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September 7,
2005
Welcome.
Welcome to the seniors, the class of 2006. You look marvelous in your hats!
Welcome to the juniors, the class of 2007. Some of you are abroad. Those who have
chosen to stay will have a particularly special year.
Welcome to the sophomores, the Class of 2008. You are the biggest class in recent
Smith history, and you are back in full force.
And welcome to the first-year students, the Class of 2009. There are 624 of you.
You come from 44 U.S. states, 26 countries outside of the United States, and 507
different high schools. You are the most diverse class that Smith has ever enrolled:
29 percent of you are women of color; 60 of you have a mother, a sister, or a grandmother
who attended Smith; and 19 percent of you are the first in your family to attend
college.
Welcome to the transfer students; there are 67 of you. This time, you got it right.
Welcome to the graduate students.
And, finally, welcome to the Ada Comstock Scholars. There are 63 new Ada students
this year, and you range in age from 24 to 65.
This is the 130th anniversary of Smith’s first convocation. On September 9,
1875, at quarter to nine in the morning, Smith College opened its doors, with 14
first-year students and four faculty members. The students had to pass rigorous entrance
examinations in seven subjects including Latin and Greek. That sounds harder than
the SATs.
Contemporaries felt that the new college was demanding too much of its students.
A prominent professor at the Yale Divinity School, Dr. Leonard Bacon, told Laurenus
Clark Seelye, the college’s first president, that he was concerned that Smith
students were suffering cases of brain fever every week because of the college’s
effort to educate women to know as much as men. The president of Harvard has recently
expressed similar concerns; perhaps he’s been consulting Leonard Bacon.
Smith’s founders were emphatic that they did not want the college to be built
on the model of a seminary, as Mount Holyoke was. Were they to see tonight’s
gathering, I don’t think there’s any danger that they would confuse the
college with a seminary. They wanted Smith to be part of the town, and this desire
led to the creation of the house system -- or the cottage system as it was called
in those days -- in which students lived in houses, very much like family houses,
the first of them, Dewey House, purchased from a Northampton citizen.
Smith’s founders adopted this plan because they wanted the graduates of the
new college to have a strong sense of service to the community. In 1900, at the college’s
25th anniversary celebration, President Seelye praised the graduates of Smith for
what they had contributed to society. This is what he said: “As writers, teachers,
and successful workers in varied professions, alumnae have given abundant proof of
their intellectual attainments. Some of them have gone on as teachers and physicians
to foreign lands, and have rendered valuable and heroic services during the massacres
in Armenia and with the Red Cross corps during the wars in Greece and in Cuba. Many
of them have become important agents in charitable work. They have organized and
successfully maintained college settlements among the poor in our great cities. In
cooperation with the alumnae of other colleges, they have investigated some of the
most pressing social needs, and the best methods of satisfying them.”
We are all shocked and grieved by the devastation and loss in Louisiana and Mississippi
caused by Hurricane Katrina. We need to help the victims of this disaster recover.
So many of them are among the poorest in our society, afflicted by the double scourge
of racism and poverty. They have suffered a traumatic and crushing tragedy. I urge
each of you to give what you can. At this point, relief organizations are saying
donations of money are the greatest help. Every dollar counts. I know that groups
in our community are organizing fund-raisers. The United Way, in partnership with
the Hampshire Gazette, has set up a fund for victims, Lend-A-Hand. Staff Council
recommends that we contribute through this fund.
In connection with Katrina, I want to announce two events [taking place this week]:
an All-College Gathering of Remembrance, Prayer, and Action … and a faculty
panel, “What Lessons Can We Learn from this Disaster?”
In the coming weeks, the chapel will be forming a committee to plan ways for the
Smith community to join the relief and rebuilding efforts during January term and
spring break.
I urge that our service to the community extend throughout the year. This year, I
would like each house to design and carry out one community service project, whether
for the victims of Hurricane Katrina or for people in our own community. For the
house whose project makes the greatest difference to those it seeks to help, the
college will make a contribution, in your house’s name, to the charitable organization
of your choice. I will be giving you more details about this project in the coming
weeks, including ways houses can link to organizations in our community that need
help.
I also want to ask you to join in Smith’s efforts to promote a sustainable
environment. Like community service, sustainability has important roots in the college’s
history. The college’s founders believed strongly in the teaching power of
nature. We must use natural resources wisely and carefully, in order not to impoverish
the future. I have been very impressed with student activism in regard to clean energy
last year. Students initiated paperless month. Students circulated a petition supporting
the purchase of energy from renewable sources; the college ranked third in the nation
in the percentage of the student body supporting this initiative. The Green Team,
a coalition of faculty, staff, and students, has recommended many simple steps each
of us can take to reduce our energy consumption. We will be building a co-generation
plant on campus to reduce our green gas emissions and our use of energy. The new
building that we are constructing for engineering and the molecular sciences will
be a green building -- not in color, but in its use of energy -- and it will
contain a co-generation system, designed by our own engineering students, for which
we received funding this summer. This year, I will be working with students, faculty,
and staff to identify ways in which we can all save energy and help reduce our emission
of greenhouse gasses, and thereby reduce global warming and climate change.
I talk often about the Grécourt Gates, the gates in front of College Hall
that commemorate the work of the Smith College Relief Unit, who went to France in
1917 to help rebuild villages destroyed by the Great War. Those gates have seemed
a particularly powerful symbol in the past week, as we have watched a city within
our own borders, with important French roots, suffer an equally destructive and traumatic
event. I hope we can look back at that symbol in imagining ways the college now can
help the victims of Katrina.
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