Does the archives represent Mount Holyoke College as a community?

Heather K. Superson

The archives represent Mount Holyoke as a community because they document the people who have belonged to the Mount Holyoke communities of the past. The archives have information on the former students, faculty and staff members who walked this campus before us. The archives document the communities of the past, and therefore represent Mount Holyoke as a community.       

Furthermore, the archives also represent events and important traditions which are unique to the college. Without record of these traditions, Mount Holyoke's past would die with those who experienced it and we would be unable to learn about and continue the important college traditions, which help create our community, that were started by former Mount Holyoke students.

Without the archives and the documents which tell about the college's past, Mount Holyoke wouldn't be as strong a community as it is today. The archives help sustain the Mount Holyoke community by educating us about the past of Mount Holyoke College and helping us keep traditions, as well as the original ideas and goals of the college, alive. Providing us, the current community at Mount Holyoke, with information about the past is another way in which the archives represent Mount Holyoke as a community. By educating us about the past of the college, the archives also allow the current Mount Holyoke community to build off the traditions of the past which in turn helps strengthen our present community.