Welcome and Opening Remarks

The GSAA Annual Meeting convened at 1:00 pm in Shirley Auditorium, Fine Arts Center, Salem College. President Jim Hart ('79W)presided. Also present were 1st Vice President Henry Jefferson ('68), Executive Secretary Joanne Goetz, Foundation Chairperson Kay Gresham, and retired GSW Director Jim Bray, and '68 class representative Clayton Gaskill. There were roughly 40 other alumni at the meeting, including a small contingent from 1968 and a larger group from 1997. The rest were spread out over other classes. Missing were GSAA Treasurer Laura Prince and Foundation Treasurer Ron Loftis.

Jim opened the meeting by welcoming the alumni and thanking them for participating. He noted that this would be a GSAA meeting like no other, because this would either be a beginning or an end. He mentioned the dwindling support and lack of active participation that has plagued the GSAA for the past eight years, and made it clear that this meeting would either be a beginning of a new chapter in GSAA history, or the final chapter. Despite sending out nearly 16,000 invitations to this summer's 35th anniversary Reunion, less than 100 alumni attended. This is indicitive of two factors: 1) the database is woefully out of date, and we do not have the manpower or resources to attack the problem, and 2) a lot of people who have come to reunions in the past and found no events for the alumni have lost interest in these sorts of reunions. Jim put on the table that the mission of this meeting was to find solutions to these problems, and put people in place to attack them.

Treasurer's Reports

Joanne Goetz reported on the GSAA treasury, which I will not mention here on a public forum.

PART I: THE PAST

How We Got Here

Then we got down to business. Jim started by explaining to the attendees the purpose of the GSAA. The GSAA is a support organization for the schools. First, we provide money for student activities during the summer sessions. There is NO money for recreation and activities in the budget provided for the schools by the state Department of Public Instruction. All money for parties, afternoon socials, trips to the mall, and special events is provided by the GSAA. This money is generated either through membership dues, as profit on sales of T-shirts and annuals, or as excess funds for the annual Winter reunion. The GSAA provides this money to enhance the social aspects of the session, and to give the kids something to do besides sit on campus and think rarified thoughts.

Second, the GSAA is a lobbying organization. We try to use what little clout we can muster to sway the Department of Public Instruction, the Board of Education, the Legislature, and the Governor to increase and expand the GS budget. With so little active participation, we have met with limited success. We should have an organization in place to mobilize the alumni in support of the schools then the situation demands it, but with so few confirmed addresses, it's not possible to do much more than we are doing now.

But we must do more.

Jim began the revitalization effort by going over the many reasons that GSAA perticipation has fallen off. The reasons that he mentioned were:

1) For the first 8 years of the GSAA's existence, the office of the President could be held for only one year. In order to prevent a small group from taking hold of the GSAA, the succession of officers was set such that a person was elected into the position of Vice President, and from there would move up to President, then hold the position of Past President (sort of an advisroy position). Unfortunately, this progression did not work. Often, the elected Vice President would resign before becoming President, leaving the GSAA often with a totally inexperienced President. Another problem was that the succession mandated that no one could maintain the authority position for more than a year, which meant that the few good people who were placed into the position would find themselves out of it about time they got comfortable with it. The overall result was to make it impossible to get and keep good people in the officers' positions. Three years ago, the bylaws were amended to allow officers to hold positions as long as they were re-elected each year. The office of Past President was eliminated and replaced with the office of 2nd Vice President. All three officers are also members of the Foundation Board.

2) For at least the past 5 years, the officers would get together prior to the annual meeting and decide among themselves what the response to most of the issues should be. Armed with these decisions, they would go into the annual meetings and publicly make those decisions. Since no one else who might have been in attendence knew enough of the environment of the GSAA and Foundation to know what was going on, there was no debate. This most likely left them with a feeling of non-participation, as though their participation was not necessary and not valuable. This encouraged people not to return for future meetings.

3) The reunion weekends themselves were rather pointless affairs, with no events for the alumni other than to hang around campus and perhaps catch a play or the orchestra. Saturday was mostly down time, and unless you brought a large group of your classmates with you, it could be pretty boring.

4) We did not have the resources, financial or in terms of manpower, to stay in touch with our alumni. The high cost of mailings was prohibitive for an organization trying to get by on a small budget. We do not have, and cannot afford, the full-time staff members that most university alumni associations have. Thus, we quickly lost contact with our alumni, and they lost interest in us. (Jim did take a moment to mention the work of Rick Langston ('72) who single-handedly verified the addresses of all 400 of his classmates, getting good addresses for over 200 of them. If every class had a Rick Langston, we wouldn't be in such bad shape.)

