Larry Salameno '66, J.D. '69, has had little contact with Cornell since law school, but he has certainly renewed his ties. With his wife, Theresa, Salameno recently made a $1.5 million gift to endow a fund to support programming in the West Campus House System.

Reconnecting with the university through the efforts of a law school classmate led Salameno to recall his time on campus with pleasure. "I thought about how much I enjoyed it, how well educated I was and what I got out of the experience," said Salameno, executive vice president at the Permal Group, an alternative asset management firm.

Salameno learned about the West Campus residential community through conversations with Susan Murphy, vice president for student and academic services. He was also inspired to make a gift because of his student activities as an undergraduate (he chaired the Scheduling Coordination and Activities Review Board) and his experiences living in old-style dormitories and off-campus housing.

"I was intrigued by the fact that Cornell is working to create a community in the houses on West Campus," said Salameno. "When I was a student, if you weren't a member of a fraternity, your social life could be difficult."

"The Salamenos' generous gift," said Alice H. Cook House Professor and Dean Ross Brann, the Milton R. Konvitz Professor of Judeo-Islamic Studies, "provides immediate program funding for such activities as guest speakers, field trips, leadership development, social activities, service projects or even academic courses taught in West Campus."

The endowment will support West Campus programming but has no restrictions, said Salameno, "because things come up that can't be budgeted for."

That flexibility is "absolutely key" to furthering the success of the West Campus House System, said Murphy. "While each house strives to bring together students and faculty to create living and learning environments, programs vary from house to house."

The gift, Murphy said, gives permanent funding for that enhanced living-learning experience. "As spectacular as the buildings are, it's the programming that's the difference in West Campus," she said.

And that programming runs the gamut, from biomedical engineering and politics to theater arts and diversity issues.

An interesting aside to Salameno's Cornell experiences, in fact, was part of the university's notorious time of tumult in the late 1960s. When African-American students occupied Willard Straight Hall during Parents Weekend in the spring of 1969 to demand improved academic conditions for black students, Salameno was the student resident manager on duty. It was his task to escort from the building several parents who were staying in a portion of Willard Straight Hall.

"Those events were emblematic of the greater society in which we lived," he said. "Cornell had become more of a microcosm of the society in which we lived, rather than some sort of halcyon experiment."

"Every day on West Campus," Murphy said, "there is rich and ongoing dialogue from students and faculty from all kinds of backgrounds, with a full array of interests."

For more information on West Campus, see http://residential.alumni.cornell.edu.

Gary E. Frank is a staff writer for Cornell Alumni Affairs and Development.