Celebrating our colors On the eve of downsizing the distribution of this magazine, OSU Alumni Association Executive Director Dwayne Foley discusses why alumni should become members of OSUAA

Dwayne Foley

Editor’s note: Beginning with our next issue, in early December, only dues-paying members of the OSU Alumni Association (OSUAA) will receive the Stater — this as a benefit of their paid membership.
With this in mind, we asked Dwayne Foley, CEO and president of the OSU Foundation and OSUAA executive director, to share some of his insights on the importance of alumni associations, along with some of his personal thoughts on why non-members should join the OSU Alumni Association.

By Dwayne Foley, ’67

What does it mean to be an Oregon Stater? Basically, it means you are one of approximately 250,000 men and women who have a connection to Oregon State and, hopefully, it means you currently have some active connection to OSU. More than half of you graduated with one or more degrees; others undoubtedly share certain, important experiences not necessarily ending in graduation. There are also those of you who never actually attended the university but are fans of OSU athletics, research or academics.

Powerful forces bind many alumni to OSU and to their former classmates and degree-granting colleges. Here at the OSU Alumni Association, we always dedicate a portion of our energies to the task of seeking an understanding of these forces, which are strong in some while others feel little or no connection at all. As we review the results of our events and programs, we constantly are searching for ways to make programming more valuable to our family of members. To be sure, timeless wisdom suggests the importance of gaining a deeper understanding of something before it can be improved.

In addition to these strong individual ties with OSU, it is also clear there is a strong sense of community among groups of alumni. These connections manifest themselves in various combinations, including class year, living groups, student activities, the degree-granting college, a memorable professor or sometimes an experience, such as attending a historic lecture or athletic event.

Aggressive marketing research conducted by our staff over the past two years has given us a better understanding of these relationships. What is clear is that through a combination of both design and instinct, plus the high levels of loyalty OSU alumni have consistently exhibited for decades, most of the things we’re currently doing as an association are helping to foster these connections.

Reinforcing this sense of "community" is the challenge we face every day, and we do so by distributing, for example, luggage tags, car stickers and car flags, by conducting alumni gatherings such as picnics, tailgaters and travel abroad, and by publishing the alumni magazine you now hold in your hands. In short, we offer Oregon Staters opportunities to outwardly express their connections to OSU with a mix of activities and events designed to cater to a wide range of lifestyles, occupations and world views. The experience of walking through an international airport and having someone ask you if you’re an Oregon Stater (maybe because he or she saw a Beaver logo on your shirt or a Beaver luggage tag on your carry-on) evokes certain powerful emotions and provides just a little bit more "stickiness" to OSU.

From academic research, numerous examples can be found that provide insights into what it takes to form and maintain an alumni community. Probably the closest parallel involves people who form a sense of community around ownership of a certain product. Researchers refer to this as brand community. Studies have demonstrated, for example, that owners of Jeep vehicles, Apple computers, Harley Davidson motorcycles and other consumer products share a connection and loyalty to one another simply because they recognize that others share their taste in purchasing and, by extension, the same values and lifestyle.

By the same token, it seems to me that attending a university is a much more significant experience, made all the more powerful if a college degree is earned, than the mere purchase of consumer goods. This investment of several years of our lives, particularly since these are often our formative years, combines to suggest powerful forces are at play. If owning a certain brand of car forms a connection, then certainly the sharing with others of a university experience must have the potential of forming some extremely strong bonds. When we see our fellow Oregon Staters dressed head to tail in flaming orange, singing the Beaver Fight Song as one, a similar sense of "connectiveness" sweeps over us. Who can forget the fabulous experience of the 2001 Fiesta Bowl? All that orange, all that pride, the joy of experiencing a great New Year’s Day at a major bowl game after 28 straight losing seasons? It seems virtually unthinkable that anyone who made the trip to Arizona or watched the game on TV would not also feel a deeper sense of pride an connection with OSU.

The same holds true for non-athletic events, as in the case of a recent gathering where hundreds of OSU alumni packed a Portland theater for the opportunity to hear Oregon Stater Mike Rich explain what he experienced creatively as he wrote the screenplays for the motion pictures Finding Forester and The Rookie. It was truly extraordinary and unforgettable.

And so we have studied, observed, and listened and have tried, as your Alumni Association, to understand why this whole business of connecting is so powerful. Taking this one step beyond, we have also attempted to understand how we can genuinely offer even more of these experiences to you and other OSU alumni.

