2024 Reunion FAQ (frequently asked questions)

You have questions? We have answers!

Your ETHS Class of 1974 Reunion Association Planning Committee is hard at work organizing reunion events, evaluating caterers, selling tickets, managing our finances, helping us contribute to our class gift, and of course communicating with you to answer and anticipate your questions. Check back here when you have a question, because we may have already answered it.

If not, or you'd just like to comment, please click here or send an email to reunion@eths1974.com with your question. We'll do our best to quickly reply (usually within 24 hours), and post the question and answer anonymously here as well.

FAQ topics

FAQs

Question: How does the Reunion Association communicate with classmates?
Our mission is to maximize reunion attendance and help make great memories, and to do that, we must be able to reach every classmate.

Our web site and emails are our only official information source. Why? Because many of us are not Facebook users, but everyone can receive our email messages (which are far less frequent that our posts here) and visit our web site.

Although we have a private Facebook group, we have no affiliation with classmates.com, linkedin.com, or any other social media sites you may encounter.

In our Facebook group, you'll see birthdays, approved classmate posts, and links to updates that are on the web site. If you’re following us there, we’re delighted, but you’ll need to visit the web site to see the weekend schedule, buy tickets, read our FAQ, donate to our class gift, and use many other useful functions too numerous to list here.

To view most pages on the web site, you must be logged in. This protects our details from being seen by anyone but our classmates. Of course, your personal contact information is confidential, even to other classmates. If you’ve logged in before, your userid is your email address. If you’ve forgotten your password, you can reset it right there.

If you’ve never logged in to our web site, you can join right now by clicking on the Join this site link on every page of our web site, and finding your name in the list of classmates. And if you need a little help with getting connected, assistance from our all-volunteer committee is just an email away.

Many classmates who have never attended a reunion, or haven’t attended in years, have already bought tickets to this year’s 50th Anniversary Reunion Gala Main Event. Curious? You can see who’s coming by clicking on the Who’s coming? link on the home page on the web site.
Question: Why is the Main Event being held in Glenview instead of Evanston?

The date and venue for our reunion Main Event are perhaps the most important and careful recommendations made by your reunion planning committee. Our recommendations were made after thoughtful discussions that were informed by responses to our surveys, as well as practical factors. The date and venue recommendations were approved by our classmates during our 2023 and 2024 annual meetings, respectively. Of course, our annual meetings are open to all classmates, and the minutes are posted as announcements on the home page of our web site.

After the vote in favor of the recommended date at our annual meeting in 2023, your planning committee members visited a number of venues in Evanston and elsewhere during the summer and fall of 2023. We expanded our search to venues beyond those in Evanston because few of them could handle our expected number of attendees.

Keeping the ticket cost low was one of our key objectives. Traditional hotel venues have become very expensive, and those we considered were well beyond our price range. Other venues weren't large enough or offered few of the amenities we sought such as ample free parking, ADA compliant bathrooms, wide hallways and no stairs, etc. Others had limited food options. And we had to rule out the Robert Crown Center in Evanston because by its own policy, we could not get a reservation guarantee there until six months before the event itself. Finally, returning to the Evanston Golf Club in Skokie (site of 45th reunion in 2019) was ruled out due to feedback by some of our classmates.

We recommended Glenview's Park Center after careful consideration. It checked the boxes for many of the important considerations mentioned above and for this reason it was chosen. Our survey and email asking for volunteers to suggest venues and help with site visits, had no responses.

There are other events planned for the weekend, including the Downtown Evanston pub crawl on Friday and the highly desired school tour on Saturday; both in Evanston. We're sure they'll be wonderful. We hope you’ll attend!
Question: What are the goals of the Class of 1974 50th Reunion Class Gift campaign? How may I participate?
The goals of the Gift campaign are to celebrate our 50th reunion and the 100th anniversary of the ETHS campus, and to support the school’s initiative to create and upgrade its educational facilities including the new Arts and Innovation wing, which will include a new theater space, classrooms, and galleries, and a new learning center called Alumni Hall.

Our Class of 1974 Reunion Association is working with the ETHS Foundation – the fundraising arm of the school – to help fund those investments for the benefit of current and future ETHS students. Wouldn’t it be nice for our class to be remembered this way?

Donating is easy! Visit the dedicated site managed by the ETHS Foundation at https://www.supporteths.org/class-of-1974-50th-reunion-class-gift/ to make your tax-deductible contribution. Your donation will be matched dollar for dollar, thanks to the Emerald Gate Charitable Trust and three generous anonymous classmates, up to $100,000. If you donate before the end of June, you will appear on the FY24 Donor Honor Roll at the ETHS Foundation site next fall (unless you prefer to be anonymous).

On September 14, we’ll present the class gift during the ETHS school tour, and we’ll also report the results during the reunion Main Event in Glenview that evening. Your gift of any size will give us more to celebrate.
Question: What is the process for our classmates that may need financial assistance to afford attending the reunion?

Please visit the Financial Assistance page on this web site. We'll only be able to provide assistance for ticket cost, not for travel, and assistance will be limited by donations received. We'll focus on soliciting confidential applications for assistance, as well as promoting confidential donations from classmates with the means to do so.
Question: What is the dress code for the gala Main Event?

We don't have, nor have we ever had a dress code. We encourage you to dress comfortably so you can make the most of reconnecting, rekindling and celebrating the milestone of our 50th reunion with your classmates.

This great photo by our classmate Jane Liechty from our 45th reunion in 2019 is the header on our private Facebook group page, and may offer useful guidance.