What happens when systems design engineering alumni from the class of ’91 get together for a few drinks at their 25th reunion weekend?
Besides the usual trip down memory lane over beers, someone came up with the idea to redecorate the fourth-year lounge in Engineering 5. Included in the redecorating, led by Chris Pratley, Christine Hepburn and Philip Willow, was an impulsive purchase of almost $2,000 worth of furniture for students none of the alumni group had met.
Here’s how Pratley tells the story:
“Well, like a lot of things we did back in the day, it was a spur of the moment thing. A big group of us – maybe 25 – were getting rowdy after the alumni dinner and some impromptu boat-racing (as plumbers do). We decided to head back to the systems fourth-year lounge in E5 around 11 p.m. to see if we could, you know, ‘spruce it up’,” writes Pratley in an email from his office at Microsoft in Richmond, WA, where he is corporate vice president.
“As we were arranging all the furniture into a pyramid and writing some friendly graffiti on the whiteboards, we realized the place could really use some more permanent mementos. It started with a simple idea – a toaster, which made sense to us since our 1991 class name was TOAST. But then it sort of snowballed and we thought we could do more to make the lounge feel comfortable as a hang-out place.
We made a list of ideas and then people just handed cash to Christine (all good things happen because of Christine). Afterwards I told Christine I would work on pulling together some stuff and actually getting the items ordered – sofas and a fridge, in addition to the custom toaster that burns the Vitruvian Man into every slice.”
Strong, long-lasting friendships
The bond between the classmates is unusually strong and long lasting, especially so with Pratley, Hepburn and Willow.
“Even after all these years, we tend to be of one mind in all that we do. Pitching in and making stuff happen is automatic,” says Pratley.
He stays in touch regularly with nearly half of his class and smaller groups get together on a regular basis, even though they’re spread out geographically.
“My best friends are all from my engineering class.”
The fourth-year lounge in Engineering 5 is a huge improvement over the basement hallway and beat-up lounge Pratley and his classmates made do with in late ’80s and early ’90s.
“The old lounge had an ancient pair of sofas — they were definitely not a matched pair — and a busted old foosball machine,” he recalls. “The lounge was a centre of our fourth- year student life so it could have been much improved if the sofas didn’t have springs popping out! In fact, we did notice the current lounge has a newish foosball table. The students told us they had pooled resources to buy it themselves, which is more than we had managed. That spirit is part of what made us feel we could go further and help them out.”
And helping out is what the Systems Design Engineering Class of ’91 did this past year. Now the fourth-year program students, grateful for the unexpected alumni support, are thoroughly enjoying their freshly outfitted lounge.
