News of the College Novemberwinter2006

An Even Hundred

A committee of Reed alumni, faculty, staff, and students has been formed to discuss ways to mark the college’s centennial. It expects to report to President Colin Diver in April.

“While the centennial observance is likely to come to a climax in five years at the 100-year anniversary of the start of classes, there are a number of other mileposts to consider,” says vice president for college relations and committee chair Hugh Porter. “The hundredth anniversary of our incorporation is June 27, 2008, and the first of Reed’s centennial classes, the class of 2011, arrives on campus a year from this August. So it is not as if we have all that much time to do this.”

In his charge, Diver asked committee members to “think broadly and creatively.” Noting that the college has settled on one centennial project, a published oral history, and is also likely to link fundraising activity to the centennial, Diver framed seven issues for consideration:

  1. what an observance of Reed’s centennial should “seek to accomplish”;
  2. the celebration’s time frame;
  3. whether there should be “a theme or group of themes”;
  4. which of Reed’s “ongoing or periodic events and programs” could be part of the centennial observance;
  5. what new or different ideas, “including wild and whacky” ones, might make a centennial “worthy of Reed”;
  6. whether the observance should include one or more celebrations;
  7. what “lasting product or monument” might be left behind.

The committee is comprised of Towny Angell, director of facilities services; Jennifer Bates, director of affiliates and events planning; Ernest Bonyhadi ’48, trustee emeritus; Virginia Hancock ’62, professor of music; Edward Hershey, director of public affairs; Kristin Holmberg, director of student activities; Juliet Hougland ’08, student senator; Roger Porter, professor of English and humanities; Kathy Rose, executive assistant to the president; Ottomar Rudolf, professor of German, emeritus; John Sheehy ’82, member of the alumni board; Gay Walker ’69, special collections librarian; and Bradford Wright ’61, chair of the alumni board’s Reed Heritage and Centennial Planning Committee.

telegram image

On July 28, 1910, William T. Foster sent this telegram from Hyannis, Massachusetts, to Thomas Lamb Eliot in Portland, agreeing to become Reed’s first president.