A committee of alumni has been meeting monthly since April to plan RECONNECT, the first-ever AHANA reunion. Led by University Trustee Keith Francis ’76, the group hopes the event, scheduled for July 17–19, 2009, will be the largest gathering of AHANA alumni in the history of Boston College. The term AHANA (an acronym for African-American, Hispanic, Asian, and Native American) originated at Boston College in 1979. Coined by Alfred Feliciano ’81 and Valerie Lewis ’79, it was subsequently adopted at schools ranging from the University of Wisconsin to Eastern Mennonite University.

According to Francis, who is an intelligence analyst at the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives in Washington, D.C., the concept behind the reunion is, as its name suggests, to reacquaint AHANA alumni with the University and vice versa, and to plan the formation of AHANA alumni associations within alumni chapters. While the committee takes some of its inspiration from the Black Alumni Reunion of 1999—which drew some 175 returnees for an investment workshop, evening gala, and gospel brunch and was sponsored by the now-dormant Black Alumni Club (many of whose members sit on the RECONNECT committee)—Francis says that RECONNECT is “unprecedented” in its plan to bring 1,000 AHANA alumni, family, and friends to the Heights next summer.

Organizers who attended the July meeting of the RECONNECT planning committee included Eva Boyce ’77; Donald Garnett ’77; Dan Bunch ’79, MSW’81 (director of the University’s Learning to Learn program); Dawn McNair ’82, M.Ed.’83; Gerry Lake ’84, MBA’88; Stalin Colinet ’96; Juan Concepcion ’96, JD’03, MBA’03; Eva Maynard ’97; Wynndell Bishop ’00; and Steven Burns, MBA’09.

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