5) Alumni meeting in the past have been long on ideas, but short on follow-through. There have been manu grand plans outlined, but they usually never came with a list of the people who would carry them out. And in many cases, there have been volunteers to carry them out who failed to do so. It was at this point that Jim asked everyone to take a good look at the time and resources that they had to commit to the GSAA. If that time was zero, Jim asked people not to volunteer. There have been too many disappointments in the past, and we would rather not depend upon someone if they are not going to do the job.

Jim concluded by stating that part of our purpose was to find ways to address these issues, and to overcome them.

The Need for the GSAA (A Word From the School's #1 Sponsor)

Jim Hart then opened the floor to Jim Bray, who was Director of GS West for 30 years before his retirement in 1995. Jim Bray is Governor's School's staunchest supporter. He has been around it the longest, he knows the most about it, and he has maintained its excellence against the tide of dwindling support. Jim was also President of the National Council of Governor's Schools.

Jim spoke of the challenges of maintaining the Governor's School. He noted how often funding for the Schools has been threatened to be cut or actually cut. He said how proud he was of the many alumni who have been willing to work in support of the Schools. He challenged each and every one of us to rise to the occasion and do what is needed to support GS, and ended by promising to do anything that was asked of him in support of the schools. His speech was rousing, and got the alumni fired up and thinking about the possibilities of the future of the GSAA. (Personal note: I would like to thank Jim, not only personally but in my office as President of the GSAA. Certainly, the Governor's Schools are what they are because of the efforts of Jim Bray, and the meeting that followed his speech was much more productive because of his inspiration. The GSAA, and the Schools themselves, are well served by their #1 Sponsor. ---JKH)

The GS Environment

If we're going to help the GSAA and the Governor's Schools, it's important that everyone know the environment in which these organizations live. There has been an essential lack of general knowledge about the Governor's Schools and how they relate to the GSAA, the Foundation, and the government bodies that oversee the Schools. To combat this ignorance, Pres. Hart gave a fifteen-minute presentation on the GS Environment.

PART II: THE PRESENT

GS Foundation Activity Report

To open the discussion of our current standing, GS Foundation President Kay Gresham gave a report on the activities of the GS Foundation. The Foundation made $1500 available to each school for the 1998 session for the purpose of securing a guest speaker. The money was raised through donation from the parents of the 1997 class. The Foundation also sent out a fundraising letter to all 15,898 alumni addresses that were not known to be incorrect. Sadly, this fundraising drive, which we had hoped would provide seed money for the Foundation, barely broke even. We are unsure of the reason, whether it is bad addresses, a poor mailing, or general apathy. In any case, we are resolved never to do a complete mailing again. The Foundation's plans for 1999 include a special event to attract corporate and philanthropic donations, another campaign to the parents of the 1998 class, and a mailing to known alumni addresses.

GSAA Activity Report

The GSAA has been very quiet this year. Lack of organization and poor coordination make it difficult to attempt anything extravagant. Most of the GSAA's efforts this year were put into organizing the 35th/20th Reunion, which, as noted above, was poorly attended. Joanne Goetz ran the usual Winter Reunions for the 1997 classes, and they were very well-attended. However, due to some problems with certain individuals and some complaints from the hotel, Joanne has resolved to quit holding them. We have also, for many years, lived in fear of an accident or incident at the reunion and the resulting lawsuit, which would break the organization if pressed. Because of these potential problems, there will be no more Winter Reunions. This poses a problem, since most of the money that the GSAA donated to the Activity Budget was generated by these reunions. We had hoped that the 35th/20th reunion would be a big enough event to provide these funds, but it was not. We will work towards the goal of having the Summer Reunion provide this fund, but in the meantime, we are at a loss, both for cash and for ideas.

PART III: THE FUTURE

Infrastructure

One of the major problems of the GSAA in the past has been the lack of organized infrastructure. The officers have done all of the work, leaving the rest of the alumni totally uninvolved. During a long, open discussion, it was suggested that we form committees to handle the operations and coordination of the following four major activities that should be performed by the GSAA:

Contact Committee: This committee would work to make contact with as many alumni as possible, searching archives, running through phone lists, using E-mail and the Internet to get good addresses for each alum. 1stVP Henry Jefferson offered to chair this committee, and several alumni volunteered to serve.

Information Committee: This committee would have a twofold purpose. One, to get information about the GSAA into the public media through news articles, magazine stories, TV and radio PSAs, and any other avenues they could find. Two, to organize the process of sending out mass mailings to alumni, including designing, printing, folding, and stuffing. Tena Helton offered to work on this committee. (Note: Since the meeting, Theresa Noble has volunteered to head this committee.)

