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Another Year, But Not Just Another Rally Day
 In case some of you have forgotten,
or maybe you just never knew, Rally Day began at Smith College in 1876
as a reception honoring George Washington's birthday. It has since evolved
into a full day of celebration. And what a celebration it was this year,
with banners, balloons, hats, binoculars and the announcement of the winner
of the first Sophia Smith Award.
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- Smith College looked both ways as it held this year's Rally Day convocation
in February: back to the contribution of its founder, Sophia Smith, whose
200th birthday Smith has been celebrating in various ways since Rally Day
last year, and forward (with the mini-binoculars that were handed out to
the first 100 or so students who gathered for the convocation) to what
the next century might hold for the country's largest women's college.
Rally Day also marked the first occasion at which Smith seniors donned
their academic gowns.
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- Amid the festive balloons of Rally Day 1997, President
Ruth Simmons and President Emerita Mary Maples Dunn, who delivered the
keynote address, share a light moment.
- Mary Maples Dunn, former president of Smith and now director of Radcliffe
College's Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America, was the
keynote speaker for the convocation. Four alumnae were honored with Smith
College medals: Gwen Grant Mellon '34, whose life has been devoted to providing
medical and humanitarian care to the most underprivileged region of Haiti;
Helene Zimmermann Hill '50, a biomedical researcher whose specialty has
been in the area of the skin cancer melanoma; Carolyn Dineen King '59,
judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals in the Fifth Circuit, Texas; and Thelma
Golden '87, curator and director of branches at the Whitney Museum of American
Art in New York City.
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- Ruth Simmons is one of only five college presidents in the United States
to receive $150,000 in discretionary funds this year from the John S. and
James L. Knight Foundation as part of its newly established Presidential
Leadership Grant program.
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- Four of the grants went to presidents who have served for a number
of years at their institutions: Centre, Eckerd and Swarthmore colleges
and Denison University. The foundation's board, however, agreed that one
grant should recognize a newly appointed president "with strong promise
for future service at both the institutional and national levels."
Simmons was chosen as the recipient of that grant. The Knight Foundation
board noted "the significance of Simmons' personal journey to the
presidency of a traditionally elite Northeastern institution and the hope
inspired by her appointment that ability, vision and determination are
becoming primary qualifications for leadership."
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- The Presidential Leadership Grant program cited the leading role of
private liberal arts colleges in assuring the quality of undergraduate
education in the United States. Simmons acknowledged this focus in her
response: "The Knight Foundation is to be congratulated for recognizing
the distinctive role that private liberal arts colleges play in the larger
landscape of American higher education and for enabling a few fortunate
college presidents to undertake initiatives that might not otherwise be
possible. It is tremendously exciting for me to have received, quite unexpectedly,
this gift, and I will consider carefully how it can be used to support
Smith's historical mission and to enlarge its horizons for the new century."
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- Russian Professor A. Woronzoff-Dashkoff, a Smith study abroad adviser,
wanted to point out to NewsSmith readers that independent study abroad
opportunities are available in eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union.
He felt that our study abroad story in the last issue of NewsSmith incorrectly
implied that study abroad in those countries is not possible. He comments,
"Indeed, there is greater interest than ever in both semester and
year programs there and currently five students are spending the academic
year in Russia: two in St. Petersburg, one in Iaroslavl, one in Voronezh,
and one in Novosibirsk (Siberia)."
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- Woronzoff-Dashkoff adds, "While our official and long-standing
membership in the American Collegiate Consortium (ACC) ended last year,
two of our students are studying at ACC sites, and we plan to join a reorganized
ACC this year. Further, there are a number of additional programs with
which we cooperate, so that students can select from a wide choice of locations."
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- Chalk, carrot cake, apples and balloon bouquets, serving as surprise
thank-you tokens, were very much in evidence at Smith one day in December.
Part of a massive appreciation effort that was the brainchild of many students
and funded by the Student Government Association, the gifts were assembled
and distributed by about 10 students "who worked through the night,"
explains SGA President Amanda Gilman.
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- For faculty members, there were apples and chalk tied with ribbons,
and cards that conveyed messages like "Thank you for all you do for
us" and "You're cool." "Professors are always complaining
that they don't have chalk," Gilman says. "We think we got to
most of the faculty," she adds, "although Hatfield was a problem.
We didn't know where those mailboxes had gone, and we certainly hope no
professor who is on sabbatical comes back to find a rotten apple!"
(Hatfield Hall was "out of service" during much of the summer
and fall, undergoing a renovation that included the installation of an
elevator as well as major mechanical upgrades and a reconfiguration of
the interior to provide more usable space for students and faculty.)
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- For College Hall administrators, plates of carrot cake and apple cake
with thank-you notes were left in front of office doors. Bouquets of balloons
bearing words of appreciation for staff members were tied to stair rails
and doorknobs.
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- The idea arose in the context of offensive drawings placed on two student
message boards on the first weekends of October and November, says Gilman.
As the first weekend in December approached, a number of students decided
to undertake something "proactively positive," she says. "In
trying to understand who we are as a community, we need to realize that
there is much that is very positive that needs to be recognized and appreciated."
This, explains Gilman, was a way to say thank you.
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- Two Smith women, one a current student and one a recent alumna, have
received prestigious international awards. Joanna Slater of Toronto, a
senior at Smith, is the recipient of a Luce Scholarship, and Angela Lwiindi
Leila Hassan, a native of Zambia who graduated from Smith in 1994, has
been awarded a Rhodes Scholarship.
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- The Rhodes Scholarship, the oldest international fellowship, provides
for two years of study, sometimes renewable for a third year, at Oxford
University in England. The Luce Scholarships, for outstanding young women
and men who wish to have an intensive experience in Asia and who would
not, during the normal course of their careers, expect to have such exposure,
offer a year of study, work and travel in East Asia.
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- Slater's interest--and experience--is exceptionally well defined for
someone who has not yet graduated from college. Over the past several years,
she has held summer internships in the Canadian bureau of the Washington
Post and at Harper's magazine; at the Paris bureau of Newsweek; and with
the Daily Hampshire Gazette, the daily newspaper in Northampton. A comparative
literature major at Smith, she has extensive ties to the college; her grandmother,
mother and aunt are all Smith graduates.
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- In a recent postcard mailed from Zimbabwe, where she is visiting family,
Hassan told Smith senior Yewande James of Guyana that she is planning to
get her Ph.D. in development economics at Oxford. Hassan was a sociology
major at Smith.
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- "These awards are an indication of the talent and intelligence
of Smith students, and a testament to the mentorship of outstanding faculty.
We are exceedingly proud of what Joanna Slater and Angela Hassan have accomplished,"
said President Ruth Simmons.
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