From the Abbot

Dear Fellow Friar,

I hope this letter finds you well, wherever you may be. With our Centennial quickly approaching I am honored and excited to serve as Abbot, and this upcoming event has shaped many of my goals for the semester. First, I have been working to increase the number of alumni that we reach. With the help of the Texas Exes we have added about sixty members from the last twenty-five years to our database, and I am continuing back in time to make sure we try to reach all known Friars. I would appreciate your help with this project. Please check out our member list at www.friarsociety.org/members and get in touch with your peers to make sure that everyone is receiving updates from us, including emails.

I also want to do my part to make sure that the Friar Society’s Centennial Celebration in the spring of 2011 is a huge success. I am very pleased to announce that we will be partnering with the UT Elementary School to ensure that our anniversary celebration goes beyond a party and leaves a lasting contribution to our community. Please read more about this great opportunity on the next page and contact Friar alumnus Howard Nirken for more information. But we won’t forget the party aspect completely! We would love to hear your ideas about what you would like to see during the Centennial. Please contact Friar Nicole Trinh at netrinh@austin.utexas.edu or 832-275-0442 to get involved.

And finally, I would like to leave the Friar Society in a stronger financial state than I found it. Last semester we encouraged you all to help financially support the society by donating to the C. A. Schutze endowment. The endowment is meant to support all of our operational expenses, yet the payout of $3000-$4000 per year is not enough to cover our expenses of $3500-$5000 per semester. Thanks so much to all of you who generously gave in response to our plea. Due to your direct donations to the organization we were able to cover our expenses last semester without going into debt. Several of you also expressed displeasure that our active members paid dues last semester and contributed accordingly. Because of your generosity we will not be collecting dues this semester. And lastly, donations increased the Schutze endowment by about eight percent. This is certainly a large help for which we are very grateful, though from the numbers above you can see that we will still need more to ensure the continued stability of the organization in the future. Please see the last page of this newsletter to make a contribution this semester.

Thank you again for your consistent support. It is the outstanding group of alumni that continues to make the Friar Society an amazing organization after nearly one hundred years.

Pax Vobiscum,

Amy Forestell

Abbot, Spring 2009

The full Friar Forum may be downloaded here.