Summer is Alumni Season
Column by Thomas Barker, President of Huntington University Alumni Association

Summer is an opportune time to rejoice, renew and best of all, to reconnect with family, friends and your alma mater, the very place and space where you spent your formative years. From your old dorm room to past classrooms and from the pub to the social rings, special events such as secondary or post-secondary reunions are indeed refreshing for it provides all with a unique opportunity to become reacquainted with the very community from which we came.

From the moment you enrol as a student, from the beginning of your stay on our residence, from the time you started working on campus or other, you became part of a growing community and remain so today. In celebrating 50 wonderful years, the alumni association at Huntington University, a founding and federated campus community at Laurentian, plays an even more crucial role as we move towards continuing our long-standing tradition of excellence. Regardless of your alma mater, as members of your very own alumni association, you are indeed considered valued colleagues, who, by continued membership and participation help spread the mission, vision, values and priorities of the institution you attended.

As a Huntington alumnus, I am always quite eager to share my own stories of my experience at Huntington and in turn, I enjoy hearing about the education and life experience gained by others who attended other institutions over the years. Results and reactions from such stories are quite similar. The past holds many stories of sleepless studious nights while the present reveals compelling testimonies that celebrate ongoing membership of campus communities locally, nationally and beyond. Regardless of the title or status of one’s diploma, one fact that all alumni can celebrate this season is that collectively, we have and continue to play an important role in every institution’s success. In a larger sense, the experience that you received whether in class, while studying, in residence, on committees, or in dialogue with others have profoundly shaped the development of your own character and how it is that you engage with your community.

These are simply a few thoughts that special events, like alumni reunions taking place through the summer present us with the opportunity to reflect upon. In turn, thoughts such as these compel us to recognize and thank the institution without which none of this would be possible.

Certainly, your presence at such reunions and other special events hosted by your very own alumni association is a testimony to this point. As alumni, we are indeed custodians of our alma mater’s past and stewards of its future and it is because of this role that we join together to reflect on our past and discuss visions of hope and aspirations for the future. As President of the Alumni Association at Huntington University, I encourage you all to think about how you have contributed and shared in that tradition, as well as how you can continue to do so as we celebrate yet another season of alumni reunions.

Thomas Barker is the President of the Alumni Association at Huntington University and alumnus who currently resides in Kirkland Lake.