing much creative happens when things are allowed to fossilize. Consequently, a number of dedicated directors have been reading, marking, and digesting the inner workings of the AAWC Bylaws, Directors’ Guidelines, and Volunteer Handbook in efforts to bring all three documents up to date and relevancy. It’s an arduous collaborative process, and thanks are due to Ann Henninger Trax ’68 and Leah M. Good ’06 for heading up the committees that will present those amendments for your consideration in 2026. (Yes, 2026. As I said, it’s an arduous process.)

Embracing the future takes many forms: the most immediate being planning Reunion ’25 itself. While the aughts and fives classes are this year’s highlighted guests, everyone returning to campus can expect gatherings: informational (campus tours, Hankey Center exhibits); traditional (all-alum lunch, AAWC awards, class meetings); and offerings uniquely Wilson (golf cart karaoke, Sandy Huffman ’86’s ghost stories).

While you’re here, embrace—literally or furtively—students…who are the future. Generational divides needn’t be gulfs. All four classes seem flummoxed by Odds and Evens. Share the knowledge, preferably while hitching a ride on a student-driven golf cart. Get lost going to Fulton Farm; minding the occasional cow; you’ll make it back in time for your class dinner. (My favorite campus moment last Fall: getting behind a hay wagon loaded down with the women’s field hockey team. I hit the horn hard and yelled out the window, “Go Phoenix!” and got a happy roar back in return.)

It should go without saying—but it bears repeating—that Wilson welcomes you: for formal reunions, informal meet-ups, or just because it’s a what-ever week day.

The Wilson you love is still here. When you come back to campus—and I hope you will, Reunion year or not—I think you’ll feel like you’re coming home. And as one wise woman observed, “if it feels like home, it probably is.”

Kind Regards,

Patricia W. Bennett ’68

President, AAWC