We come back for 1,800 different reasons with nearly as many agendas, but having a good time is close to the top of everyone's list. At Watson House, where receptions are hosted by President and Mrs. Grabois for the Classes of 1948 and 1973, one alum says he wishes he had known more of his classmates 25 years earlier. One of the real highlights for me is the number of people I've met this weekend. Reunions are entirely about people, in relationship to one another, to peers and professors, and to place. What startles even the most recent reuning class, '93, is how much this place has changed.
New buildings stand in their memory's sightlines.
Associate professor of English Deborah Knuth compared film clips from recent film adaptations of Jane Austen's novels with textual passages and led her students in a discussion of what is lost in the translation and other questions. Not all the classes are held by faculty. Alumni take the podium and offer an equally eclectic sampling. Filmmaker Joe Berlinger '83 screened his Paradise Lost , a gripping and award-winning documentary about Arkansas's most notorious murder case ever. Following a faculty panel on the wide-ranging effects of World War II, former congressman Peter Peyser '43 lent a legislative point of view and Ozzie Wales '43, who led a platoon for 100 days on Okinawa, shared his perspective.