In the past year, The Cavalier Daily staff has jumped headlong into digital production, abandoning high-resolution printers and paste-up flats for pure desktop publishing, complete with PDFs and FTP delivery to Culpeper. As a by-product, they’re taking College Topics with them.

April’s issue of Topics was the first to be sent to press digitally, but not without a painstaking conversion from its original PageMaker format to the newer Adobe In-Design. The Communications Committee wishes to thank former CD Operations Manager Peter Jackson for all the time he devoted to modifying our files to make them compatible with Culpeper’s needs.

This issue has gone one step further: It was created in In-Design and will be sent directly to Culpeper via email. The new format means a new template, which is allowing for some style changes, which we hope will bring Topics a bit more up-to-date and make it more readable. Comments and suggestions are welcomed at kramsey@alumni.virginia.edu.

With any conversion of this nature, there have been glitches. Last issue, several of the fonts were lost in the process, making for some odd-looking layouts and an even stranger masthead. Who knows where the problems will surface in this issue? All I can say to you prod gurus out there is, have patience, we’ll work it all out in time.

— Kim Ramsey
Communications Chairman
February 2003

As communications director, I regret to inform you that the CDAA discussion boards on our website, www.cdalumni.org, which were introduced in November’s issue of College Topics, have been pronounced dead on arrival. While newly redesigned and reorganized, the message boards have failed to draw users.

The question now is why? If you have any clues, or suggestions as to how to revive them from their lifeless state, I urge you to contact me, either through the boards or directly via email at kramsey@alumni.virginia.edu. Thank you!

As you may have noticed, the Communications Committee has been promising for some time now to bring the popular discussion boards back online on the CDAA web site (www.cdalumni.org). As you may also have noticed, they’re still not there.

This is because the Communications Committee is a committee of two: myself and Andrew Csontos. Due to work and personal demands, Andrew hasn’t had a block of time to devote to the project; I don’t have the technical know-how to do the programming of the boards, or the time to dedicate to it if I did.

Getting the boards up and running is still a goal of ours, but we need help.

If you have technical computer experience and would like to help make the web site better, please let me know. I am also always looking for new writers and story ideas for College Topics. I can be reached at 540-338-2269 or via email at skramsey@compuserve.com. I look forward to hearing from you!

The Communications Committee has been busy since the last College Topics. Two main projects topped the agenda: publicizing the September Cavalier Daily Reunion and revamping the CDAA web site.

Based on the great turnout at reunion, it seems publicity efforts paid off, thanks in large part to the group of more than 20 alumni who volunteered to serve as class sponsors. These alumni helped spread the word about reunion events to their classmates, and the CDAA wishes to thank them for their time and energy. Other publicity efforts included a mailing in early summer, official printed invitations, extensive information on the CDAA web site, and several email notices.

The other major initiative, the redesign of the CDAA web site at www.cdalumni.org, is a project in progress. While much has already been accomplished—a new look has been created and many database functions have been updated—there is much still left to do, including programming a series of topic-specific discussion boards. I would like to extend an enormous "thank you" to Andrew Csontos for all the effort—and many late nights—he put into this project. The new web site wouldn’t be up and running without him.

If you would like to maintain—or rekindle—the skills you learned while working at The Cavalier Daily, the Communications Committee welcomes your help. Volunteers are always needed in both the print and online arenas. Please contact me at 540-338-2269 or skramsey@compuserve.com to discuss ways you can help out.

— Kim Ramsey
Communications Director
November 2000

Some of you have asked about the status of the discussion board on the CDAA website, www.cdalumni.org. Never fear, it is not gone forever—we are simply in the process of updating and improving the board in an attempt to foster more positive and constructive conversations on the board. We will keep you posted on our progress and will let you know when things are back up and running. Comments and suggestions are encouraged; please feel free to contact me at 703-723-6633 or skramsey@compuserve.com.

As reported in the April issue of College Topics, the Communications Committee has been working to help establish a dialog among other college newspaper alumni groups. I am pleased to report that this effort has proven very successful, thanks primarily to Mike Coleman of the Daily Californian Alumni Association and Eric Jacobs at the University of Pennsylvania. An email listserv has been created through which alumni association leaders can pose questions to one another and get feedback on issues and problems facing the groups. Thus far, topics discussed include database recommendations, member recruitment, web site security, collection of dues, and creation of alumni directories, among others. Nearly 40 university newspapers from across the country are participating. Half of these currently have active alumni associations; the remainder are in the process of forming alumni groups or plan to create an alumni association in the future.

The Communications Committee is in need of web expertise! In addition to this newsletter, the CDAA web site, www.cdalumni.org, is our primary means of disseminating information about our activities to the membership. However, the site demands a lot of attention, and we are looking for volunteers to help fill in holes in the page and to expand the amount of information available. If you are interested in giving a hand, please contact me at collegetopics@cdalumni.org or Matt Lane at support@cdalumni.org.

Since the last update, the Communications Committee has begun a new initiative: In partnership with Mike Coleman, a coordinator for the Daily Californian Alumni Association at the University of California-Berkeley, we are trying to establish a dialogue among university newspaper alumni associations across the country. The goal of this dialogue is to exchange information on a variety of topics that would be common to any of our organizations, such as membership retention, fund-raising and preservation of archives. The effort is in the early stages at the moment but could prove to be a valuable source of ideas. If you have any friends or acquaintances who are involved in newspaper alumni associations other than the CDAA, I would enjoy hearing from them.

At last spring’s Cavalier Daily Alumni Association Board of Directors meeting, there was discussion concerning the security of publicly posting online minutes from CDAA meetings.

In response, the board decided that, in order to protect the security of this information and to continue to encourage free discussion during meetings, abridged minutes should be posted as a general record of a meeting’s agenda and that access to the unabridged copies should be password restricted to members of the two organizations.

The Communications Committee is pleased to report that, thanks to the work of Scott Ramsey and Matt Lane, two versions of all existing minutes are now online. These include a dozen meetings that have been recently added, including the original teleconference that founded the CDAA.

However, there are a number of meeting minutes missing from the CDAA’s files that we would like to include online if copies can be located. (Please see www.cdalumni.org/news/meetings.asp for a list of minutes we do have.) If you have copies of any of the missing minutes, please contact Scott Ramsey at 301-982-7495 or via e-mail at skramsey@compuserve.com.

In other projects, webmaster Matt Lane is collecting photographs and memories from past staffs to post on the web site. If you have anything that you would like to share, contact Matt Lane at 512-419-9594 or through e-mail at matthew@laneweb.com. Any submitted photos would be scanned and returned.

And, as always, volunteers to help out with either the web site or College Topics are encouraged to contact me at 301-982-7495 or via e-mail at collegetopics@cdalumni.org.

The Communication Committee would like to express its unending gratitude to Matt Lane for his tireless work on one of the committee’s most ambitious projects: the CDAA web site. Matt has done a tremendous job almost single-handedly programming, organizing, and maintaining the site.

The site is a work in progress though, and there is still a lot of work to be done to help it reach its potential as a communications tool. If you are interested in helping out, send an e-mail to support@cdalumni.org or call Matt at 941-262-7652. Programming experience is not necessary—there is a lot of information gathering that can be done that requires no computer skills at all.

College Topics is the other major focus of the Communication Committee. The next issue is scheduled to mail in early September. If you have story ideas or news to report or would like to contribute by writing an article or assisting with production work, please e-mail collegetopics@cdalumni.org or call me at 301-982-7495.

Thanks also to Andrew Csontos, who chaired the Communication Committee for the past two years. We appreciate all your hard work and wish you the best in your upcoming marriage!