WMGALA Homecoming 2006 Closing Remarks

Wayne Curtis

Concluding Text

Mark Twain once wrote "Twenty years from now

you will be more disappointed by the things
you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So
throw off the bowlines, sail away from the safe
harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails.
Explore. Dream. Discover."
I think that tonight we’ve seen that is
exactly what William and Mary GALA has done
for the last two decades. And although
anniversaries are wonderful times to look back
and take stock, they are also reminders that we
must take care for the future and change with
the times.
Several years ago, a very early member of
GALA decided to come to Homecoming and
reconnect with the group. He was a little
disappointed that the number of members
attending that year wasn’t as large as he had
remembered, and he posed a question to me,
“Is GALA still relevant?”
I thought it was worth exploring. The
following spring, the Board of Directors had a
weekend retreat where we evaluated what we
were doing, what worked and what wasn’t
working, and actively tried to chart our
priorities for the future, to make sure that
GALA remained relevant for both students and
alumni. That retreat spawned a lot of creative
thought and energy which propelled us to make
some significant changes in the organization.
We re-wrote our bylaws to better reflect the
way we were operating. We revised our
membership categories for the first time in
well over a decade, and created two new
categories of membership: Friends and
Corporate Members. In fact, I have to give
credit to our first corporate member, Live For
Today Travel, who brought that wonderful Mark
Twain quotation to my attention.
The timing of this re-evaluation process
turned out to be most fortunate. Within a few
months of our weekend retreat, things at the
College started going through major changes.
William and Mary not only gained a wonderful
new President and an openly gay member of
the Board of Visitors, but also we witnessed
the changing of the guard at the Alumni
Association. Suddenly, the future of our
relationship with both institutions was open to
new possibilities, and we’re actively exploring
the possibilities.
With the Cornish Fund nearing its $100,000
goal, we also set ourselves upon a course of
increased campus support and involvement,
creating a formal application and review
procedure so that we could provide monetary
grants to support projects that will have a
direct impact on the lives of the students at
William and Mary. In your program folder, you’ll
find descriptions of the projects we’ve funded
to date.
The answer to the question is YES. GALA IS
still relevant. We will be working with our
friends on campus to make sure that we STAY
relevant as long as there are issues that need
our involvement. But as a result of our re-
evaluation, we also realize there is a danger
here, too. Many organizations become
irrelevant because as they make friends and
find success, they become more cautious. They
become less willing to “sail away from the safe
harbor,” as Twain put it. Their friends counsel
them not to push too hard and to have
patience, because some people might be
offended and make life more difficult.
 If we’ve learned anything from the events of
the last twenty years, its that those who fight
change will always be out there, pushing back
at us. We cannot afford to let them determine
our priorities or change our action plan.
No minority group in the history of this
nation ever achieved equal protection under
the law by waiting patiently for it to be handed
to them. They pushed, they fought, they
persuaded, they persevered: and when they
achieved their goals they could credit their
own efforts as being the primary engine of
their progress, not the condescending
benevolence of their former persecutors.
GALA will remain a vital part of this
community as long as we remember our
history. Twenty years from tonight I plan to
gather here with many of you to look back at
another two decades of accomplishment and
wonderful friendships, getting ever closer to
the day when full equality and acceptance
greets every person born different in our
society.