The Words of the Davies Family
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The Words of the Davies Family |
Greetings, Alumni!
I hope that everyone is having a good summer. We have been having some exciting developments around Barrytown and UTS.
True Father appointed In Jin Nim head of the Board of Trustees. She has directed a scaled down UTS to move into NYC at 43rd street. The seminary will continue entirely out of 43rd street. The move is underway.
That left the Barrytown main buildings unoccupied and without funds to maintain them as well as the grounds. Unwilling to accept boarding Barrytown buildings, In Jin Nim appointed Mr. Namvon Van der Stok responsible to find ways to raise money for maintenance and development of the Barrytown property. UTS has retained Paul Stupple and Henry Christopher to work with him to care for the property, develop it, and foster community relations.
On July 27th, Mr. Van der Stok held a community meeting at Barrytown to explain his plans for development. He has a three prong approach. First, rent out approximately 40 rooms to Bard students. The dorm will be a Clean dorm, and possibly a special interest dorm with an inter-religious emphasis. Second, run a conference center, using the west half of the building and the Massena House. Third, host weddings, using especially the Massena house. With the money raised from those activities, he hopes to maintain, develop, and improve the property. He has many other ideas and is happy to receive suggestions.
STF is staying at Barrytown for at least two months, and possibly longer. In Jin Nim has ended the emphasis upon fundraising, moving instead toward preparing for college, service, witnessing, and finding their passion. Dr. Noda and I are offering a full SAT/ACT and College Advising program to them. Mike Mickler is presenting a college course on world peace and conflict resolution. There are those of us who believe this could provide an excellent opportunity to begin our undergraduate college at Barrytown in September 2010.
The World Peace Center is reactivated under the leadership of Marty Miller. The prospect of UN member nations using Barrytown to host conferences is viable.
Shortly after the 30th reunion for the class of 1979, the UTS Alumni Board asked me to serve as interim president of the UTS Alumni Association. I accepted with the understanding that my purpose is to
1) revise the UTS AA by-laws to establish the association as an independent organization;
2) hold elections for alumni officers; and
3) help create a UTS AA community website. Farley Jones and Jim Borer have agreed to help with revising the by-laws. I will post our suggested revised by-laws when ready for feedback, probably on a website that allows for comments.
I would like to acknowledge the efforts of a number of individuals in establishing the UTS AA. Guido Lombardi invested great effort in the early 1990s to found the UTSAA as an incorporated organization. Robin Graham and Gillian Corcoran labored to build on that foundation. Everything we will do from now is built upon their efforts.
Currently, I am focusing upon Marty Miller's first of five questions (who, what, where, when, how): Who are we. At first I thought that to be a simple question. We are graduates of UTS. Yet, while working on compiling a full list of UTS Alumni with Ute Delaney, UTS Registrar, I realized that that designation is unworkable. If we strictly follow that, some of our most illustrious alumni (including Lee Shapiro and one of the UTSAA board members) would not qualify. I find that unacceptable, so would rather opt for including as members of the alumni association anyone who has attended UTS.
Further, I realized that "Who" includes
1) Who we were
2) Who we are and
3)
Who we will be.
In creating our website, as well as restructuring our association, we need to take into account all three "who." Who we were is the easiest, I think. We were UTS students who attended UTS between 1975 to the present. We can organize by year. Who we are is more complicated. I became amazed at the diversity of our membership while working on the list. We are from many countries, we represent people in all walks of life, we speak many languages, we are all shades of faith and commitment, and we have alumni who are not Unificationist (in terms of membership). Who we will be is even more challenging. I believe that we are on the threshold of an era of new inclusiveness, of extending our seminary to everyone. That will have enormous implications for our view of our organization.
I will keep you posted on developments as they happen. I hope to have a interim community-building website up by the end of summer. This letter is going out mainly to the first three classes. I will resend it to the rest of the alumni on our ever growing list, slightly modified to bring them up to speed.
As always, happiness and peace,
Daniel Davies