Zuckerwise '01 to Speak on Students' Behalf

Don’t expect to hear Lena Kay Zuckerwise '01 talk about her preparations for facing "the real world" when she speaks at commencement on Sunday. As far as she’s concerned, the real world is where she has been for the past four years. "The real strength of this school is its incredible, limitless plurality of students," says Zuckerwise, this year’s student commencement speaker. "This is one of the most real worlds I can imagine coming to."

Zuckerwise, a politics major with a self-designed minor in theories and practices of discrimination, followed her interest in issues of social justice while at the College. She has served on a Five College committee on issues of civil liberty and public policy, and was an elected representative to the Student Government Association Committee Against Discrimination. She also organized and ran a jazz and political news show on WMHC, the College’s radio station, during 1998 and 1999.
In the world outside Mount Holyoke, Zuckerwise has worked on behalf of underprivileged pupils, as a coordinator with a public nonprofit education advocacy agency in her native New York City, and as a tutor for inner-city students in Holyoke, Massachusetts. She also interned at the Scottish parliament in Edinburgh during her junior year and wrote her senior thesis on democratic legitimacy in the European Union. She intends to return to Europe in 2002 to pursue a graduate degree that focuses on the political economy of the European Union. "I'm hoping ideally to pursue a career in international law looking at transnational organizations where European law would be involved," Zuckerwise says.

Zuckerwise described herself as "awed and nervous and excited" by the prospect of Sunday's festivities. "I feel very lucky to have the chance to do this," she said of her selection as the senior class commencement speaker. "In a way, this is going to be the best closure I could ask for. I’m so completely in love with Mount Holyoke, and I’m so glad to be able to formally thank the community at the end of my time here."