A Brief History of
the GSAA
The
GSAA was begun in 1987 in reaction to budget cuts in education that were
threatening the School’s existence. During some tough economic times,
the legislature though to trim the budget by reducing or eliminating
Governor’s School. Fortunately, this happened to coincide with the 25th
year of GS. JoAnne North and her soon-to-be husband Milt Goetz went
through 25 years worth of old data and collected addresses for the
entireity of the GS alumni at that time. (His was a huge task, and
literally a labor of love...on Milt’s part.) They then invited all the
alumni they could find to this 25th anniversary of GS celebration. During
this event, JoAnne, Jim Bray, and several of the faculty encouraged the
alumni to form an organization and work to save GS. Under our first
President, Betsy Hackney, the GSAA was able to keep GS off the chopping
block, but not without some loss. While GS was not cancelled, its budget
was seriously cut.
As
Student Activities Director of GS West, JoAnne continued to work with (or
in many cases, for) the GSAA, holding annual Winter Reunions to raise
money for the Schools’ social activities, since this item was not part
of the new, reduced budget. For a decade or more, the GSAA’s primary
source of income was the proceeds from the Winter Reunions and alumni
membership funds.
During
this time, the GSAA created the Governor’s School Foundation, a
non-profit organization whose goal is to raise funds to support the
academic programs at GS. It lobbied the legislature in hopes to return GS
to its pre-1988 funding levels. And it began to look at new ways of
keeping in contact with the alumni. JoAnne and Milt maintained the
database for another ten years.
Originally,
the officers of the GSAA were elected to single one-year terms. (Or to be
more specific, at the end of a year, the Vice-President would become
President and the President would become Past President.) However, after
eight years of this during which many dedicated officers were pushed
aside, and a couple of Vice-Presidents not accepting the President’s
position after the year was over, w changed the bylaws to allow members to
hold offices as long as they were interested and could get re-elected.
This solved a large problem that we were having with continuity: no longer
were people moved out of office at about the time they began to understand
what was going on.
In
1996, Milt Goetz handed over control of the database to the GSAA officers.
It was maintained by Jim Hart for three years, and now resides on the GSAA
Web Site in the form of the Alumni Database.
In
1998, with the nation’s love of lawsuits a growing trend, the GSAA
decided that it could no longer afford the risk of the Winter Reunions,
and that program was cancelled in favor of the new Summer Symposium
format, taken as a suggestion from GS alumnus and long-time GSW orchestra
conductor Randy Foy.
Also
in 1998, the GSAA secured the internet domain name ncgsalumni.org and, through
the efforts of Sam Sanders (1971W) and Mike Pilato (1992E) produced the
current web site and on-line database.
In 2008, we began testing of Yahoo!
Discussion Groups to fulfill the purpose of a guestbook and bulletin
board.
Today,
we continue to work toward our goal of supporting GS and the alumni with
funding and a forum.
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HOW TO JOIN Joining the GSAA is easy, just print out this form and follow the instructions on it.
AM I ALREADY A MEMBER?
Can't remember if you joined or not? Unfortunately, in a
number of cases, neither can we. Some of the records are missing, some records never got
updated. But here are a few simple guidelines that you can use to verify your status. We
ask that everyone check their status by sending E-mail to Rodney Allen .
1. If you attended GS prior to 1987 and have never attended a
reunion, chances are good that you are not a member.
2. If you attended GS prior to 1987 and have attended a
reunion, chances are better then even that you are a member. Let us know when you attended
the reunion, and we will check our records and let you know your status.
3. If you attended GS in and year from 1987 to 1997 AND you
attended your reunion weekend the winter after the session, you are a member. Again,
send us E-mail so that we can update your records if they are wrong.
4. If you attended GS between 1987 and 1997 and did not
attend your winter reunion, you may still be a member. Check your records with us.
5. If you attended GS in 1998 or beyond, our records are the
only way of knowing. Records for 1998 and beyond are accurate and are kept updated .
HOW MUCH IS MEMBERSHIP?
Membership is $20.00. Currently, this is a one-time fee to
cover lifetime membership.
WHAT DO I GET?
In the past, we have had all sorts of answers to this
question. A bi-annual newsletter. A break on events. Something. But when you consider
$20.00 for a lifetime membership, it really doesn't take long to spend that. Even if all
you got was a bi-annual newsletter, we would run out of money to send them in about ten
years, and would have done nothing else in the meantime. So ask not what the GSAA can do
for you. Ask what you can do for the Governor's School. Our purpose is to support
the schools. Primarily, GSAA funds have gone to the Schools themselves, to support
non-academic events for the students and to purchase items for the Schools that they
cannot afford on the lean budget they get from the Department of Public Instruction and
the Legislature. So, you may never get anything. But you will get invited to all events
that the GSAA holds, and you will know that your membership fee went to help provide
things for the current GS students that you enjoyed when you attended.
So there are some perks. So I ask you to please join, and
help provide a worthwhile and FUN experience for the classes that will follow you.
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