Commencement Set for Sunday

Five hundred seniors are expected to graduate during Mount Holyoke's 164th commencement ceremonies Sunday, May 27. Ceremonies begin at 10:30 am in the Gettell Amphitheater.

Award-winning screenwriter and playwright Suzan-Lori Parks, who graduated with honors from the College in 1985 with a double major in English and German, will be the commencement speaker. Parks was a protégé of the late James Baldwin, and in 1989, at the age of twenty-six, was named the "year's most promising poet" by the New York Times. One year later, her play Imperceptible Mutabilities in the Third Kingdom won the Obie award for best new off-Broadway play.

Parks will receive the degree of doctor of arts. Also receiving honorary degrees will be Rita Rossi Colwell, director of the National Science Foundation; Susan D. Kare '75, a computer illustrator and interface graphic designer who created the widely recognized Macintosh computer icons; Om Dutta Sharma, a New York City taxicab driver who used his earnings to establish a school for girls in his native India; Ruth J. Simmons, president of Smith College, who was recently chosen to lead Brown University; and Jean Taylor '66, an acclaimed teacher and scientist. Lena Kay Zuckerwise '01 has been chosen by the senior class to speak on behalf of her classmates.
As in years past, commencement activities will begin days before the event. Receptions, open houses, worship services, fireworks, and a chance to chat with "Mary Lyon," in the person of storyteller Kate Carney MA '58, are some of the scheduled events. Among the most cherished traditions are the laurel chain ceremony, scheduled for 9 am Saturday, May 26, at Mary Lyon's grave, and the canoe sing, to be held on the same day at 10:30 pm on Lower Lake.

Parks has tackled subjects that include racism, homelessness, and sexual hypocrisy in her avant-garde plays. In addition to Imperceptible Mutabilities, she has written Betting on the Dust Commander (1985), Pickling (1989), The Death of the Last Black Man in the Whole Entire World (1990), Devotees in the Garden of Love (1992), The America Play (1993), Venus (1996), and In the Blood (1999). She is currently working on the screenplay for Hoopz, a Disney musical about the Harlem Globetrotters. Vogue magazine notes that Parks has "burst through every known convention to create a new theatrical language, like a jive Samuel Beckett, while exploding American cultural myths and stereotypes along the way."