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Message: [QUOTE="Carl S. Ey, post: 1353389, member: 6325"] There are quite a few great posts on this thread about the future of the Alumni. One of the posts that caught my eye particularly was how the alumni group in any fashion will help UCONN move forward in terms of respect from other universities/conferences and hopefully land us in a big name conference. I don't know the answer to that other than to say the manner in which the UCONN Alumni Association was "taken down" does not reflect well on our alma mater. The university president didn't offer any other options but to defund the alumni, remove our ability to use our logos/branding and as the UCAA Board of Directors moved toward a combined organization, the transition ideas continued to get rejected SUCH AS allowing alumni to elect a certain portion of the committee that advises the Foundation on alumni activities. Listen, the right answer in the future may be to combine these missions, but as it stands today (read the transition plan), if you vote YES, these things happen: 1) You lose your elected alumni representation. Sure if the Foundation wants to do something that alums don't like, we can all write letters, send emails, make phone calls but a YES vote to dissolution removes the alumni voice in any official capacity. 2) We don't know what the future of the Alumni Center is - when the university decides the building is no longer suitable for an alumni center, it gets demolished, re-purposed etc. and there is no guarantee where our alumni operations will be - none; could become a cubicle in the student union. 3) The $6M in the coiffures gets sent over a with purpose BUT NOT LIMITED to that purpose so we don't really know how that will be spent. 4)there still is no plan from the Foundation how this will be better - Newton has done a super job with the Foundation but now he is inheriting a new mission with a fairly new executive director and the staff that has been there for many years and the UCONN BoD (volunteers) is writing the transition plan; the Foundation is not; collaboration is happening but the BoD is providing the ideas and there is little direction on how the Foundation will make this all better or how chapters will benefit; today (a week after the ballots were sent), a website update ([URL]http://uconnalumni.com/vote[/URL]) has one line on how this will affect chapters, "We plan to increase events, volunteer opportunities, and benefits for ALL alumni who want to stay connected to UConn!" The work on this dissolution option started in March and today alums get this one-liner. Really? Finally, remember a NOT vote doesn't mean "NO" forever; it could in fact send a message to UCONN to get this uber-important transition right and stop trying to ramrod this exceptionally poor effort down the alumni's throat. [/QUOTE]

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