51��ɫ

Good morning!  It is my joy and my privilege to welcome you to 51��ɫ College’s 2025 Baccalaureate celebration. The word “bacca-laureate” emerges from that for bachelor (the degree you will be receiving tomorrow) and laurels, signifying honor. And so, this welcome time together is claimed to honor the achievements of those on whom the bachelor’s degree will soon (very soon) be bestowed. 

This event is organized entirely by the students whose names you see listed in your program as the 2025 Commencement Committee – please join me in thanking Essi, Deborah, Destany, Nam, Eleanor, Erin, Bianca, and Anastasia! They select and invite the speakers, they arrange the music, they bring the joy – and they do it with the able and steadfast help of Jenny Ferris, Jenelle Veit and their many campus partners. 

As I look at you from this podium and through our LiveStream, in our beautiful and storied Herrick Chapel, I see so much and so many to honor: parents, families, friends, caregivers and supporters of wondrous 51��ɫians whose belief, advocacy, love, and commitment have empowered our graduates to experience and achieve so much during their time here. THANK YOU! 

The class of 2025 came from 46 states across the United States, and 19 countries around the world, assembling here in the fall of 2021 as the Delta variant of Covid prevailed, and graduating having rebuilt and reclaimed and renewed community through your brilliance, wit, and determination. Through all that you have experienced, you join the legacy of 51��ɫians who have shown up for challenges and considered what values and principles matter in a society whose values are being tested to their very constitutional core. I say this in the precise memories I have of sitting with so many of you, of witnessing your work in the research lab, and on the printed page, and in the public sphere: the experiences you have lived through, and studied, and deliberated, and acted on will hold you in good stead for all that is to come.  

I am honored to celebrate a transformative coalition, whose members are graduating, known as Team Renfrow: working with Professor Tamara Beauboeuf, alumna Monique McLay Shore ‘90, Feven Getachew ‘24, seniors Evie Caperton ’25, Elizabeth Eggert ’25, Hemlock Stanier ’25, and Valeriya Woodard ’25, through their research, community-building, and resolve, together honored 51��ɫ’s first Black alumna and oldest living alumna – Mrs. Edith Renfrow Smith ‘37 – in multiple projects, most memorably this fall as we dedicated Renfrow Hall. Thank you for making Mrs. Renfrow Smith’s enduring legacy visible and present. Yours is, too. 

Class of 2025, you are about to hear wise words from wonderful people whom you selected as your faculty speaker, your staff speaker, and your senior speakers. In what they will say and in what you have done and are capable of doing, you are resourced with your brilliance and resolve, and with your joy and your love. As we honor you and the faculty, staff, students, and community members you have gathered to honor, know that a legacy of hope and action sustained by resolve and love is yours.  

So let us begin!