WMGALA Homecoming 2006 Closing Remarks
WMGALA Homecoming 2006 Closing Remarks
Wayne Curtis
Concluding Text
Mark Twain once wrote "Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines, sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover."
I think that tonight we’ve seen that is exactly what William and Mary GALA has done for the last two decades. And although anniversaries are wonderful times to look back and take stock, they are also reminders that we must take care for the future and change with the times.
Several years ago, a very early member of GALA decided to come to Homecoming and reconnect with the group. He was a little disappointed that the number of members attending that year wasn’t as large as he had remembered, and he posed a question to me, “Is GALA still relevant?”
I thought it was worth exploring. The following spring, the Board of Directors had a weekend retreat where we evaluated what we were doing, what worked and what wasn’t working, and actively tried to chart our priorities for the future, to make sure that GALA remained relevant for both students and alumni. That retreat spawned a lot of creative thought and energy which propelled us to make some significant changes in the organization.
We re-wrote our bylaws to better reflect the way we were operating. We revised our membership categories for the first time in well over a decade, and created two new categories of membership: Friends and Corporate Members. In fact, I have to give credit to our first corporate member, Live For Today Travel, who brought that wonderful Mark Twain quotation to my attention.
The timing of this re-evaluation process turned out to be most fortunate. Within a few months of our weekend retreat, things at the College started going through major changes. William and Mary not only gained a wonderful new President and an openly gay member of the Board of Visitors, but also we witnessed the changing of the guard at the Alumni Association. Suddenly, the future of our relationship with both institutions was open to new possibilities, and we’re actively exploring the possibilities.
With the Cornish Fund nearing its $100,000 goal, we also set ourselves upon a course of increased campus support and involvement, creating a formal application and review procedure so that we could provide monetary grants to support projects that will have a direct impact on the lives of the students at William and Mary. In your program folder, you’ll find descriptions of the projects we’ve funded to date.
The answer to the question is YES. GALA IS still relevant. We will be working with our friends on campus to make sure that we STAY relevant as long as there are issues that need our involvement. But as a result of our re-evaluation, we also realize there is a danger here, too. Many organizations become irrelevant because as they make friends and find success, they become more cautious. They become less willing to “sail away from the safe harbor,” as Twain put it. Their friends counsel them not to push too hard and to have patience, because some people might be offended and make life more difficult.
If we’ve learned anything from the events of the last twenty years, its that those who fight change will always be out there, pushing back at us. We cannot afford to let them determine our priorities or change our action plan.
No minority group in the history of this nation ever achieved equal protection under the law by waiting patiently for it to be handed to them. They pushed, they fought, they persuaded, they persevered: and when they achieved their goals they could credit their own efforts as being the primary engine of their progress, not the condescending benevolence of their former persecutors.
GALA will remain a vital part of this community as long as we remember our history. Twenty years from tonight I plan to gather here with many of you to look back at another two decades of accomplishment and wonderful friendships, getting ever closer to the day when full equality and acceptance greets every person born different in our society.
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