Does the archives represent Mount Holyoke College as a community?

Jessica M. Dupont

“Sunday night I went over and talked to the girl who worked at Commencement time on the stuff I’ll be doing this year. She gave me a few pointers, etc.” This passage taking from Mary Browning’s April 26th,1948 letter to her parents is just one example of how the community and life at Mount Holyoke has been somewhat continuities over the years. If there is not one accurate way to define what community is, a large portion of what makes a community is the traditions that are held within it. The archives do a wonderful part in helping to not only preserve this but create a deeper sense of community within us. As Bauman says, “The same finds itself in trouble the moment it’s conditions begin to crumble: when the balance between ‘inside’ and ‘outside’ communication, once skewed sharply towards the interior, gets more even, thereby blurring the distinction between ‘us’ and ‘them’.” (Bauman, p.13) It’s one thing to hear about past generations at Mount Holyoke and hear that they too shared the same rituals and traditions as we do, such as Mountain Day, Laurel Parade, M&C’s, but it is entirely another to actually read their shared experiences of these events. It is a way that allows us to connect to others in a unique way that can not exist any where else.

Yet in the same way it allows us to connect to others through shared experience, it also allows an outside view of the way a community functions in a certain space and time. Through the various materials provided by and kept in the Archives, researchers are allowed a birds eye view of what created a community in that time frame, and what common features with the past does our community share today. By being able to examine their letters and documents and getting insight into their struggles and triumphs, in many ways it allows us to look at the community we live in today through a more critical lens. Despite what we would like to think, are we all that different? The social pressures and dynamics that obviously existed between social groups for both finical reasons as well as ethnic ones created the community and environment of that time. While we would like to think in the modern year of 2004 these petty distinctions would no longer play a role in the way our community is constructed, this is not true. After all, isn’t hind sight 20/20? The woman that lived then didn’t see it as we don’t see the flaws in our community now.

So in essence, not only do the Archives represent Mount Holyoke as a community that spans time and generations, it also allows us to learn from the mistakes of the past to help to better our own lives.