Gloucester Alumni

by Jane Fosberry Enos,
CNC.com

Gloucester - Gloucester High School alumni have been receiving letters this week on school letterhead — with a Chesapeake, Va., return address.

The letters are from Harris Connect, a firm that is putting together a directory of GHS alumni, with the approval of Gloucester school officials.

The letter provides a phone number to call to verify personal information. It states there is a 10-day deadline to respond.

Once the information is compiled, the database will be given to the Gloucester Public Schools, and the information will be published in a directory.

The book is available for purchase by alumni for $99.94, plus tax. The school receives no money from the sale of the book. Alumni don’t have to purchase the book to have their information included.

People can opt out and not have their information published in the book.

David Marsh, a local businessman and advocate for the schools, said the directory would help the schools in the long run.

“The idea is to build an alumni association out of the data base, to get more support for the school — political support, monetary support, mentoring, whatever might come from an alumni association,” he said.

The directory provides contact information for the nonprofit organizations that help the schools, such as the Gloucester Education Fund and the Gloucester Fishermen Athletic Association.

He said many alumni associations and schools have similar directories.

Jonathan Pope, a former School Committee member, said the directory has been talked about for several years. “It will be a great service to any number of groups in the community who need to get in touch with alumni,” he said.

The company behind the directory, Harris Connect, states on its Web site www.harrisconnect.com that it does more than 2,000 high school alumni directories each year. A representative stated there are 17,300 Gloucester High alumni in the database, which covers from 1905 to 2008.

“Basically what they do is get records from the school, which is perfectly legal under the Buckley Act,” Marsh said. “From those records they do a search to find out where people are now, then essentially create a data base out of that.”

“It’s a legitimate situation,” Marsh said. “You can have your name in it, you might want to be involved, you might want to buy a book. It would help reunion classes keep track of where classmates are.

“To me, it’s relatively harmless,” he said, pointing out that people can opt out if they don’t want their information included.