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Alumni Engagement Survey - OPPORTUNITY TO GIVE FEEDBACK RE. [Redacted] HIRE

PhDeac said:
I'm slipping. I got that e-mail and didn't even think about it from this angle.

Great suggestion. Everybody please do this.
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@PH - I just tried to respond to your PM. But you have exceeded your "stored private message quota" and cannot receive further PMs until you have cleared some space... Please do so and I will resend.
 
thedeacfan said:
@PH - I just tried to respond to your PM. But you have exceeded your "stored private message quota" and cannot receive further PMs until you have cleared some space... Please do so and I will resend.
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Done. Please resend.
 
Wake Forest as a small community needs to have a tight, committed alumni network that feels a sense of community and goes above and beyond to help other Wake Forest graduates due to the scarcity of numbers and the geographic sprawl of our alumni. I have noticed that the alumni network on the whole is not as effective as our peers, especially outside of North Carolina, in terms of creating a strong professional and social alumni network outside of those we went to school with directly.

This has been exacerbated by the poor performance of our two major sports (basketball and football) since 2009. When our basketball and football teams are better, alumni events occur more often and are better attended, leading to better alumni connectivity across the board. I would encourage the school to create more opportunities for alumni to interact based on sporting events and other events in major cities up and down the East Coast. In doing so, I will note that making changes to the revenue sports programs to make them competitive again will solve more of these problems than 4 or 5 other types of initiatives combined based on experience with my generation of Wake graduates.
 
My $.02:

"I have become increasingly disillusioned with my Alma Mater. The skyrocketing tuition means that I cannot reasonably afford to send any of my children to Wake Forest. It is no longer the institution that I attended as a young adult and loved during my four years there. Instead, it seems to be operated more and more like a faceless corporation, with something other than "Pro Humanitate" as the goal.

Symptomatic of this unwanted trend is the abysmal state of our athletics program, epitomized by its flagship, the Men's Basketball Team. I have held season tickets to Wake Forest Basketball games for the past thirteen years, scheduling my responsibilities and activities (which are numerous) around the games so that I could cheer on my beloved Deacs in person. The wretched state of the program has sucked every last drop of enjoyment out of it for me. It just isn't any fun anymore. What is worse is that the Administration, from the Board of Directors, to the President, to the Athletic Director, just don't seem to see the disaster that is front of their face, or to appreciate how upset that I, and virtually all of the Wake fans and alumni that I talk to every day, are about this debacle.

Like it or not, the basketball team is the flagship of this University. For the past three seasons, this flagship has been sinking like a stone.

I will be severely curtailing my contributions to the Deacon Club and to the College Fund until things change. If the University doesn't care about their product, why should I? I find it deeply ironic that I should contribute generously to the Deacon Club and Wake Forest as a whole when I would be hard pressed to be able to afford to send just one of my children to Mother So Dear without severely jeopardizing the finances for my other two children to attend college.

I love Wake Forest dearly, from the bottom of my heart. That is why what I see happening hurts so much."
 
Poor Wake. Everytime they try to do anything, however related or unrelated to athletics, they get hammered about Wellzdelik. I would love to see the eyes rolling at administration/deans' meetings when they try to go over the results of a survey or even an update on the Twitter account only to be told that it was an avalanche of "#BzzOut" commentaries.
 
They sent the survey for a reason, so something is amiss. I wonder if they're too proud to actually listen to the responses.
 
Here's my response:

As a former student athlete at Wake Forest I have a tremendously positive relationship with Wake Forest and terrific memories. I retain connections with many Wake Forest alumni and see several Wake Forest alumni regularly even though we live in California. I attended my 10 year reunion this year and enjoyed reminiscing with Wake Forest alumni on our many memories of our time at Wake Forest and our victories on the field.

Unfortunately, due to the current state of the Wake Forest athletic department, specifically the men's basketball program, these connections are being severely damaged. The connections between the alumni I know remained strong when we were excited about viewing Wake Forest athletics events on tv and planned outings and get togethers around Wake Forest basketball and football games. The past three years these get togethers have dwindled severely as the performance of the revenue sports has become dismal and embarrassing.

I am also ashamed of the behavior of the athletic department in both making excuses and validating the awful athletic performances as not only acceptable but moving in the right direction. The current Wake Forest athletic director's public statements affirming the direction of the basketball program are shameful. When I attended Wake Forest, I received excellent coaching and was a part of an athletic department that demanded excellence both on and off the field. This no longer seems to be the case.

I do not support the current direction of the athletic department and the university as a whole and have discontinued my Deacon Club participation as have my parents. Living in California, I see that Wake Forest must maintain a highly visible presence in revenue sports to keep an excellent national reputation and to draw students from geographic locations outside of the east coast. In recent years that national reputation has been damaged due to poor performance in revenue sports. I hope that changes will be made soon within the athletic department so that my family's emotional and financial connections to Wake Forest will not be damaged further.
 