Information Age Committee: This committee (or person, this could be a committee of one) would be responsible for securing and Internet presence for the GSAA that would allow us to maintain a more interactive web site, support List Servers, and allow alumni to fill out forms on-line. We would also like to get a more suitable domain name, the current one being too long to remember. Currently, Pres Jim Hart is maintaining the web site on his Compuserve account, but Compuserve does not support list servers, CGI scripting, user access, or other types of active content. Likewise, Jim does not have the time to maintain a more active page. We are therefore seeking an alumnus with better Web programming skills. Access to a server would be a plus, although we are looking into the cost to buy the necessary web services and to register our own domain name.

Reunion Committee: This committee would plan next summer's reunion. No one was assigned to this committee because I hoped to involve the alumni on the GSW faculty in this committee. Randy Foy is the current contact person, but may not be committee chair.

Anyone interested in working with any of these committees should send their name to the current chairperson, or to the GSAA.

Winter Reunions and GSAA Dues

The next discussion centered on the Winter Reunions. For reasons outlined above, we do not want to continue the Winter Reunions. However, the question was raised as to whether the students would join the GSAA without the promise of the Winter Reunion. The entire contingent from the Class of '97 agreed that they would have joined the GSAA, at pretty much any price, on their final day, regardless of the Winter Reunion. Also, the plans for the improved Summer Reunions that had been hinted at earlier would, in their opinion, be enough to draw the students to the GSAA. Armed with this information, we voted to stop the Winter reunions, concentrate on the Summer Reunions, and raise dues from $10 to $20 per student. We also resolved to give students more for their money, with better reunions, more constant contact, and better organization. Discussion was held as to what to do with the increased funds, if they materialize. One suggestion was to use them to hire a full or part-time person to work on generating corporate and private donations, or to work on improving the Alumni Database. Debate on the subject was tabled until the October meeting, at which time we would have some idea as to how much capital we had at our disposal, and the demands that would be placed on it.

Summer Reunions

The next topic was the Summer Reunion. As discussed in the How We Got Here section, one problem with participation has been the poor quality of the reunions, with few events for the alumni and little interaction with the current students. A suggestion made a year ago by Randy Foy was brought out for discussion. The concept is a Renaissance Reunion, in which the alumni come back to GS for a weekend for an intellectual experience. Seminars on cutting- edge theory, held by faculty, alumni, or guest speakers, would be the mainstay of the event. It would also coincide with some of the arts performances, in which alumni may participate. All events would be open to the current students as well. The event would be coordinated with the GSW faculty.

The concept drew overwhelming approval. The Runion Committee was proposed, and we resolved to get as many people as possible to attend the event. (Salem College may be overrun if we are successful.)

Making Contact

With the new Contact Committee in place, we discussed methods of getting in contact with alumni. Pres. Hart reported that at last count, the database contained about 1500 confirmed addresses. (This number was confirmed later at over 2200.) He also noted at least 150 E-mail addresses (later confirmed at over 250). However, the later years (1988-1997) were most likely still good, at least for the alumnus' parents. (This does, however, fail to explain why so many people stayed away from the Reunion.) With over 22,000 alumni, this is a dismally small number of correct addresses. However, the expense of mass mailings is prohibitive, so we were looking for more economical ways to contact people.

One suggestion was to recruit alumni in certain areas and ask them to call other alumni in their area to confirm their addresses. (Basically, look them up in the phone book. If there is someone with the same last name living at that address, call them and try to make contact.)

Another suggestion was to recruit one or two members per class who have Internet access and try to track down alumni via Internet White Pages, People Searches, etc. (This is basically what Rick Langston did to confirm 200+ addresses from the Class of '72.)

Another suggestion was to use the Alumni Directories of local universities as a resource.

Any other suggestions should be sent to Henry Jefferson.

Assignment of the Foundation Board

One of the duties of the GSAA is to select the members of the GS Foundation Board. Many members of the Board have been absent and inactive for the year, and were replaced. The officers of the GSAA are automatically members. The other 4 members are at-large positions. These four are now:

Kay Gresham -Chair
Jim Bray
Ron Loftis - Treasurer
Joanne Goetz

There is good rapport between all of these members, and all have been associated with the Governors Schools for many years. The GSAA believes that this board will achieve what others have failed to provide: the prestiege to draw corporate interest in the Governors Schools.

Election of Officers

With the business done, the last order of business was to elect officers for 1998-1999. Most positions were unopposed, and the results were:

President: Jim Hart '79W
1st VP: Henry Jefferson '68
2nd VP: Sonja McLean Williams '79E
Treas: Laura Prince '73

With that, President Hart thanked everyone for attending and breathed a sigh of relief that things had gone so well.