January 2022 Dispatch
Happy New Year from your Alumni Council!
The council had our first meeting of the year earlier this month and have begun our work plan for the year. Many of you have responded to the survey we opened last month–Thank you! In order to reach as much of the community as possible, we will keep the survey open until the end of the month. Now that we have federal nonprofit status, we are ready to begin the next phase of our work, and your input will help inform our priorities for both the long and short term. If you have not yet responded, you can find the survey here. We’d love to hear from you! Please be sure to fill out the survey before it closes on January 31, 2022.
Another bit of news is a change in the council. Our dear friend and council colleague Gretchen Holbrook Gerzina ‘72 has resigned from the council due to other obligations. The council would like to formally thank Gretchen for her contributions up to this point. Gretchen’s experience and connections have helped us a great deal over the past year, as we worked to build the foundations of our organization. Her wit, pragmatism, insight, and warmth will be very much missed in our monthly meetings. Per our interim processes and procedures, our process with a vacancy is to offer the role to the person on the slate who received the next highest number of votes. That person is Amy Domrad Tudor ‘01 and we are happy to report that she has accepted the role. We are excited to have Amy join us to serve out the remainder of Gretchen’s term, which concludes in December of 2022. (Stay tuned in the next year for more information about upcoming elections!)
There has been a good deal of buzz around the launch of a new website devoted to Potash Hill. The website is home to information about the property on Potash Hill (formerly the Marlboro College campus) now owned by the Marlboro Music School and Festival. We share with Marlboro Music a kindred connection to the campus, and, like many of you we’ve heard from, are so pleased that it is now under their apt stewardship. We continue to converse with representatives of that organization and expect to engage with them further when they are ready. We wish them well and are supportive of the care and effort they are taking to ensure the health and sustainability of our beloved campus. We know so many of our members are especially attached to the place, and we encourage those of you with ideas about how to use the land and buildings when the Festival is not in residence to contact them directly here.
To quell any confusion or rumors, the new Potash Hill organization created by the Marlboro Music School and Festival has nothing to do with our intention to revive Potash Hill Magazine. The council is in planning mode to consider how we might support this revival and we will share more on that as we have news. We feel confident that a number of projects can and will take their name from the Hill without undue confusion or competition.
We have a lot on our plates right now and are eager to connect. Please stay tuned for more news from the Archives Committee, and developing plans about a virtual gathering with members of the council.