President Diana Chapman Walsh's
Charge to the Seniors
May 28, 1999

And so my ebullient sisters, Wellesley's class of '99, the moment is fast approaching when you will take your leave. You will close the 1900s behind you as you go, and take up a place in the history books that is yours alone. You will survive. You will imbibe, my Chellesley Wicks. And I hope you will be very happy. We have high hopes for you.

You've been counting down the days for months, and now in a matter of minutes your moment will arrive. For those of us who feel as though you only just arrived, I confess a real reluctance to let you go so soon.

In this, the traditional President's "Charge to the Seniors" I want to reflect with you on what, besides these diplomas for which you have labored so diligently, you will be taking with you as you go on your way.

You'll take relationships that have defined the person you will become: friends, faculty, staff who held up mirrors for you, allowing you to see your deepest essence, your fullest, most powerful and generous self.

You'll stay in contact--always--with some of the friends from whom you part today. From others, though (and you can't know which) you will gradually drift away, despite every intention to keep the bonds intact.

So as you take your leave today, I would just counsel you to say good bye as though it is for real: take the time--and take the risk--to tell those here who have meant much to you the ways in which they will dwell forever in your hearts.

You'll take the unshakable certainty that women can do it all, even as you encounter prejudice--the insidious signs of lower expectations for women that remain all too pervasive in our culture still.

You will sometimes confront subtle forms of discrimination--a contribution you made that was completely overlooked, for example, or credited to a male colleague.

What you will know with utter certainty from your four years here will be to ask yourself in every such situation not only whether there was something wrong with your contribution (there may have been), but also whether there is something wrong with the world, and if so what role you can play in efforts to make it right--for yourself and everyone else.

Hold onto that structural question from this women's college without boys. Heed the words of Filomina Chioma Steady, the newest member of our tenured faculty, "True feminism is ... a determination to be resourceful and self-reliant."

You'll take a vague and peculiar identification with the color yellow--although I doubt you'll be wearing your feather boas every day (I hope not). And you'll experience an irresistible urge at the sound of the word "brotherhood" to shout an in-your-face corrective at the top of your lungs-- "Sisterhood!" (You might try to curb that impulse in staid company).

You'll take memories of this breathtaking campus--moments that brought you alive. Perhaps you were walking along a meadow on your way back from a class, deeply preoccupied, when the sound of a bird or the carillon or the voice of a friend called you back to yourself, or a glint of sun on the snow or the amazing blue of the sky drew you out of a No in your mind into the Yes of the world.

"I suspect that yes is the only living thing," e.e. cummings wrote, "and we'll make yes." You'll be taking that living Yes with you to resist the drag of the No, the incomparable beauty of Wellesley as part of who you are.

When you return, 5, 10 or 50 years hence (and I hope you will come back soon and often), this College will be here for you:

• here as a place of peace to heal your spirits and mend your hearts,
• here as a place of history to anchor your memories and stir your dreams,
• here as a place of prophesy to reawaken your hopes--for the safer, saner, fairer future we need you to build.

Wellesley will still be here for you in all those ways if we dedicate ourselves, each of us, to the bedrock values on which this College stands, values of intellectual integrity and exploration, respect for difference, for human freedom, a commitment to lifelong growth, and to serving others.

You'll take the astounding body of knowledge you have mastered in your four years here, but more than knowledge, you will take a way of approaching the world--inquisitively, critically, with empathy, ever curious and open to stories others have to tell.

You've developed here, I hope, in the company of a great variety of fascinating women from a great variety of backgrounds the genuine interest in other perspectives out of which learning occurs. Please hold your minds open, always, to radical encounters with those who are other than you.

That leads me to the last--and perhaps most important--of the sensibilities I see you taking from your experiences here. It is also a vital part of the legacy you leave. In struggles we've had this year over authority and decision-making, the larger claim I've heard you asserting is the claim of community. And that claim reconnects us to our deepest roots.

Going back to the Greeks, higher education has been about a particular kind of interaction--a special kind of intellectual community that makes ethical demands: honesty, openness to alternative views, humility, responsibility for one's truth claims and for a systematic form of self critique.

There was a time when a college like Wellesley could depend for its ties of community on personal relationships and tacit understandings about the workings of the social world. But as we become an increasingly diverse, cosmopolitan, and inclusive intellectual community that prizes, welcomes, and thrives on difference, we cannot assume the conformity and homogeneity on which a system of unspoken rules depends.

Nor is it fair to privilege some groups (the keepers of the tacit rules) and leave others on the margins, trying to figure them out. A commitment to learning from difference requires that we negotiate openly our expectations and disagreements, that we engage in the frank and extended debates--the fruitful conflicts--that can produce a clearer alignment around common goals, objectives, and values.

So ... one way to understand the struggles that are occuring in our time is as healthy evidence of communities reaching out for new connections, defining new kinds of accountability in a period of rapid change.

Having led that process as seniors, you now leave Wellesley with a fuller sense of your own capacities as agents of change, your own responsibilities to make a difference in the world--and not only for yourselves--your own deeper appreciation of the complexities and ambiguities of a "common good."

This work of forging unity out of pluralism will be the defining task of your generation. It is demanding work, high-stakes work, and what I would ask of you is to find the best in others--always--forgive their mistakes, and, yes, forgive yourselves for mistakes you will surely make.

Even as you undertake the serious work of fostering change, I hope you won't take yourselves too seriously. In that spirit, I want to leave you to ponder the fate of the world's smartest woman.

Four passengers and a pilot are flying in a small airplane, with only three parachutes when the pilot suddenly drops dead of heart attack.

The first passenger, a lawyer, grabs the first parachute saying, "I'm a world-class lawyer and my clients depend on me. I have seminal work to do. I'm out of here." He jumps out of the plane.

A second passenger grabs the second parachute and announces: "I'm the world's smartest woman, admired all around the globe. My public needs me as a shining symbol of women's liberation. I must be off." And she exits.

The remaining two passengers, a priest and a Boy Scout, look at one another and the priest says: "Son, I've had a long life, with many gratifications. Your life lies before you. I insist that you take the last parachute."

"It's OK, father," the Boy Scout replies cheerfully. "There are still two parachutes. The world's smartest woman just jumped out of the plane wearing my backpack."

So as you set out on your travels, the balance you will have to strike is not to overestimate how smart you are, or how indispensable, but not to lose sight, either, of how truly remarkable and unstoppable you are.

Keep that balance and your sense of humor--your sense of whimsey and absurdity--and remember all you have learned and done in your four years here.

"You need only claim the events of your life to make yourself yours," Florida Scott Maxwell wrote: "When you truly possess all you are and have been, you are fierce with reality."

We are so proud of your accomplishments and so grateful for your contributions--for the ferocity of the reality you have brought to this place. We send you forth, now, ready to claim the events of your life.

You go with the pride of our institution, and with our great faith in your abilities, your instincts, your passion and your promise. We send you forth with that faith, with our admiration, our hopes, and our love--and with a parachute.

Good luck and soft landings to each and every one of you.