By Liz Lewis ’22
Publisher & News Editor
“This, Mount Holyoke, is not how Convocation is supposed to be,” said Mount Holyoke College President Sonya Stephens, addressing a virtual crowd on Monday, Sept. 7. “Or at least, it is not Convocation as we have known it.”
Mount Holyoke’s 183rd Convocation took place, as much of the semester has so far, over Zoom. As students virtually filtered in, photos of past Convocations and calls to “Make some noise for the class of 2021!” flashed across the screen. A short montage of photos submitted by students and other community members followed.
Convocation marks the College’s official welcoming of the class of 2024, represented by the blue lion, into the Mount Holyoke community. The College has yet to publicly release the annual set of statistics for the incoming class.
The program officially opened, as Convocation does every year, with a performance from the Five College West African Dance Ensemble. The drummers, all of whom were masked, were spaced several feet apart. Following the performance, Vice President for Equity and Inclusion and Chief Diversity Officer Kijua Sanders-McMurtry began with a land acknowledgment before speaking on the goals outlined by the new Anti-Racism Action Plan, which the College rolled out in the wake of this summer’s nationwide racial reckoning. “Every day, we must work towards building a world where the racial injustices that we’ve seen in the United States this year are behind us and we can finally eliminate the racial hierarchies that are ever-present,” Sanders-McMurtry said.
Next to speak was Chair of the Board of Trustees Karen Strella ’90. She was followed by Stephens, who began by acknowledging the visible difference between this Convocation and Convocation as it has always been.
Rather than seeing this event as a stripped-down version of the beloved tradition, Stephens urged students to allow traditions to evolve during these unprecedented times. “Engaging in Mount Holyoke traditions, like this one, is to ask how you might engage creatively with them, and to see in them the opportunities for our future and for our community,” Stephens said.
Much of Stephens’ speech revolved around the problem of how to approach tradition during this historical moment. Many traditions are impossible to recreate virtually, but beyond that, Stephens believes it is vitally important to view a shared past through a creative lens rather than a rigid one.
“Without rediscovery, without ... invention and reinvention, traditions do not live on or grow, and they become history rather than legacy,” Stephens said. “Interrogating our history and traditions opens up new possibilities and horizons.”
To Stephens, the Mount Holyoke community must continue an “examination and renewal of our most beloved traditions — to bring new vision to what we know, to bring new questions to the legacies of history and time, to reject certain kinds of traditionalism in order to renew tradition.” Stephens believes this historical moment requires a flexible outlook on tradition, routine and community. “Instead of perpetuating traditions through adaptations that diminish their experiential value, I challenge our class to build our own new ones,” she said. “Let’s create new ways of being members of the same community.”
This sentiment resonated with Michela Marchini ’22, a member of the virtual audience. Though Marchini thought the event was well-handled, she also acknowledged that some traditions “need to be on campus.”
“I think we [should] see if we can make new traditions that are more suitable for a virtual environment, [but] trying to force traditions into a space online makes them lose a lot of what’s special,” Marchini said.
Director of the Miller Worley Center for the Environment Olivia Aguilar was the next speaker. As a relative newcomer to the College, Aguilar empathized with those trying to orient themselves in the Mount Holyoke community for the first time. “Having only arrived here myself in January, and only being on campus just a couple of months before the world turned upside down, I can relate to those of you embarking on a new journey in such uncertain conditions,” she said. Still, Aguilar emphasized that the joy of learning in a community can transcend virtual boundaries. “We are here to learn together,” she said. “Not just about the disciplines, but to learn so that we may better serve. What a beautiful education to be a part of.”
Wendy Rua ’94 followed Aguilar with a speech in which she meditated on the line from “Alma Mater”: “Mount Holyoke forever shall be.” The spirit of Mount Holyoke, to Rua, can be found wherever there is community — “even if it’s over a Zoom screen.”
This sentiment was echoed by Maya Sopory ’22, president of the Student Government Association and the final speaker of the event. Sopory urged listeners to carry with them the “Mount Holyoke spirit of resilience and perseverance,” and to care for themselves and one another during this time.
“I firmly believe that Mount Holyoke is not just a physical place,” Sopory said. “It is the friends, staff and faculty that make it what it is.”