NDAA CLOSES COMMUNICATION CHANNELS WITH ALUMNI

From: Karen Putt
To: ALUMNI-CLASS-SEC@lists.alumni.nd.edu
Sent: Friday, March 16, 2007 6:53 AM
Subject: Class Secretary Update

Greetings from campus! We have 3 items that we would like to share with class secretaries, and we ask that you share this information with your other class officers!

Alumni Senate 2007
Alumni Senate 2007 is May 3 - 5. Attendees of this year's Alumni Senate will be the first to see an overview of the new version of Irish Online! The weekend is also in conjunction with the campaign kick-off, and all senators have been invited to take part in the activities. Details for the weekend can be found at http://alumni.nd.edu/ and registration is now open. Senators must make their own hotel reservations this year, and accommodation information can be found at http://alumni.nd.edu/clubs/senate07reg.html

pray.nd.edu
Kathy Sullivan, Senior Director of Spirituality and Service, has asked for your assistance in spreading the word about the new Pray at ND website. Visit http://pray.nd.edu/ and experience the sacred places on campus through a music video that changes weekly. Start your day with a prayer written by a Holy Cross priest; read the Gospel of the day and discover ways to live that Gospel at work and home. Let us light our Alumni green candle for you, your family and friends. Check out the site. We think you will want to share it with your classmates, your parish and, of course, all your relatives!

Communications from Sycamore Project
Recently you may have received an email from William Dempsey ’52 of the Sycamore Project. Apparently, the Sycamore Project sent an email to many club and class officers asking you to forward a statement from their “steering committee” to club and class members.

Several club officers have contacted the Alumni Association to find out if the Sycamore Project is affiliated with Notre Dame or the Alumni Association. Many have also asked whether the email should be distributed broadly to club membership. The Sycamore Project is not affiliated with the University or the Association.

Further, representatives of the Sycamore Project did not contact the University or the Alumni Association prior to contacting club and class officers. We became aware of their efforts and the contents of their email when several club presidents forwarded it to us accompanied by a request for clarification.

The Alumni Association does not customarily attempt to govern communications from club and class officers to constituent groups. However, we do believe that you serve those constituents best when you focus on communicating news and activities that are directly related to your group. If we open our Club and Class communication network up broadly to special interest groups, we run a tangible risk of inundating our alumni with unwanted and unsought information.

We also believe that forwarding information on polarizing topics – no matter how important a part of dialogue about ND – could suggest a level of endorsement that would not be appropriate in your capacity as a leader of an official Notre Dame group.

These types of communication may also contain content that is closer to rumor than it is to fact or news. We acknowledge that as our dedicated volunteer leaders you are all very busy. And we do not expect you to dedicate your time in an attempt to determine the factual basis for communications that do not originate from the Alumni Association. Simply put, if a communication originates from the NDAA, you can be assured that we stand behind the content.

Finally, some club officers also inquired how the Sycamore Project obtained their email address. Please know that the Sycamore Project did not work with the Association to gain access to email addresses; nor did they obtain approval from us to distribute the email. To the best of our knowledge, representatives of this group used email addresses that are available on the NDAA club and class websites.

If you have any questions regarding this matter, please contact Chris Bellairs at 574.631.2788 or bellairs.1@nd.edu