Dear Friends and Colleagues:
The superb results Cornell achieved in its recent capital campaign are a credit to the entire Cornell community, which has rallied to support the effort over the past five years.
Many of you made personal financial contributions to the campaign. Some of you, especially those on the faculty, contrib uted to its success by taking time to explain your work and your needs to those in a position to provide support. Others worked long hours, including weekends and evenings, to help the Univer sity make an effective case for Cornell. Whether you drove a campus bus during a reunion weekend, set up and took down the many stages required for special events, shouldered extra respon sibilities in Cornell Dining facilities in order to accommodate campus guests, or helped out in some other way, you can be proud of the role you played in the campaign's success.
Those of you who are students or recent graduates may have contributed to the campaign effort directly through your senior class gift or by staffing the phones for a Cornell Fund phonathon. Many more of you contributed, with equally good effect, by sharing your perceptions of student life with alumni and other visitors to Cornell.
We owe much of the campaign's success to generous alumni and friends who individually contributed thousands and even millions of dollars in support. But we also owe much to the tireless volunteers, throughout this country and abroad, who called their classmates, hosted special events, and worked so enthusiastically and so effectively to bring others closer to Cornell.
I am deeply grateful, as a new president, to be part of such a cohesive community. I hope the spirit of teamwork and shared enterprise that the campaign engendered will continue to animate the campus and inspire us all to help Cornell achieve a new, even higher standard of excellence in the remaining years of this century and beyond.
Yours sincerely,
Hunter R. Rawlings III