Bob Bruner writes:
Two years ago, Lupi Robinson and I agreed to co-chair the 50th reunion of our class. We wanted to give something back to classmates who had made our time at Yale so rich, to honor our shared experience, and to discover who we all are today. The value of such ends seems obvious to me. Yet the most frequent question I have heard begs why one should attend a reunion.
The questioners may have attended few, if any, of the previous reunions, lost touch with classmates, don’t think any of their friends are coming, live at great distances from New Haven, recoil from big lawn parties, and/or have moved on from an identification with Yale ‘71. Their demurrals resonated even with me over the years. And yet our 50th warrants an exception: of all the reunions, this is the big one, traditionally the best-attended, and for many of us, the last one. Whether or not you’ve attended a previous reunion, this is the one you should make an extra effort to attend.
Aside from the novelty of the 50th, three stronger three reasons call us to the reunion.
Make friends. That is, make, renew, and rediscover friends. Research finds that regular engagement with friends is an attribute of people who age well.[1] Friends and acquaintances enrich us. The pandemic has taught us all the costs of social distance. Rather than the CDC’s six-foot prescription, I mean the loss of the kind of connectivity with others that enriches our lives in things great and small. As we are already finding, our peers are passing away. Sustaining a circle of friendship takes constant care, much like tending a garden. The problem of making new friends is finding some common frame of reference on which to build a bond. Shared experience is one of the best foundations for new friendship. And the transformation during college years is a durable shared experience. In the hundreds of hours of calls, Zooms, and meetings for the reunion, I’ve met incredibly interesting classmates, whom I never really knew back then. These are people I want to get to know better. A great reunion is first and foremost about making friends. The lawn parties, dinners, and hoopla pale in comparison to the conversations you will have, the one-to-one chats and small-group gatherings where you connect with people and insights in ways that will move you.
Make meaning. Erik Erikson, a developmental psychologist at Yale during our time there, argued that the central task of people in old age is to look back, judge what has or has not been accomplished, and draw fulfillment or acceptance about the life so lived.[2] I think a reunion can help with that task—not mainly in reminiscing about college days, but in connecting those days with what followed. We all have changed since graduation. What role did the college experience play in that growth? The Greek philosopher, Heraclitus, said that you can’t step into the same river twice: no one at age 71 is the same person he or she was at 21. How have we changed? The gift of a reunion is to illuminate some insights.
Make a society. Surveys document the American declines in social trust, in the acceptance of norms, and in the extension of respect to one another.[3] These declines are associated with declines in participation in purely civic and social organizations, such as bridge groups, singing groups, fraternal and religious organizations, and charities[4]—to the list I would add alumni gatherings. Such organizations build trust and social capital, as Robert Putnam described In Bowling Alone.[5] The decline in social trust and social capital has two bad consequences. The first is a weaker sense of well-being. Strong social capital appears to have greater effect on a sense of personal well-being than great wealth or good health.[6] Second, at the level of communities and nations, weaker social capital can impair effective market exchange and the mobilization of resources necessary to produce public goods[7] such as clean environment, justice, and defense. To attend the class reunion is to take a step in building social capital and strengthening the social fabric.
By now, you have received email and snail-mail announcements about our 50th reunion. The Covid pandemic has restructured—but not thwarted—our intentions. To “attend” reunion entails both (a) joining virtual gatherings on May 1, 2, 8, and 9, 2021, and (b) coming to our in-person reunion at Yale in late spring 2022 (dates to be announced).
Join us at the Yale ‘71 reunion. Make friends. Make meaning. And make a society.
Robert F. Bruner
Endnotes
[1] The famous study of Harvard graduates cites the avoidance of social isolation in addition to not smoking, avoiding alcoholism, and sustaining healthy weight, regular exercise, and stable marriage, among others. See George Vaillant, Aging Well: Surprising Guideposts to a Happier Life from the Landmark Study of Adult Development.
[2] See Erik Erikson, Childhood and Society.
[3] See https://www.aei.org/politics-and-public-opinion/does-america-have-a-trust-problem/.
[4] “The Space Between: Renewing the American Tradition of Civil Society,” United States Congress, Joint Economic Committee, Dec. 18, 2019 https://www.jec.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/republicans/analysis?ID=78A35E07-4C86-44A2-8480-BE0DB8CB104E
[5] Putnam, Robert D., Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community, New York: Norton, page 183.
[6] Helliwell, J. F., Aknin, L. B., Shiplett, H., Huang, H., & Wang, S. (2018). Social capital and prosocial behavior as sources of well-being. In E. Diener, S. Oishi, & L. Tay (Eds.), Handbook of well-being. Salt Lake City, UT: DEF Publishers. DOI:nobascholar.com.
[7] Durlauf, Steven N., and Marcel Fafchamps, (2004) “Social Capital,” Working Paper 10485, Cambridge, MA: National Bureau of Economic Research, https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w10485/w10485.pdf.