What goes around comes around. Particularly when it comes to college fund-raising campaigns.

Back in 1922, it was The Million Dollar Fund Campaign (a name straight out of Austin Powers), for which the freshman class and President Clifton Daggett Gray (left) staged a “Shine Day” at Lewiston’s Empire Hat Shop, raising $34. According to the story, when Auburn mayor Charles S. Cummings (right) walked in, President Gray offered him a shine.

The 1920s campaign focused on endowment and construction. Today, the $120 million Campaign for Bates: Endowing Our Values focuses on…endowment and construction (specifically new residence halls and a dining facility. Story, page 6).

Last December, the current Bates president and local leaders again got together, albeit in a less-hokey fashion, when President Elaine Tuttle Hansen and Barbara Trafton, a former state senator whose husband, Richard, is a former Auburn mayor, announced the new Alonzo Garcelon Society for local donors, as well as a local campaign to raise $1 million in scholarship endowment for area Bates students. In her column this issue, President Hansen discusses the specific need for scholarship endowment.