Class of 1975

Welcome! This page will give you all the news you need to know about our upcoming 50th Reunion May 22—25, 2025. Here you’ll find out about upcoming events, whom to contact to get involved and where to send your updates for our class book. Keep coming back to check for updated news and tell us where you are. 

We want to see you back in Middletown in 2025! Why come back?

  • Reconnect with (old) friends, classmates, and professors
  • Remember the excitement and energy of our time
  • Try to figure out where the last 50 years went
  • Share our passion and rigor for continuing to make a difference 

It may seem far away but we want you to plan on attending your 50th Reunion of the Class of 1975! 

To locate a classmate or to volunteer, recruit, or participate in a program, email Amanda Broulik or 50threunion@wesleyan.edu

50th Reunion Class Book

This spring, prior to reunion weekend, a wonderful 50th Reunion Class Book will be sent to you. This special keepsake includes bios, remembrances, photos, reflections, and more. We want to hear from as many classmates as possible! Please submit your bio, photos, and updated contact information by October 1, 2024.

CONTRIBUTE TO YOUR CLASS BOOK

Upcoming Engagement Opportunities

  • Class Virtual Happy Hour - September 22, 2024
  • Homecoming + Family Weekend Reunion Planning Party - November 2, 2024
  • Class Virtual Happy Hour – February 27, 2025
  • All-Reunion Class Virtual Trivia – March 24, 2025

Check back for more details

 

Committee Members

Please join us and be part of the planning process.

  • David Bickford
  • Vin Broderick
  • Perry Cacace
  • Cliff Chanin
  • Barbara Coven
  • Karen Freedman
  • Arthur Gaither
  • Susan Gans
  • Paul Gionfriddo
  • Cathy Gorlin
  • Clif Grandy
  • Claire Gruppo
  • Steve Hoffman
  • June Jeffries
  • Risa Korn
  • Steve Levin
  • Steve McCarthy
  • Pat McQuillan
  • J.D. Moore
  • Joe Morningstar
  • Mark Nickerson
  • Katherine O'Brien
  • David Rosenblum
  • Mark Schonberger
  • Cindi Silverman
  • Brian Steinbach
  • Gary Steinel
  • Charles Stolper
  • Cynthia Ulman
  • Ellen Wayne
  • Bruce Weinraub

Your Contact Information

Update your info

Be sure to update your contact information so that your classmates can get in touch.

As you reflect on your past, please make a gift to support current and future Wesleyan students.

Make a Gift

Class Notes

Read Class Notes

Please send new notes to the Class Secretary:
Cynthia Ulman 

Staff Contacts

Lucy Diaz, MALS '05
Senior Associate Director of Special Events
(860) 685-2420

Mandy Broulik
Associate Director of Annual Giving/50th Reunion Liaison
(860) 685-4840
 
Kate Quigley Lynch ’82, MALS ’20, P’17, ’19
Associate Director of Gift Planning
(860) 685-5992

25th Reunion Essay (2000)

Well, here it is. Our 25th reunion and the Class of 1975 finally has a yearbook!!

Painstaking research reveals that we were the first class (but not the last) to have missed publishing the Olla Podrida. Was this a distinguishing feature of an apathetic class, or an appropriate reaction to the times? We’ll leave that judgment up to the reader to decide.

The years leading up to our matriculation at Wesleyan were filled with social, political, and cultural upheaval. The civil rights movement, the women’s movement, the Vietnam War, Kent State, Woodstock, the availability of the pill, the 18-year-old right to vote and drink, the assassinations of JFK, MLK, RFK and X seemed to happen all at once. Eighteen-year-olds in 1971 could vote, legally drink, easily gain access to drugs, wage war, have sex with minimal fear of pregnancy (or AIDS), and risk being killed for civil disobedience. This represented a sea change from the state of the world just ten years before our freshman year.

Wesleyan had changed enormously as well. It no longer was the bastion of Protestant, white, upper-class males. Blacks, Latinos, Jews, and women were now on campus in significant numbers. The curriculum was revamped. Campus unrest and strikes were chronicled in the national press. Drug usage “flowered.” Capital improvements on campus continued apace… a world-class arts center, a new science center, new hockey arena, Williams Street (and still no student center). The diversity university was born.

When we arrived on campus, it seemed as if the world and the campus needed a breather. A time to ponder and assimilate all the recent chaos, crises, and upheaval. Our political unrest abated when the draft was eliminated during our freshman year, even though the war raged until the time of graduation. A recession with high inflation, fueled by oil shortages led us to be more concerned about future employment. Like the college students of the 1950s, we became more insular, more focused on our education, and on making the transition from teenager to adult, all in the context of a recent social upheaval. Not quite hippies or preppies, not yet yuppies.

So… what can we say about our place in Wesleyan history? We had no yearbook, no winter term, no outdoor graduation on an eventually sunny day, no celebrity as a graduation speaker, no student center, no marching band—but who cares. By the time we graduated, diversity at Wesleyan was an accepted concept. Our class played no small role in ensuring that success. Perhaps, that is our legacy and one of which we should be proud.

Wesleyan’s namesake was a man of individuality, peace, good works, and service. He embodies the Wesleyan “ethos”; and, in our way, so do we.