94Deac said:
Poor Wake. Everytime they try to do anything, however related or unrelated to athletics, they get hammered about Wellzdelik. I would love to see the eyes rolling at administration/deans' meetings when they try to go over the results of a survey or even an update on the Twitter account only to be told that it was an avalanche of "#BzzOut" commentaries.
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Unfortunately the people that matter will probably only get an exec summary of the quantitative data and filtered "highlights" of the qualitative comments.
 
PhilliesDeacs said:
Unfortunately the people that matter will probably only get an exec summary of the quantitative data and filtered "highlights" of the qualitative comments.
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The lunatic fringe often finds itself filed under "misc."
 
I worked in University Advancement for my work study. You realize that it will be some college sophmore who reads these responses. No one else.
 
I responded as all of you have. I know it won't make adifference, but it made ME feel better.
 
before this thread was even started i had already read it and immediately replied, "Fire [Redacted] and Wellman."
 
I am sending a similarly-worded letter in response to the football season ticket renewal package that I received in yesterday's mail explaining the reasons why I won't be purchasing tickets this year. That will be six fewer seats sold for the season, which isn't much in the grand scheme of things, but it is emblematic of the level of frustration and anger I have towards the Wake administration at this time.
 
I never get these emails, so I won't be filling out a survey nobody is going to take seriously, but I do share the sentiments expressed on this thread.
 
"My connection to WF is currently very strained and it's largely due to athletics. I travel 6 hours each way to every home football (might not get tickets this year) and a lot of basketball games (before the last three seasons). I love Wake and I want it to be part of my life but it's getting difficult to discuss it with non-alumni and potential future students since the teams have become the punchline to a joke. Athletics are a huge part of any university, but they are especially huge for one as small as Wake. It allows us to get Wake's name out there and attract students and fans (I was drawn to apply by Tim Duncan and Skip Prosser). However, our name is only out there now when we show up as being beat by a top 25 team. Wake should be one of those top 25 teams in some sports. I graduated in 2007 and got to experience the Orange Bowl as my last experience with Wake football as a student. I developed lifelong bonds with fellow students and alums in Miami. Over 1/3 of all living alumni showed up for that game, which should show that Wake alumni are passionate and will support the teams if given something worth their time investment. We depend on our alumni more than most schools because Wake has so many competitors close by and thus has a lower non-alumni fan base (but those non-alum fans are very proud and loud). I respect Ron Wellman and he has done a good job with WFU in the past but his current management of our two revenue sports is atrocious as both are well below average. If he is not willing try to make Wake's athletic teams elite then he should be asked to retire to make room for someone who will demand excellence.

Furthermore, the choices that President Hatch and the BOT have taken in not acting to rectify the athletics program's steep decline in a lot of sports makes me question how they are guiding the academic, service, and other prongs of the university. Are we keeping that bad history teacher because he had bad students in the past? Are we keeping the economics professor under the guise that she get back to historical competitiveness? Wake does not accept average for its students or faculty. Why is it allowed with our athletics? Wake Forest is supposed to be an elite university. It's academics are mostly living up to the expectations but it is time for WFU to understand alumni and fan demands that it strive for athletic excellence and stop making excuses. Demanding students pay close to $60k in total expenses to attend Wake Forest is only further making me miss the Wake Forest I attended (still expensive but nothing that exorbitant). Still, demanding that much money indicates the university views itself as being elite and worth that much. Are athletics no longer part of the university? Because they certainly aren't pulling their weight. By having all these athletic capital funding campaigns, the university has indicated a desire to compete for titles. However, those people that bought seats in Deacon Tower or donate money at the Monocle Society level must feel similar to Bernie Madoff's victims (pay into the athletic department to build these brilliant new structures with expectations of good teams only to have the teams inhibiting them be average at best and it be by choice).


I want to give to Wake Forest but I am truly worried that my money will be used to support initiatives that undermine the goals that students and alumni hold dear. I've 100% stopped donating to athletics and I'm starting to think about stopping academic donations given Pres. Hatch and the BOT's inability to ensure a worthwhile athletic department and their inability to indicate why such a steep increase in attendance related costs are necessary."
 
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DeacLaw05 said:
I am sending a similarly-worded letter in response to the football season ticket renewal package that I received in yesterday's mail explaining the reasons why I won't be purchasing tickets this year. That will be six fewer seats sold for the season, which isn't much in the grand scheme of things, but it is emblematic of the level of frustration and anger I have towards the Wake administration at this time.
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Add 8 more to that. First time in nearly a decade I'm not purchasing season tickets.
 
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