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Dear Abby: Class Reunion
DEAR ABBY: I am the treasurer for my high school's upcoming 50th reunion. My senior class was large -- more than 550 students. My problem is, 280 students have not responded to our monthly emails or newsletters.
It takes a lot of time and effort to put on a reunion. We have been working on it for two years. I realize some classmates hated their senior year. Not all of us had a perfect time. But would you remind people that a simple yes or no works well?
Frankly, I don't know why anyone would say no, unless medical or financial issues prevented them from attending. I don't look like I did at 18, and neither does anyone else. The clique clubs are gone, and the captain of the football team looks just like any other guy. Can you comment? -- READY FOR THE REUNION
DEAR READY: Yes. There may be other reasons why some graduates don't wish to attend their high school reunion. They live far away, or there is no one they particularly want to see.
Rather than work yourself into a lather, in your next communication to the graduates, specify that only those who have responded to the invitation can be accommodated "because the committee is making arrangements for which they need an exact head count." If you don't hear from someone, do not plan on seeing him or her.
It takes a lot of time and effort to put on a reunion. We have been working on it for two years. I realize some classmates hated their senior year. Not all of us had a perfect time. But would you remind people that a simple yes or no works well?
Frankly, I don't know why anyone would say no, unless medical or financial issues prevented them from attending. I don't look like I did at 18, and neither does anyone else. The clique clubs are gone, and the captain of the football team looks just like any other guy. Can you comment? -- READY FOR THE REUNION
DEAR READY: Yes. There may be other reasons why some graduates don't wish to attend their high school reunion. They live far away, or there is no one they particularly want to see.
Rather than work yourself into a lather, in your next communication to the graduates, specify that only those who have responded to the invitation can be accommodated "because the committee is making arrangements for which they need an exact head count." If you don't hear from someone, do not plan on seeing him or her.
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You really shouldn't discount the Facebook factor, btw. If nothing else, those who have minor health issues that don't prevent traveling but make it more of an effort are probably thinking, well, I'm connected with some people anyway...
More than anything, stop taking this so personally. I'm going to guess that high school was a big time in your life. You need to accept that for some people, it wasn't. It didn't have to be traumatic or dramatic, just...not a period in their lives that they attach a lot of emotion to.
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Add in the fact that they usually hold it in a major metropolitan area, and the entire thing is just a huge NOPE for me. So yeah, there are definitely reasons beyond medical and financial why someone might not want to go to one of these things, grawr.
(Plus, from a practical standpoint, some people's contact info might have changed. I'm a little baffled why, with an event this size, the LW isn't already taking a "no reply" as a "no" unless there have been lots of people showing up without RSVPing in the past.)
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And yes, there's the inevitable comparing yourself to others. I went to my 15th, feeling all proud of my doctorate and career, and I was one of maybe three people who didn't have kids. I went to a Catholic all-girls school, so there were a lot of full or part time stay-at-home moms, and given that I was already worried about my chances of having a kid, I came out feeling less-than-great about my life. This is to say nothing of having been one of the heaviest people there. The LW may think that the cliques are all gone, but that doesn't mean that people aren't going to feel judged and inadequate.
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The first two paragraphs... make sense? I mean, I can see asking an advice columnist for how to wrangle the competing demands of being welcoming to their class as a whole versus the need to make plans in advance, stay within a budget, etc.--- that is in fact a really hard question for something like a class reunion, at least by my lights (of course you want everyone who shows up to be welcome, it's a party for all of them, in a way that many parties are not! But also of course you have to make plans in advance and some of those require hard numbers and there is the budget to consider!) I mean, Miss Manners or similar might be a better source because the first two paragraphs are fundamentally an etiquette question--- "when can I do a cut-off date, how much allowance should I make for latecomers in order to be courteous," etc.--- again IMHO.
And then the third paragraph is what takes it into WTF-land for me. Like... the only way I can grasp the LW's confusion is to imagine that LW's high school is in the sort of relatively insular community where everyone knows everyone and it is rare for people to move away and the people you went to high school with grew up to become the people you work with and live near, so you are still socializing with each other regularly as adults. Or contrariwise if that was LW's personal experience even though it wasn't for others--- stayed close to home for post-high-school life, their adult social circle includes mostly people they did know in high school, etc. Which actually makes a lot of sense because LW did, after all, become the treasurer for the reunion, which suggests that high school Meant A Lot to them, for whatever reason--- at least in my experience, people don't take on administrative roles for things that don't mean a lot to them, whether it's running an event for a hobby, or for a professional organization, or whatever, and clearly this is a Big Thing for LW personally.
BUUUUUUUUUUT... not only was high school not "the best" time for everyone, etc., but put simply, in fifty freaking years and especially in any community with any level of "transience" (people moving out for work/school and not coming back, etc.) it makes a lot of sense that around half the class simply has lives in which their high school experience is just less important than other connections they've formed in, let's just repeat for emphasis, fifty freaking years. That is a long time and a lot of friendships and professional contacts and life experiences in between, and it is not even weird to me to think that someone who did have a truly great time in high school but now lives far enough from high-school-location to have it require planning to come back just happens to have other friends or commitments that are more important than their high school reunion. (If anything, IMO, the people who did have fun in high school and were outgoing and had good friends, but left town afterwards for school/work just because that's how their lives went, are exactly those less likely to come, because they will have been outgoing and have made good friends in their adult lives and those social circles will take precedence--- because: fifty freaking years.)
And in particular given that you're looking at a bunch of people whose average age is likely to be somewhere around 68, the non-responders are probably prioritizing retiree/workplace reunions or professional-association gatherings (or hobby-based gatherings or other-interest-based gatherings) or family gatherings when they plan their vacations etc., because those are the ones that are likely to have involved more of their lives--- as in, the bulk of the (once more, with feeling!) last fifty freaking years. The fact that almost half of LW's class is sufficiently attached to their high school in some way to have responded is pretty epic to my mind.
And, also, as someone else pointed out: FACEBOOK. And social media/social networking generally. There are probably plenty of people who are keeping up with each other that way and find it more than adequate, and that being the case, why not spend your travel moneys on a vacation somewhere awesome (or a get-together of people you've known and worked/played/worshiped/etc. with for more than the four years of high school, like decades' worth of adult life, see above on "other interests") instead of your high school?
TL;DR: it sounds like LW does identity strongly with their high school and high school experience (as witness, being treasurer for the reunion) and that is great but it might help them to get a little perspective on its importance to others. They've got a fantastic response rate, the people who did respond are clearly the ones who cared, and they'll have a great time together doing their thing. The others are clearly just not interested for whatever reason, and that needs to be fine too.
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Gee, I feel so confident that "a simply no" will "work well" with this person, rather than just not engaging at all.
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warning: rant
Maybe they haven't replied for the reasons I haven't. I have never replied to any invitations to high school reunions because I know I couldn't stop at a single "no". I bet most of my old classmates are as racist, snobbish, and obnoxious as they used to be, and I have less than no desire to see the (multiple) ones who sexually assaulted me.
Also, fuck you. I bet you were the kind of asshole who made so many of us hate high school.
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FFS. I wish I could think this is a troll, but my living grandmother would be that self-centered and stupid, even though she herself is living in a retirement community. Augh.
There's another reason for me to be glad I was homeschooled. I don't have to worry about ANY class reunion bullshit. Boo-yah!