An About Face on Facebook

It wasn’t quite the bright white light that struck that tax collector Saul on the road to Damascus. Nor am I ready to change my name to Paul. But consider myself a convert to the Church of Facebook.

Now that may merit a response along the lines of, “Welcome to the 20th century,” as we lurch towards the third decade of the 21st century, but bear with me for a bit.

While social media is all the rage these days with businesses creating “social enterprises” and leveraging “social data,” I just wasn’t connecting with Facebook. I was one of the first people I know to have a LinkedIn account and with this blog post it is obvious that I use that social platform. Despite Twitter’s sagging stock price and its demise of being the “it” app, I’m a “140 character-aholic.” But Facebook? I’ve never been in like. That changed May 21st.

That day is not the day that I joined the social media giant and like St. Paul, all was revealed to me. No, quite the contrary. I have been a user of Facebook for about 10 years under the aegis of my company. The reason I joined was twofold: 1) a colleague told me it was a fantastic way to generate new business (not really) and 2) a decade ago it was the rage with kids. Like most teens and pre-teens, my children were “on” – and remain so. But when they were younger I wanted to monitor their activity and make sure there was no cyber-bullying in play as my town has had its share of sad, social media inspired incidents.

Plus, I work at CNBC where the network covers Facebook like ESPN covers LeBron James. Daily I hear about what a great investment it is and how it is changing the face of media. If that woman putting the Wookie mask from “Star Wars” is revolutionizing media and is a threat to major video companies, I need to buy a tiki bar in the U.S. Virgin Islands.

Nor has it just been at work that I have had to listen to the cheerleading for Mark Zuckerberg and his creation. In graduate school, my very smart Media Economics professor, Spencer Grimes has extolled the virtue of Facebook in several lectures. As a prelude to that praise, Prof. Grimes labeled the internet “the most important invention of all time.” And of course without the internet there would be no Facebook. But all-time greatest invention? Ever?

Now this is one of those great barroom debates. Sort of like who was better the 1927 Yankees or the 1998 Yankees?  There is no correct answer. Actually a few years ago The Atlantic, put together a list of the "50 greatest breakthroughs since the wheel"  and the Internet finished ninth -- behind the likes of the printing press, electricity and penicillin.  The internet did finish ahead of the automobile airplanes and personal computers.

Brian Donlon making the "pitch "for the future of the College of White Plains of Pace University at the May 21st reunion with (below) my fellow "long lost" alums

However, after May 21st,  I am now officially a subscriber to the internet being the greatest invention and to Prof. Grimes’ position that Facebook has the most powerful (not to mention profitable) business model in history. Hands down. No argument.

 So what was my Saul to Paul moment on the 21st of May in 2016?

A reunion. But not just any reunion.

It was for a small liberal arts school, the College of White Plains. It is an institution with, shall we say, with a complicated history. It began in 1924 as an all-female institution, Good Counsel College, resting on several rolling acres in White Plains, New York. In the 1970s it, like so many one gender colleges, decided to offer co-educational programs either because of prevailing social change or because of the declining popularity in single sex institutions which led to declining enrollment and revenues.

So in 1972, Good Counsel went away and the College of White Plains was born. Swimming against the changing economics of higher education with an enrollment in the neighborhood of 1,000 students, it was unlikely CWP would make it into the next decade. Enter Pace University.

In 1975 the college made a “consolidation agreement” with the school, where CWP would become a “college” of the university and Pace would build a law school on the then wide-open spaces of the White Plains campus. The move unquestionably saved the College of White Plains which became known as The College of White Plains of Pace University.

Naturally there was some resistance to the “big school” practices the university would inject into the small college world of CWP. It made for great sparring. Protests and college newspaper editorials about “preserving our identity” were not uncommon.

Changes in administrations and the recession of the 1990s, once again put CWP in peril. The university leaders who made the agreement to continue CWP as a college within the university – not uncommon in large institutions – were gone. With another Pace undergraduate campus located in Pleasantville, NY – a 25-minute car ride away – and with the original Pace campus in downtown Manhattan, the economic tide was pushing ferociously against CWP.

In 1993, Pace University ended the life of the College of White Plains of Pace University. Some departments such as the journalism program -- which had produced a long line of successful professional journalists and media executives -- were moved to the Pleasantville campus. Programs, such as business, were folded into Pace’s well-regarded Lubin School of Business.

