It's easier to stop counting after you reach a certain age, 56, 75, 87...but when you reach 175, you've got to celebrate.

This year's Founders Day dinner (and its accompanying week of festivities) marked that milestone for Emory--its 175th birthday.

Administrators, faculty, students (including me), and friends gathered Monday night, January 31, for a fabulous dinner to celebrate good ol' Emory.

And it wouldn't be a celebration without the musical voices of Emory's all-male, a capella group, No Strings Attached. They entertained attendees with their versions of "Georgia on My Mind" and "Got To Get You Into My Life."

President Emeritus James T. Laney 94H delivered the keynote address, referencing Robert W. Woodruff 1912C and his endless contributions to Emory--and his ironic "aversion to praise and publicity. He told an anecdote about the first time he met Woodruff. The latter gave him a card with the following adage on it: "There is no limit to what a man can do or how far he can go if he doesn’t mind who gets the credit."

The following year when they met again, Woodruff gave him another card with the same inscription. The crowd laughed as Laney said he knew that must've meant something. I think Woodruff would've wanted us to remember what he said, not that he said it. If you love Emory as much as I do, you know that you don't need a title or a fancy position on campus and you don't need to be quoted in The Wheel. All you need to know is that whatever it is that you do for the good of the Emory community, no matter how many people notice, is enough.

You can hear the rest of President Laney's address here.


Now, although the birthday cake didn't have 175 candles, I bet there were more than 175 lit up during the closing ceremony. After President Jim Wagner's toast to Emory, all the guests lit our candles and sang the alma mater, led by No Strings Attached. After we "hailed the gold and blue," we all blew out the candles in proper birthday fashion.

To see photos from the night, visit the EAA's photo page.

Founders Week continues tonight with a lecture at Oxford College by Mark Auslander from Brandeis University. And Thursday marks the beginning of a landmark three-day conference on slavery's role on higher education sponsored by Emory's Transforming Community Project (TCP). You can find more information on upcoming Founders Week's events here.

And with that, I'd like to wish a happy birthday to Emory. Here's to another 175 years.

--Lindsey Bomnin 12C, EAA communications intern

Being at the lecture that Andy Urban delivered at Oxford College for Founders Week was a bit of a Janus experience, seeing like that two-headed Roman god into the past while also looking into the future.

Urban’s lecture, Romance and Race in the Jim Crow South: Yun Ch’i-ho and the Personal Politics of Christian Reform, centered on Yun Ch’i-Ho 1893Ox, a Korean national who was Emory’s first international student and alumnus. Urban, who is a postdoctoral research fellow with Emory’s Transforming Community Project, read Yun’s diary, which he kept while he was at Emory on what is now the Oxford campus, as well as other archival material during his research.

Yun was the first Asian most students and local residents had ever encountered, and his experience in an era of Jim Crow laws was a complicated mixture of acceptance and discrimination. Contrasting with those realities were the many international students in the audience, representing Emory’s rich diversity in the 21st century, and capping it all was the presence of Hena Chun 08Ox 10C (above, left, with Urban), an Emory senior and New Jersey native who is Yun’s great-great granddaughter.

Chun said that Emory was the only university in the South that she considered, partly of course because of the connection to her forebear, but also because she knew it had such a diverse student population. It’s astounding to consider how far we’ve come, but exciting to consider the breadth of achievement that Emory’s wide embrace continues to foster.

Urban’s lecture will be available for viewing/listening shortly through iTunes U.

-- Cathy Wooten, director of communications, Oxford College

Saturday morning, September 26, I experienced a half century of Greek life for women at Emory, when I attended the “Fifty Years of Sorority Life” panel presentation during Emory Homecoming Weekend 2009. I was impressed with the open and candid panel presentation and the lively discussion on topics ranging from life for Emory’s first women students, to the impact of civil rights, campus protests, race relations on campus, and female empowerment.

Jody Usher 86G, 89PhD, co-director of the Transforming Community Project, moderated the panel, which included a wide array of alumnae, each of whom offered a distinct perspective on her time here.

Jaye Johnson Smith 59C came to Emory in 1955. Back then, clubs were being organized, largely by transfer students who were given scholarships by their national chapters of Greek organizations, to get “colonies” established at Emory. At the beginning of the school year, virtually all the women were eager to attend rush parties and join these clubs—they were among the few social outlets for women at the time. Anyone who wanted to join one of the clubs was able to do so. Four years later, in 1959, Emory would hold a mass chartering ceremony for the nine new Greek sororities. Greek life for women had officially arrived.

Julianne Daffin 60C talked about starting college at Sullins College in Virginia where the strict curfews, bed checks, and women-only environment soon stifled her and encouraged her transfer to Emory. A bit of a non-conformist, Daffin chaffed at the semi-conformity of Greek life, but after her graduation, she eventually returned to Emory as a staff member and went on to become Emory’s last Dean of Women. She retired just a few years ago.

Bonnie Rubenstein Wunsch 83B attended Emory in the 1980’s, during a time she describes as a “complacent period.” An engaged and active member of Alpha Epsilon Phi, a Jewish sorority, Wunsch talked about how far-thinking Emory had been when 50 years ago, it ensured that a Jewish sorority was among its first chartered groups. She also discussed the empowering experience Greek life provided her as she found both social and leadership development opportunities through her participation in Greek life. Wensch went on to continue her involvement with Greek life following graduation and today is the executive director of the AEPhi Sorority, nationally.

Melissa Bowman 02C was exposed to sorority life before she came to Emory, largely through the example of a church youth director who was a member of Delta Sigma Theta, one of two black sororities on campus at Emory. The first black sororities came to Emory in 1979, following the integration of the University in the wake of the 1962 case, successfully argued by Ben Johnson Jr. 36C 40L 05H, dean of the School of Law, and Henry Bowden 32C 34L 59H, chairman of the Board of Trustees, before the Georgia Supreme Court, that allowed the private schools in the State of Georgia to desegregate and still keep their state funding.

Today, the Emory campus is 29 percent Greek, and Greek students have a fairly significant impact on campus. After 50 years on campus, sorority life at Emory continues to challenge students to lead, to gain in self respect, and to set demanding personal and academic standards.

Not a bad record of achievement.

-- Martha Fagan, senior director, alumni relations, EAA