Graduate Alumni Get a New Reunions Blazer For the First Time Since 2003

Year after year, the undergraduate class that is celebrating its 25th reunion designs and dons custom Reunions blazers for the occasion, yet graduate alumni have worn the same — and only — blazer since 2003.

To honor the 75th anniversary of the Association of Princeton Graduate Alumni (in 2024) and the 125th anniversary of the Graduate School (in 2025), a new blazer for graduate alumni was designed and produced by the APGA’s JAS (jacket, accessories, and style) committee, which is pronounced like the soulful music genre.

After six months of brainstorming from late 2023 to mid-2024, the committee distributed a survey to graduate alumni with four design options. Out of 776 votes, 55% chose what became the final design as their favorite, and the second-highest option, with 23% of the votes, was used as the liner.

The blazer is predominantly black with orange stripes — not pinstripes, but rather rows of stars that represent Princeton Stars, aka graduate alumni. Robin Resch *03, a JAS committee member who photographed Reunions blazers for the 2023 Reunions program cover, describes the stripes as energetic and progressive, as well as “a reference to tiger stripes. You can’t change your stripes, you earn your stripes.”

The liner is inspired by APGA’s logo, Cleveland Tower at the Graduate College, with “a spire stripe at a ratio of 1.25 (representing 125 years of the Graduate School) and black bordering at a ratio of .75 (representing 75 years of APGA),” according to the APGA website. In addition, the Graduate School seal and the motto inscribed above the dining hall fireplace — bonus intra, melior exi, which means enter good, leave better — are featured on an interior pocket.

“The most successful [Reunions blazers] in my mind are those that convey a story and that people can identify with,” says Resch.

Ahead of its debut at the Many Minds, Many Stripes Graduate School affinity conference in 2025, Karthick Ramakrishnan *02, chair of the JAS committee and president of APGA from 2022 to 2024, wore a sample of the winning design to Alumni Day that year. More than 50 alumni then purchased and wore the blazer to the conference. It will be available for purchase again beginning in early 2027, alongside matching scarves and ties, through the Reunions registration website.

Ramakrishnan hopes it won’t take two decades to produce another graduate blazer. The goal, he says, is to “give each new generation, or at least each new cohort of 10 years, the chance to author their own vision.”