Worse than the shuttering of the undergraduate life that thousands had come to know and love, was the loss of identity. The CWP academic records were merged into Pace-speak. I was listed as attending the Dyson College of Arts and Science.

The what? Dyson? Didn’t he make vacuum cleaners?

Alumni events were held at campuses that no one from CWP attended. Thousands of graduates felt less like alumni and more like post-graduate nomads.

In the meantime, “real life” carried on. Classmates married and had families. Others moved. Even more “moved on.”

Long held connections were lost. The sole touchpoint with the college experience for many became the seemingly constant solicitations to make a financial contribution to a university that many felt had ripped out the hearts of their college life.

Years went by and the disappointed turned into the disheartened who turned into the disenfranchised.

Two years ago, one more attempt was made to see if Pace could understand that the College of White Plains was different, and certainly unique, within the university. The school elicited a passion that would rival Notre Dame. This despite the fact that CWP had no football program and its major sports offering was a ragtag group of playground pick-up artists who for some reason could fill the school’s small “athletic building” for the lowest level of college basketball action possible.  

The student body would often pack the cafeteria for a Thursday night "mixer" to drink a red concoction called "bash" out of plastic garbage cans. The booze filled beverage was only part of the appeal of the event. The camaraderie and sharing of stories from the inevitable hangover laden aftermath proved to be the real draw. It was a campus where people looked after one another.  There were no outcasts. No elites. No caste system between seniors and freshmen. There was just CWP.      

But after more than two decades since an undergrad set foot on the campus who at Pace would remember? Worse, who would care? 

In what could only be classified as a minor miracle, Pace University had one person who had an ear and a heart for the White Plains graduates. Michele Camardella, the assistant director of alumni relations listened. At one meeting where she heard former students tell their tales she said, “I don’t know what I would do if I felt like my college didn’t exist anymore.” 

Now, you may be wondering just what does this have to do with Facebook? 

Imagine trying to arrange a reunion for a school that has a database filled with long forgotten phone numbers or is populated with discarded America Online email addresses. Imagine trying to overcome an institutional memory that has seen parts of it discarded and other parts absorbed into sprawling entity.  

What at first seemed like a wonderful idea – host a reunion on campus in the college’s most beloved building Preston Hall celebrating the 40th anniversary of the “consolidation” – suddenly felt like a Herculean task. Initial estimates by the alumni staff anticipated a turnout of 50 to 60 from an alumni population that exceeded tens of thousands.

The one intangible people underestimated? That CWP spirit – and Facebook!

While a small group of alums were “googling” names they could remember and tapping into the email addresses Pace had on file, there was a second group operating separately trying to gather one-time residents of Dannat Hall – one of three buildings which housed students on campus at one time or another. This was being conducted on Facebook.

As soon as Marybeth LaMendella -- the Facebook organizer -- received the “official” email letter from the University informing her about the planned reunion she sprang into action. The Dannat Hall Facebook Group with 70 or so members was converted into the CWP Pace Reunion Group.

In a matter of a few weeks the number of members doubled – and then in what seemed like days -- doubled again. Today some 320 members have enlisted into the Facebook group and it continues to grow weekly.

Facebook proved to be a beacon in the dark night for so many CWP ships lost at sea. It helped spread the word of the reunion event. Those 60 people that were supposed  to attend? The number turned out to be 170 and dozens of others were unable to attend because of longstanding family commitments – such as the college graduations of their own children.

Disney World bills itself as “the happiest place on earth.” Well, from 2 to 6 pm ET, on Saturday May 21st at 78 North Broadway, White Plains, NY, inside the venerable Tudor Room of Preston Hall, that title fell to Pace University and its old College of White Plains campus. The happiness came from moments with friends who were separated by the valleys of time. The happiness came from rejoining the connections severed by the twisting, turning journeys of life. The happiness came from the long overdue recognition of an extraordinary institution.

While undergraduate classes may have ended on that campus in 1994, the essence of the school still very much exists. Many of the buildings remain standing – now part of the University’s law school. More importantly the essence of the college thrives. Anyone in attendance on May 21 saw that. It lives in all of the graduates. Much of who we are and what we are today is because of what transpired at that quirky little school that lived inside the large, polished university.

What life the school takes moving forward is up to those who returned to Preston Hall, as wells as all the members of the Facebook group and the alums we have yet to connect with again. But make no mistake about it. The College of White Plains of Pace University is  alive -- just visit its Facebook page if you have any doubts.