The ASAs and a few topless screaming sports fans...

In the fall of 2003 I decided to check out how my Engineers were fairing in football. I walked in the stadium and saw a horde of students (some topless) cheering for the good old Brown and White – for those of you who remember the same school I did, this was probably a shock. Lehigh students were actually cheering a football game – that didn’t involve maiming a leopard. I thought nothing of it until I saw a similar crowd at a basketball game – aha! I identified this sighting as the Hawk’s Nest.
The Hawk’s Nest is really just a small subset of a much larger organization, affectionately named the ASAs. These ASAs (Association of Student Alumni) support many of the events we are all familiar with: Life after Lehigh series, first-year student rally, first-year student move-in, and the Lehigh-Lafayette Bonfire.
The ASAs continue to support all the great events we remember as Lehigh students, but they also have created some new and exciting programs: class ring ceremony, mystery dinner and programs for community service such as Fall into the Streets. These great things have to have come from somewhere…
The brainchild of this collection of spirit bringers is Director of Student Alumni Development Jen Lichty. Back in 2002, eleven Lehigh students joined forces with Jen to make something wonderful. The vision of taking the “connected, engaged, involved” idea to the students was born. After nearly two years, the ASAs are now 100 students strong (excluding the notorious, 800-member Hawk’s Nest) and are already planning for next year. Those two years have been an arduous process for the founding eleven. I am excited to see the Lehigh traditions I am familiar with still intact and to see the inception of new events that will certainly have a lasting power.
For more information on the Association of Student Alumni, visit http://www.lehigh.edu/asa
This article appeared in the December 2004 Young Alumni Newsletter