About Perry Metz:
- Lives in Bloomington, IN
- Recently retired General Manager of WFIU and WTIU, IU’s public broadcasting stations
- Former Associate Vice President of the IU Bloomington campus
- Recently awarded the Indiana University Bicentennial Medal for his service to IU.
- Currently serves on the Union Board of Directors as the Alumni Representative.
What was your role with Union Board/at the IMU (include the years)?
- Served as Union Board President in 1976. Before that as a director, Perry managed Dusk ‘til Dawn, an all-night series of activities which attracted about 10,000 students to the Union.
How did Union Board and the IMU prepare you since you left IU?
- Managing conflict (didn’t do that very well at the time) and helping others achieve goals (did that much better).
- We developed strong relationships with other student groups which turned out to be good training for developing alliances after graduation.
- Programming was so strong that it taught many of us about the power of big ideas. Dick Blackburn, the IMU director at the time, believed in students and became a model for me of how to support students and to offer advice.
What advice would you give to current and future Union Board members?
- Don’t automatically do things the way we always have.
- Administrators can be effective allies. Cultivate the ones who look promising and ignore the others.
- Get a file card and write down the three things you want to accomplish while being on Board. Keep it on your desk because that’s where you want to focus your work. Your term will be over sooner than you expect.
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