Remarks at the 2004 Convocation

September 8, 2004, Mount Holyoke College

Joanne V. Creighton

Good morning! I’m pleased to welcome you all to the opening of 168th year of this venerable institution. Let me extend a special welcome to all new faculty, staff, and students, especially class of 2008 and new transfer, FP and foreign fellows. And let me properly acknowledge the class in academic regalia, marking their final year at Mount Holyoke, the Class of 2005.

Class of 2005, you seem happy to be here or is it that you are happy that you will soon be leaving here, or is it some combination of that? Four years go by really fast, do they not? But the good news is that your connection to the College will likely last a lifetime. What is it about this College that is so powerfully sustaining? Why are we always so glad to gather here each fall? Oh, Mount Holyoke, why do we pay thee devotion?

Of course, one reason is that it’s a beautiful place to be, especially in the fall. The sheer beauty of the campus is no incidental phenomenon; it infuses our experience in a Dickinsonian way: “Inebriate of air -- am I – Debauchee of Dew,” she wrote. (I know you might occasionally try imbibing something stronger than air or dew, although never at Convocation, of course!) This campus is even more beautiful and functional with new facilities such as the Science Center and the Blanchard Campus Center which, I’m pleased to note, have both recently been officially designated “green” buildings because they meet strict environmental standards. This year we are moving ahead on preliminary plans to build a new residence hall. Students, keep tuned in. Very soon, working through the SGA, we will seek your advice on where to site new building and other important dimensions of it.

So, Mount Holyoke, we pay thee devotion because we cherish this campus and want to plan wisely for its future. But even more than place, it’s the people that make Mount Holyoke formative and transformative, both people here now and those who came before. Buried on the campus grounds, Mary Lyon, so visionary and so quotable, lives on in words and in spirit. She and other foremothers have metamorphosed into buildings whose stones and bricks and mortar instantiate their enduring legacy: Mary Chapin, Mary Woolley, Emma Carr, Lydia Shattuck, Cornelia Clapp, Elizabeth Storrs Mead, Ruth McGregor monumentally live on. So too do the words and deeds of generations of Uncommon Women who passed through these halls as students resonant in the present. Through rite and ritual, song and custom a sense of connection to those who came before is palpable.

Most immediately influential, of course, are the smart and talented and engaging people who make up Mount Holyoke now: members of the classes of 2005, 06, 07, and 08, Frances Perkins scholars and, of course, faculty and staff. Our community is diverse, more so, in fact, than any and all of our peers. Students with a variety of ethnic, racial, socioeconomic and religious backgrounds come from all states in the union and from over eighty different countries. Twenty-two percent of faculty is from minority groups; one third were borne outside the U.S. We value this diversity because we believe that the best kind of preparation for life in a globalized world is one represented by peoples of the world. Indeed, a necessary antidote to the kind of xenophobic bellicosity plunging us into global conflict is cosmopolitan experience, the opportunity to know and learn from people different than oneself. The Center for Global Initiatives, newly up and running in Porter Hall, embodies our commitment to global awareness and understanding. To help us to be a diverse community that supports and values each individual, we instituted last spring a group called the Presidential Commission on Diverse Community. It is sponsoring soon, on Tuesday, September 21, a visit by Professor Claude Steele, of Stanford, who is at the forefront of scholars examining what is called “stereotype threat.” His work is important, provocative, and controversial. I hope you will hear him out and join in the dialogue.

Because while people and place are important components of Mount Holyoke, even more is the essence of what we do here: think and debate, learn and grow. Mount Holyoke, we pay thee devotion, first and foremost, because you are a great institution of learning. Here “the liberal arts, the arts of thought, perception, and judgment; the arts that foster humanity and civility of spirit” are “at the center of our life,” so say the Principles of the College. Here is a veritable garden of intellectual delights with hundreds of mind-expanding courses, professors, and opportunities inside and outside of the classroom to experience the sheer joy of learning. Here, indeed, to quote Emily Dickinson again, the “Brain is wider than the Sky,” and your four short years in residence are an unparalleled opportunity to expand your mental horizon.

