Not so much in the sense of “would you go to your college / high school reunion if they had one”, considering that thread has already been done fairly recently, and is actually a pretty fascinating read.
But - with the advent of social media, primarily Facebook I suppose - do you even hear about “class reunions” anymore? I graduated high school in the early 90’s, and went back for my 10- and 20-year reunions, but never heard that a 25-year was held or that a 30-year is even in the works.
Maybe it’s assumed that everybody is “up in everybody else’s business on Facebook” already, so maybe what’s the point in arranging flights or driving six hours to drink beer / play golf / tell old stories in person? I dunno.
Do “kids these days” have no use for them? Speaking for me personally, I never hear them advertised (on the radio? in the newspaper?) here where I live. What about those of you with kids who are around that 27 - 28 years-old age-range - do they have their 10-year-reunion already circled on their calendar, or not so much?
One of my older relatives goes to the class reunion basically every single year; they had their 50th a couple of years back, but he went to the 47th and 48th and 49th and 51st too. (Small town in farm country)
As for me, my 25th was apparently held recently, but they didn’t invite me (and I wouldn’t have gone if they had), having lost touch with all of them, so I’m not the best person to ask.
Some of my former classmates hold a get together every year. But, now that you mention it, I haven’t heard of a formal class reunion. My 30 year reunion would have been in 2016 and I heard nothing of it if one happened. Just as well, I wouldn’t have gone anyway.
My old college is always organising events, alumni weekends with academic talks, anniversary lunches and receptions, and so on, all with a view to extracting donations, of course. My old secondary school, less so, but then, I never joined the follow-on organisation. On social media, I do occasionally stumble across people I was friendly with in those days, and it’s mildly interesting to see how they turned out, but I’ve no desire to go into the old pals’ act.
We tried to have one for our 20th in 1997 and didn’t have enough people interested to get the venue we’d planned. We had it at a local bar instead and like 15 people showed up. I think pretty much everyone felt that whoever they wanted to stay in touch with, they were in touch with online.
There is a Facebook group for my high school class. I got added to it a few months prior to the 35th reunion. They were discussing exactly when and where it would be. I looked around for a bit and left the group so I’m not sure if they ever had the reunion but I imagine that they did.
My high school has reunions, which I’d go to if I weren’t on the other side of the country. My 50th is coming up.
And my college sure as hell has reunions - big ones - that are tied to graduation. The 50 year class gets to go on the stage. Reunions are every five years, and there are parties and events. And, most importantly to the college, they get tens of millions of bucks in alumni donations tied to the reunion.
I’ve been to two college reunions, and I’m definitely going to my 50th.
I realized that after decades of never responding to letters or phone calls, my high school finally dropped me from their mailing list. No more constant donation solicitations, alumni newsletters, and invitations to such events as the athletic hall of fame or golf tournament.
But I just checked their web site and it looks like this year they are having 5, 10, 20, 25, 30, 40, 50, and 60 year reunions. The reunions are an important part of their fund-raising programs, so they keep on chugging along.
My 50th high school reunion was back in September. I didn’t go. I heard 100 of a class of 400 showed up. But a month ago I attended an unofficial lunch gathering of 20 or so local alumni.
Definitely still a thing for my high school, despite the fact that my high school doesn’t actually exist anymore.
Three Catholic high schools in the Green Bay area (two all-boys, one all-girls) were merged into one co-ed school in the early '90s, and all of us alumni from the predecessor schools are now considered to be alumni of the new school. The new school has a quarterly alumni news magazine, which contains reunion info, and every issue has details on at least a dozen reunions for the various past classes.
That said, the classes from the predecessor schools tend to hold separate reunions. My class only had 75 graduates (it wasn’t a big school), and of them, I think that 8 or 9 are now deceased. We had a 25-year reunion in 2008, which was very well-attended (probably half of our class was there, plus a lot of the girls from the all-girls school with whom we had done things in high school). The 30-year reunion in 2013 was a little smaller, but we still had maybe 25 guys show. There should have been a 35-year reunion last year, but the guy who organized the last two was burned out on it, I think, and nothing got organized.
The last few from my year were actually combined with several classes before and after mine. Even then, the turnout was very small, at least at the one I attended (41 years.)
No surprise that the few people I would have liked to have seen weren’t there. I’ll never bother again. It’s not worth the long drive.
In addition to 5x class reunions, my High School also has an “all alumni rally” dinner. My brother was grand poobah (I forget the exact title) one year so I got to eat for free.
My class reunion was the same night so I missed it (Though there was an informal gathering the previous night)
I’m in touch with the classmates I care about and I mostly hung out with folks who graduated a year later.
They’re still VERY big around here. Almost every weekend in July, you’ll find the popular venues downtown booked up with some class reunion or another. I’ve been to a couple of mine; they were fun, but not THAT fun. I skipped the last one, but it was fun to run into ex-classmates around town for a few days before/after.
My wife’s school has an active Alumnae Association that organizes such things. She attended her 20th and 25th.
My school had less than a dozen guys in the graduating class, and never had any extracurricular activities, you could pretty much forget about an organized reunion effort. We’re all friends and keep in touch, albeit somewhat loosely, so I guess no one feels a need. When one of us marries off a child, all of us see one another at the wedding.
