Recently in Alumni News

A view of the Hong Kong skyline. (Photo: iStockPhoto)

Former On the Campus columnist David Walter ’11, a Princeton-in-Asia fellow at the Wall Street Journal in Hong Kong, sent this dispatch to PAW after attending an alumni gathering last week.

HONG KONG — The Feb. 1 event was billed as a celebration of the Aspire campaign, a chance for Shirley Tilghman and trustees to thank Asia alums for contributing to Princeton’s most recent endowment drive.

But in light of Tilghman’s September decision to step down as president, the reception at Hong Kong’s JW Marriott Hotel couldn’t help but feel like the first stop in a season-long farewell tour.

“I’m doing nothing else all spring, practically,” Tilghman has told the Daily Princetonian, speaking of the Aspire parties planned for Hong Kong, London, and seven U.S. cities.

It’s easy to see why Tilghman made the trek out East. Hong Kong is Asia’s financial hub, and Asia — if you haven’t heard — is the future. Even today, contributions from the Asia-Pacific region made up $49 million of Aspire’s $1.88 billion fundraising total.

In typical Hong Kong fashion, when alums on Friday weren’t reminiscing about the good old days or pulling Tilghman aside to express thanks, they were talking shop:

“Exit price is not the same as entry price…”

“What happens in China is what everyone wants to know…”

“And, eventually, I went into finance…”

Money is global nowadays, and so too are universities. In addition to boosting Princeton’s capabilities in neuroscience and environmental studies through Aspire, Tilghman also increased the school’s engagement with Asia through programs like the Bridge Year, which sends students abroad for service projects in four locations, including one in India and one in China.

In four years, the classes of '66 and '16 will celebrate together at Reunions. Last week, they introduced themselves over pizza. (Photos: Courtesy Marguerite Vera '79)

Members of the Class of 1966 might want to know that they have just adopted 1,364 grandchildren, thanks to several members of their class who made an early effort to foster a relationship with the Class of 2016.

This year’s freshmen met with their “grandparents” — members of the class that will have its 50th reunion when the freshmen graduate — at a pizza party during intersession Jan. 30. The event began with opening remarks from Class of ’66 President Charles Plohn, after which the two classes shared 60 pizzas in Campus Club.

“Everyone loved meeting the grandparent class,” class council member Gwen Lee ’16 said. She added that many of the freshmen also appreciated the opportunity to meet other members of their own class who were on campus during the week after fall-term exams.

According to Plohn, little seems to have been done to encourage the grandparent-grandchild class relationship in the last few years. “[The pizza party] is certainly the first event of this nature that any grandparent class has done for any grandchild class,” he said. “We decided ‘let’s make something of this.’”

Lee and other ’16 classmates hope to continue the connection. A tentative plan is underway to meet in smaller groups with local members of their grandparent class, class council member Molly Stoneman ’16 said.

For the last seven years, 30 Rock’s Jack Donaghy has entertained TV fans with his incisive one-liners, including occasional references to his time as an undergraduate at Princeton. We’ve learned, for instance, that he recorded every word in the English language for a linguistics project and played Maria in an all-male production of West Side Story. He shrugged off an infestation of bedbugs on the grounds that such things don’t happen to Princeton grads. When experiencing great success in his career, he yearned for a trip to Reunions, in hopes of showing up the first lady.

All of this was fun but fictional — or so we believed. But earlier this week, while flipping through the pages of the Class of ’81’s Nassau Herald, PAW spotted this surprising entry:

Click to enlarge. (Baldwin photo: Courtesy Seth Poppel/Yearbook Library)

Will Donaghy’s post-30 Rock life include a visit to Reunions? Or maybe an interview for a certain job in Nassau Hall? As the TV announcers used to say, stay tuned.

Below, Donaghy mentions receiving the Amory Blaine Handsomeness Scholarship in a video message to his unborn child. Video courtesy NBC.