While Life After Mount Holyoke may seem very murky right now, Class of 2005, take heart in the fact that through something akin to osmosis, you are developing through your Mount Holyoke education the skills and the knowledge, the confidence and the competence that will serve you well in the future, and you are imbibing with the air and the dew, the values of the place, the conviction, borne over successive generations, that your life should be purposeful, and in service of something larger than yourself.

And in that, I know that you will find special sustenance in Mount Holyoke’s being a women’s college. If your experience is like mine, you are probably not infrequently asked why in the world are you at a women’s college as if to imply that such an education is out of touch and out of date. Of course, we know that nothing is further from the truth.

This College derives and gives strength from being of and about and by women. Here women are valued and are expected to achieve. Indeed, while you are here you might be lulled into thinking that gender equity is not a problem in the world outside of the College. Think again. The world continues to be overwhelmingly dominated by male leadership, you may have noticed.

While, to be sure, tremendous progress has been made since Mary Lyon founded Mount Holyoke Seminary in 1837, still advancing educational opportunity for women both in this country and in the world continues to be the great unfinished agenda of the 21st century. And an even more pressing issue is that of social justice for women worldwide. The subjugation and degradation of millions of women in our world today are nothing short of a disgrace.

Indeed, the roots of women’s education are very shallow. Many of us (including me) are first generation college women. Most of the women in the world now and across human history do not have the opportunities you have. We, the generation of women immediately preceding you, have made good gains, but, in truth, these are comparatively small inroads. You must not assume that all the battles have been won, and you must not forget to value and build upon what has been achieved with blood, sweat, and tears.

Take voting, for example. Remember how hard your foremothers worked for women’s suffrage, including Mary Woolley, who despite her distinguished career, couldn’t vote for the first twelve years of her presidency of this College, until the 18th Amendment was passed in 1920. In this the 84th year since women’s suffrage in this country, you can and you must (if you are an American citizen, that is). It is distressing to note that in the 2000 election, 40 million women didn’t vote and more than half of women ages 18-34 did not vote—about 15 million women.

Don’t be part of that shameful group this time. Vote. Even more important, engage with the issues that are quite literally shaping your future. Class of 2005, except for one bucolic week pre-September 11, 2001, your life at Mount Holyoke has taken place in the shadows of a distressingly troubled world, and those shadows have only darkened since then. Only an educated, engaged, critical thinking citizenry will find the way out of this morass. The Weissman Center is doing a wonderful series this semester entitled “The Road Not Taken: The Real Choices of the 2004 Presidential Elections,” kicked off on September 12 by a voter registration drive. Check it out. Register. Get that absentee ballot. Attend these events. Engage in the debate.

And, when you leave here, I hope many of you will seriously consider running for office. Women leaders are sparse throughout the world and in the U.S. our record is worse than most, 57th in the world in women in public office, behind Burundi and Slovakia: not an Olympics to be proud of. While women are over half the population, they hold only 14% of U.S. congressional seats and only 16% of governorships. And the great majority of young people going into public office are men; you can help to redress that.

Okay, so perhaps politics is not your bag, and that’s all right, but who is going to step up? We aren’t going to let Wellesley handle this alone, are we? Don’t leave the running of the world to others. Those others aren’t doing such a great job, you may have noticed. What will be your role in what Mary Lyon called the ‘great work of renovating a world?’ A scientist? An artist? An educator? A business leader? A community activist? All good choices! Remember Margaret Mead’s words: "Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; in fact, it's the only thing that ever has."

In being on this beautiful campus, in drawing inspiration from the impressive women who came before you and who surround you, in being mentored by caring and demanding professors, you are tremendously privileged. But great privilege brings great responsibility. In short, and not to understate the case: we expect great things from you.

You can start preparing for “greatness” right now by investing yourself fully in your studies and in the broader opportunities for self development, for engagement, for citizenship, and for fun that this College offers. Once you graduate we know that you will approach world citizenship with confidence and ambition and idealism and determination to play a responsible part.

And when you do that, you will, like countless Uncommon Women before you, to Mount Holyoke be paying devotion.