What we’ve learned about how healthy communities work has enabled us to improve the design and value of our Association’s programs to our alumni. Certainly the most powerful form of community results from on-campus experiences, and it is clear these experiences generate lifelong bonds to OSU. These run the gamut of human experience. While not even the most paternalistic approach can guarantee a good experience 100 percent of the time, those that are good are powerful. This has led us to believe, for example, that part of our Association’s focus must center on, principally through the activities of our OSUAA-sponsored Student Alumni Association, healthy, memorable experiences as part of a student’s on-campus years. In addition, the "landscape" of a person’s student years also may find an individual simultaneously enjoying this sense of community with multiple on- or off-campus groups. Here the complexities multiply because these feelings of community may be entirely separate, nested and reinforced by multiple connections.

Important versions of the sub-communities of OSU are formally structured alumni chapters, alumni networks and groups of alumni affiliated with living groups, student activities, particular academic disciplines or athletics. As much as anything we have mentioned, these groups also build upon our sense of overall OSU "connectiveness." One other feature is that once one has become embedded in academic work, the sense of community he or she feels is probably irreversible. This means a person cannot "un-graduate" himself or herself from OSU. This further differentiates an OSU alumnus from another category of community I described above as the "brand community."

And so, as we reformulate our plans for new alumni programs, all these factors are explicitly included in the design process.
We have also learned from the hundreds of Alumni Association events we have sponsored over the years. But what have we learned? Why are some events wildly successful, while others lack energy? Definitive answers still are not known. What we do know is that it is incumbent upon our Association to put together the best possible mix of events, programs and publications necessary to meet alumni needs. At the same time, these events must be conducted in a professional manner and designed to satisfy the expectations of alumni of differing generations, careers and lifestyles.

As I have tried to explain, a healthy alumni community has strong forces binding it together. Alumni associations help these forces stay healthy by assisting their members in the development of a strong sense of community and by nudging other community members, who may not be so committed, toward stronger ties. Community ties, we have learned, are reinforced by a relationship in which the individual and the community do things for each other in a sort of (unspoken) mutually accountable "moral contract." The strength of this contract will, in large part, determine how we react to problems affecting the group. Being part of a healthy community feels good, helps support our collective needs and is generally quite a valuable part of our lives.

All this, of course, is important to our understanding of the dynamics of a community such as the Oregon State University alumni group. So why is this important?

Part of the answer, to be sure, involves the legends, traditions and other symbols that act to reinforce the effect of community. These elements provide outlets for the outward expression of what it means to be an Oregon Stater.

But there are other powerful concepts that help define this dynamic. Much of this arises from the members’ understanding of who they are, what groups they belong to, how they exhibit their membership and, finally, from a sense of who is outside the membership of the group.

Simplistically, the elements of community center first on an inward sense of "we," that is, a personal understanding that you belong to a group. For an alumni family, this sense results from experiences that bond. Examples include the total university experience and such specific events as initiation rites, rites of passage and certain significant emotional experiences.

The second dimension of community involves the way we exhibit our community connectiveness to others. Such exhibitions manifest themselves in two ways: (1) how we display our affiliation to other members within the group and, (2) how we exhibit these connections to members of the public who are not members.

At OSU, such behavior might include the wearing of orange logo clothing or orange day-glow wigs or singing the Fight Song or Alma Mater. There are many examples. These actions all have a role in reinforcing the notion of community and represent some of the ways we exhibit our membership so that others might see who we are. Such symbols may also provide outlets for extreme exhibition. This is common at athletic events and other highly charged situations in which in-your-face behaviors such as wearing orange clothing "nose-to-toes" is perfect for the occasion. Outward expressions of our connections, however, also vary with time and circumstance. What’s OK in a football or basketball setting may be deemed outright weird in a so-called more "dignified" setting.

A third element of community is that in striving for a sense of "we," it is important to also have a sense of "they." This sets up a boundary that reinforces the notion of community by differentiating members from outsiders. Even to the casual observer, it becomes instantly clear that even a lukewarm Beaver is not a Duck!

In the final analysis, our sense of "Oregon Stateness" is a composite of all these things, built on powerful experiences we enjoyed during our student years and reinforced through our connections to OSU and other Oregon Staters. This is the essence of what the Oregon State University Alumni Association is all about and an important part of the value we strive to make available to you. OSU