Guidance for Section Reps when compiling the News

(an example is towards the bottom of the page)

Issuing information to Members of your Section:

For those who don’t mass mail or forward attachments very often, the following may be helpful:

• 1. Open the email and click on ‘Forward’. You will find that ALL the attachments are there so you will need to delete any which are for your information only and do not need to be sent on to your section. These will still be attached to the original email in your inbox so you will not lose them.

  2. Email addresses of the section members should go in the’ BCC:’(blind carbon copy) box, rather than the ‘To:’ box. This increases privacy. Your own address can go in the To: box.

Request for News:

You need only post to active members - those from whom you have heard within the last 5 years - though you can send to more if you wish. If you are sending out the documents by post rather than email, please put your own contact details on the Request for News form, to indicate that they should reply to you.

Emails can be sent to all active and inactive section members including those that have not replied for many years - this might be the year!

Editing:

Section Reps should collate the replies and edit their own section’s news, particularly any long and rambling entries, before it goes to the Editor. Please send in news via email where possible (in Word or plain text), as it can then be ‘copied and pasted’ very easily. Please also pay attention to spelling and punctuation.

It would be very helpful if when compiling news from your members, you put it in alphabetical order by current surname, with any general statement you care to make about your section at the top (e.g. "Fantastic to hear from so many of you this year!") and paste your personal news into wherever you fit in the alphabet. This will make it very much easier for members searching for a particular person to find her.

Format:

From 2016, please could you follow the format as shown below.

As the News is now available on Amazon and from other outlets, contact details will no longer be included in the News. Changes of contact details of old girls should be sent for changing on the database. Please note we are no longer putting the names of Old Girls in capitals, just in bold. If they are married, their maiden name should also be in bold, and in brackets afterwards, as shown.

Validation of content:

Section Reps are, from time to time, asked by members to put some news in the magazine on their behalf, perhaps after a telephone call or a reunion, rather than sending in their own news by post or email.

Any member whose news is not provided in writing should be asked to validate and confirm any proposed summary by the Section Rep before it is sent to the editor for printing. Normally the content will be such that this is a mere formality, but on the rare occasion that the news is sensitive (or even inaccurate) it might just give members, section reps and editors some peace of mind that everyone is happy with the information which is going into the public domain. With virtually everyone now on email it can be a quick and relatively informal process for a section rep to say to a member, “Yes of course I’ll write up your news, and I’ll email you what I propose to say just to check you’re happy with it”.

For the Recent Leavers (and reluctant sections!):

Recent leavers may not think they have much news of interest. Just getting a reply is significant. If someone confirms they have received your email, please count such information (including Read Receipts) as making contact. In the Section’s news submission you could then just list the names without news, e.g. "X, Y, Z have been in touch during the past year; Y has also been in touch with P, Q and R".

Equally, do not underestimate the value of simply saying who is doing what at university, who has continued to play netball, lacrosse, golf, tennis or other sports or are involved in music or drama etc after school, and what people are doing other than university. That alone can give people a reason to contact each other and the Association is a useful form of networking.

Thank you so much to all the section reps for the effort which I know you put in, to extract news from people, to edit and collate it all before it comes to me. I do appreciate it, and hope you enjoy the final product as much as I do.

from the News Editor, 7 Jan 2016

Example:

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SECTION 50: (1980)

Section representative:

Mary Bold

Mary Bold had had her busiest year ever at work, but still managed to get to the Shetlands for a month's bird-watching last summer.

Susan Grantly (Harding) wrote to say that she was job hunting again and visiting universities all over the country with her daughter - trying to decide which looked best. Having lost both their parents in 6 months, Susan and her sister Eleanor Bold (Harding, section 54) were busy sorting out the estates. Susan felt that the highlight of the last year was seeing her nephew and his crew at Grennock at the finish of a leg of the Tall Ships Race; she had never seen so many crates of ale and lager coming out of Tesco's and going towards the boats!

Opie Green wrote last autumn to say that she was still living in London and running her own Financial Consultancy business. She was also painting, and selling, water colours of the Alps, and skiing as much as possible.

Augusta Moffat had been in contact during the year.

Beatrice Oriel (Gresham) told Mary Bold at Christmas that she would be moving house in March.

Mary Thorne wrote "At the end of October I moved from London to 20 miles away. It has been an excellent move for me - five minutes from my work and I'm still able to have London social life. My sister Monica remarried in November at her Quaker Meeting House in Lancashire. It was a wonderful day, and Amelia de Courcy was one of the guests."

Madalina Bangles (Demolines), Isabella Crofts (Dale), Clara Dalrymple (Van Siever) have acknowledged emails.

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Westonbirt Association index

last amended 22 February 2020