Reunions – The Riffin' Griffin

Griffin’s Beat: Reunions 2026

What’s up Reunions visitors of 2026?!?! This is one of your loyal Reunions student workers and I am so excited to see all of you this year! My name is fittingly Griffin, and I am a rising junior at Reed! This is my second year working as a Reunions Student worker so I thought I would look through the schedule for the Reunions weekend and point out some of the events I am most looking forward to and that you will hopefully see me at!

First off, Thursday is the first day of big events, of which, I am most excited to see the 50th class reunion dinner in the evening. I didn’t get the pleasure of being there last year but I am most definitely going to be there this year and am looking forward to hearing all the amazing stories of y’all’s time at Reed! There is also a reactor tour from 3-4 pm that has limited spots so make sure to sign up when you can if you want to see that signature blue glow! If you can’t get a spot on the Thursday tour don’t worry, because there are three other chances for you to sign up for a tour.

The reactor emitting cherenkov radiation. The “blue glow” is produced by charged particles in the core moving faster than the speed of light in water.
*Credit: Nemo Shen ’21*

Moving on to Friday, this is the day where things really get going for those of you not from the class of ’76. If you’re an architecture fan, or just like walking around looking closely at buildings (which technically makes you an architecture fan) try your best to catch one of the two architecture tours hosted by Paul Edison-Lahm of the class of ’83.

Also on Friday is my FAVORITE event of the whole weekend: How to Make Sausage with Meat Smoke!!! If you have ever wondered what it’s like to feel the power of a full on meat grinder in your hands, or what it feels like to rehydrate some prophylactic-esque looking sausage skins, this is the event for you. Not only do you get to do lots of tasting while you’re making your creations (you know…….for quality control) but you also get to be a part of Reunions set up like me! The sausages y’all make will be served after the fireworks on Saturday! So help feed your fellow Reedies and make some banger sausages (get it? There’s a badum tshhhh in there somewhere).

Learn How a Sausage is Made (Literally)
1:00–3:30 p.m., Spanish House

The masters of meat will demystify the metaphor, and prove that the dirty details are in fact delicious, clean fun! Meat Smoke veterans will lead a sausage-making workshop, demonstrating the entire process from snout to tail. Get hands-on experience in cutting down and grinding whole slabs of pork, seasoning it to perfection, loading and filling pork casings, and pinching and cutting sausage links. There will be plenty of opportunities for grilling and tasting our creations during the workshop. Sausage made during this event will be served to everyone after the Laser Light Show on Saturday. Come meat with us, join in the fun, and make lots of dirty jokes (sometimes they slip out unintentionally)!

Later Friday night, come support some Reedies on the quad who are playing music! One of my bosses from another of my on campus jobs will be playing so you bet I’m going to be there shouting GO BEN!!!!

Finally for Friday night there is arguably the biggest party of Reunions every year, the Language plaza party. Now the past couple of years it has been a 90’s party (The Dream of the 90s Is Alive at Reunions), but this year it is under new management. The class of 2016 has taken over, and with the help of some other classes, they are going to throw the biggest 2016 party since…. well, 2016!!

On Saturday, make sure to try to catch the All-in-one HUM 110 lecture! There will be every helpful piece of information from the entire universe ever and I personally think that is pretty cool.

One final event that I want to point y’all towards is the Human Chess! Have you ever wanted to LARP a chess piece??? (who am I kidding you’re Reed Alum, you do that every Saturday) BUT!!! There will be a little bit more action than your average run of the mill human sized chess game. I can’t say anymore because I fear for my lowly pawn life but be there or be square!!! (get it……. Badum tshhhh again!)

There are so many cool events happening this Reunions weekend I couldn’t possibly talk about all of them but these are the ones I personally have my eye on! I hope to see y’all there!! If I don’t see you at a particular event, I’ll definitely see you while I’m whizzing around AT OR BELOW the speed limit in the Reunions taxi so don’t hesitate to wave it down or call the taxi number (503-517-4050).

Signing off, your soon to be favorite Reunions student worker:

Griffin J ’28

Reunions was so fun; maybe we should like, do this every year or something?

Reunions 2025 is over! Aside from the fact that I now have lost my only excuse for staying up unreasonably late and getting paid to do so, I enjoyed it. How about you? Did you meet new people? Catch up with old people? Do drugs? Actually, don’t answer that last one.

The audience of the All-Purpose Humanities Lecture

There were a lot of events to go to and many people to meet up with: over 1,000 attendees and nearly 100 events to attend! My personal favorite event was Paul Edison-Lahm ’83’s walking tour on the architecture of Reed, followed closely by the rugby game (celebrating 50 years of rugby at Reed!), and driving people around in a golf cart.

In case anyone did not know, there was also a scavenger hunt, made by Matt Giraud ’85, that took you all around the Reed campus (that’s what all the cryptic messages taped on various buildings was about). I was one of the lucky few who answered the call to go on the quest and send President Foster home.

For those who drank too much to remember, Friday was when everyone met up at the International Plaza and ate good food with Meatsmoke (where all the language houses are), and Saturday was on the Great Lawn, where everybody ate grilled meat while the light show was going on. I hope you, dear reader, also had as much fun as I did during Reunions, and I look forward to next year’s reunions. I’ve spotted myself a few times in the photos of the weekend–proof that I didn’t just eat grilled meat. Take a look yourself?

Doing a doughnut in a golf cart,

William

Foster’s Quest: Reunions Scavenger Hunt

On an otherwise unremarkable spring day in 1915, William T. Foster, Reed’s first President, strolls toward Sallyport, lost in thought. Life is a course charted between knowledge and ignorance, light and dark, truth and fiction – indeed, between Lux and Nox, the two grotesques guarding the portal as he enters. Where to guide his nascent College, newly troubled by adversity? And it is this question, posed precisely between these two poles, exactly as he enters the portal, that bends the fabric of time toward an answer and propels him out the other side… into 2025!

Reunion-goers have the chance to pick up the quest–your task is to help him return to his time by deciphering 11 clues to 11 locations around Reed Campus, enjoying a rather pleasant tour while collecting one letter at each locale. Then, gathering together those letters, you have only to unscramble them into a four-word phrase and you have saved the day. But more: the first 250 to show their work at Prexy earn a special keepsake reward – and yes, boundless glory!The Scoutbook you’ll pick at Prexy contains valuable information to spark your quest, or pick up the trail at any of the 11 locations if you happen upon one over the weekend.

Scavenger hunt designed by Matt Giraud ’85