Unfortunately, common or not, the usage of "alumni" in that context is incorrect. It may be a bit pedantic to insist on correctness in Latin, but all other schools use the term correctly and it doesn't reflect well on a well-regarded school to use the term incorrectly.
Yes it is by processes of consensus arising from appeals to stylistic license, shared community language, memes, etc. But not every grammatical error falls into these categories.
Think of it this way - let's say you make a grammatical mistake that most people consider a mistake. You shouldn't hide behind the "language evolves" catch-all card... you should to recognize it as a mistake and try to use the correct form.
Not at all. You have misread me. That language evolves is a common used argument (and there is a place for it) but often used as a catch-all argument to justify errors.
But in this case alumni is in common use in that way and has been for some time. You yourself acknowledged that by starting your comment with "Unfortunately, common or not".
> But in this case alumni is in common use in that way and has been for some time.
I dispute that. Googling doesn't turn up many examples of official usage of alumni in the singular.
I also disagree with your second claim, which is a projection. When I said "common or not", I meant that frequency in itself does not automatically make something correct, and I gave reasons why in a follow-up comment. I didn't claim that usage was common.
I'm not trying to be difficult, but alumni really is plural. Using alumni as singular is not correct.
