A Socratic exchange between members of the classes of 2013 and 1963 will occur on Friday, May 24 during Reunion and Commencement Weekend at the Eclectic Society house on High Street.

William Needham ’63 and Harvey Bagg ’63 originally contacted Rachel Unger ’14 to express interest in organizing the event. Needham, an Eclectic Society alumnus, had known Unger due to his former position as alumni chair of the society. He also approached David Shor ’13 and asked him to become involved because of his active role within the University community as the senior class president.

“The idea begins with Eclectic and that Eclectic had a Socratic literary society [when I was here],” Needham said. “We’ve attended some other reunions, and often what happens is that there’s a congratulatory handshake, but there’s really nothing that passes between the alumni and the students. Here we have a situation where we graduated 50 years ago, and at the same time they’re commencing their first 50 years after Wesleyan.”

The alumni are particularly interested in creating an intimate setting in which members of the classes can partake in stimulating conversations and challenge each other to think differently about their lives.

“They have the desire to make this event a Socratic inquiry into what we see us doing in the world to make it a better place and vice versa—something that is very challenging about it,” Unger said. “They want it to be a very stimulating, exciting, challenging, and intellectual atmosphere because that’s what they remember Wesleyan being, and I [admire] that they want to revive it.”

Alumni and members of the senior class who have expressed interest in participating will be paired off for discussion. The organizers will form groups that they think will be able to produce meaningful and edifying conversation.

“I think that this is an opportunity to share wisdom—heaven knows that we’re not wise—and to just to share experiences, viewpoints, things that we took away from Wesleyan that have stayed with us, and things we took away from Wesleyan that we immediately forgot,” Bagg said. “It’s exploratory, and it’s a fascinating thing when you can get challenged, and coming from the same wellspring of background…it’s a learning experience for all of us.”

The discussion will be open-ended in topic and will allow participants to fully engage with one another.

“They’re really open to Wesleyan students impressing them and showing them what we’ve learned and what kind of educational experience it is now, and I think it’s going to be really cool to talk to people who are coming from a completely different time who are completely open,” Shor said. “I hope that we are as open as they are to what they have to say because I think there will be a lot of gaps between the two groups both ethically and what we think is right to do with our lives.”

The event will give the class of 2013 insight into what life is like following graduation.

“My ideas of what I think their class was like, based off of what I’ve heard Wesleyan was like in the past, was that it was really different, and I think Wesleyan has gotten a lot more progressive in a lot of ways,” Shor said. “I’m really looking forward to getting a chance to hear from [the class of ’63] about what they think about the ‘Wesleyan of new’ and also getting the chance to challenge them on what a lot of [our generation] find to be the right way to go about things.”

Depending on the amount of success this year’s exchange has, Bagg, Needham, Unger, and Shor hope that there will be enough enthusiasm to make this type of event an ongoing tradition between University alumni and the graduating class.

“I think that the past 50 years have had the common denominator of accelerating change, and the 50 years this year’s class faces is an era where change accelerates faster,” Bagg explained. “We want to give people the opportunity to share views from the onset with views from 50 years out—how the Wesleyan experience has affected all of our lives for the past 50 years. There’s no question, if you ask any Wesleyan alumnus what was one of their defining moments of their lives, they’d say Wesleyan.”