Commencement Speaker Suzan-Lori Parks '85 Advises Graduates to Listen to Voices from Within

Of all the voices that will offer advice, the most important is that one that comes from within, acclaimed playwright Suzan-Lori Parks '85 told the graduating class of 2001 during commencement exercises in Kendall Sports and Dance Complex.

Despite the drizzle that forced the exercises to be moved indoors for the second consecutive year, the mood was buoyant and festive. Approximately 3,000 friends and family members watched as the members of the class filed into Kendall field house for the 164th commencement on Sunday, May 27.

Four hundred and eighty-nine bachelor's degrees were awarded, in addition to two master's degrees and twenty-five international certificates. Parks, the commencement speaker, received an honorary doctorate, as did 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, the president of Smith College recently chosen to lead Brown University; and Jean Taylor '66, an acclaimed teacher and scientist.

"Sixteen years ago, I sat where one of you is sitting right now," said Parks, whose honors include a 1990 Obie award for her play Imperceptible Mutabilities in the Third Kingdom. "The class of 1985 was graduating. And we were lucky because we had a great poet speaking to us… . She spoke brilliantly and eloquently and to this day I have absolutely no memory of what she said. I don't remember one word of her brilliant speech that launched the class of 1985. Not one word.

"I want you to catch my drift—I'm not saying our speaker was boring. I'm saying that I don't remember what she said. But I do remember some words that went through my head at the very moment our speaker's words were passing by. It was a voice, coming from me, coming through my gut, a voice coming from my heart, and the voice said, 'Ah, Suzan-Lori Parks, the next degree you're going to receive is an honorary degree from Mount Holyoke College.' I really said that to myself. And here I am." "Whether my words today will be remembered is not the issue because, you see, what I'm saying to you right now isn't as important as what you are saying, right now, to yourselves," Parks said. Listening to the inner voice was one of sixteen "suggestions" Parks offered the graduating seniors. (Read the text of her address at http://www.mtholyoke.edu/offices/comm/oped/loriparks.shtml.)

Simmons, in accepting her honorary doctor of humane letters degree, congratulated her sister, Ozella Raymond, one of the graduating class's Frances Perkins Scholars. Raymond's years at Mount Holyoke "were difficult for me," Simmons deadpanned, "because she never forgets to remind me that [Mount] Holyoke is a much better college than Smith." The audience responded with laughter and applause.

Lena Kay Zuckerwise '01, the class speaker, spoke of her appreciation for "the gorgeous plurality that makes this College so brilliantly alive." Rather than striving to follow a single ideal, "We are all so profoundly different that any one of us can show you something new," Zuckerwise, of New York City, said.

Andrea Ayvazian, dean of religious life, delivered the opening, with welcoming remarks by College president Joanne V. Creighton. The closing was delivered by Shamshad Sheikh, chaplain to the College and adviser to the Muslim community.
The processional and recessional were performed by the University of Massachusetts Brass Quintet.