Preparing for change

LAST weekend over 1,000 Cambridge graduates returned to the city for the University's Alumni Weekend. They were welcomed at a reception in the beautiful setting of the University's Fitzwilliam Museum. They then had a rich choice of lectures and other events to enjoy, including a lecture by Professor Stephen Hawking.

History and music, astronomy and medicine, the internet and discussion of genetically modified foods - these and many other topics were on the menu organised by the University. Alongside it, individual colleges arranged events for their members.

The emphasis of the programme was on the present and the future - on current scholarship and today's scientific developments - in what is a highly successful university. The 1,000 visitors, by contrast, were of course representative of the past, in the sense that their time at the University was five, 10, 20, or more years ago.

Having been involved in the organisation of the Alumni Weekend, I took the opportunity during the following week of attending an open day offered by the University's Estate Management and Building Service. It was designed to give people - University staff and people from the local business and professional community - an idea of the extensive developments that are currently taking place. A huge building programme is under way. The open day, like the Alumni Weekend, placed the emphasis on present and future, on planned new buildings, and the care and maintenance of existing ones, to support the University's academic purpose.

Why did so many people attend the Alumni Weekend? The reason, I believe, is that they feel a sense of belonging to the institution. Each is a member - not a former member, but a member - of the University, and of a college, and that concept of lifelong membership undoubtedly brings with it a sense of responsibility as well as a sense of belonging. The responsibility is to understand, and support (not necessarily financially), the institution greatly changed as of course it is - a university which does not change to meet changing needs dies - just as one tries to understand and support one's family.

Is this a romantically idealised view? I believe it is not, even though many people may argue that in an intensely realistic world such emphasis on belonging is eye-wash. My feelings about it are coloured by the fact that, as this month begins, I reach the age at which my Fellowship of my college, which I joined 32 years ago, is transformed into an emeritus Fellowship. I am reminded of the story of a distinguished newspaper editor who was replaced by the proprietor - and as a sop to his pride made editor emeritus. He asked the proprietor what exactly emeritus meant. "The 'e' means you are no longer editor; the 'meritus' means that you do not deserve to be," came the brutal reply.

That, I am glad to say, is not how it seems to me. It is appropriate that the new generation moves forward, in any organisation, and the older generation takes a back seat. But the process need not mean rejection. Emeritus status is a recognition of the continuing membership which is a feature of this university, and it must surely be to the advantage of the institution as well as to the individual that support for what the institution is doing accompanies that feeling of permanence.

After a turbulent conference, the Prime Minister and other leaders of the British Labour Party, the party of present Government, must have wished for a stronger sense of membership among their followers. They were faced with criticism, and indeed revolt, over a number of policy issues. The complaint of the critics was essentially that the party has not been following some of the policies which they, the critics, see as the bedrock on which it is built. Mr. Blair and his colleagues, for their part, are urging the party to look forward, not back.

Whatever the rights and wrongs of particular policies, the general point that a party, like any other living organisation, must be prepared to embrace change if it is to survive, is surely true, just as it is true of the University of Cambridge. The risk is that if change leaves supporters behind, the organisation can quickly fall into serious difficulty. Binding them in by making their membership real, and making them realise that their contribution is important, is not a mere friendly courtesy. It is a pretty good survival strategy - which is why Cambridge puts a lot of effort into its Alumni Weekend.

BILL KIRKMAN

The writer is an Emeritus Fellow of Wolfson College, Cambridge.

E-mail him at wpk1000@cam.ac.uk

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