Second Semester Launched with Messages from Clinton and Weld and Announcement of New Web Site and Lecture Series

Convocation ceremonies on January 29 took Mary Lyon's accomplishments as their theme, celebrating the bicentennial of her birth. President Joanne Creighton formally opened the second semester by announcing the creation of a new World Wide Web site honoring Lyon's life, and of the Mary Lyon Lecture Series, which will bring major speakers to campus.

The event was also marked by the recognition of seventeen student leaders and presentation of six other special student awards, and by an address about Mary Lyon by Ford Foundation Professor of History Joseph Ellis. In "The Founder and the Mountain," Ellis traced how this "deceptively gentle radical" managed to found our College during a major economic depression, in the face of intellectual trends against such a plan, with no personal wealth of her own, and did so a quarter century before anyone else attempted it. She had, he said, a "nonnegotiable agenda that defied authorities." Much as the Holyoke mountain range itself defies geologic logic by running east and west while nearly all other mountain chains run north and south, she bucked society's conventions, and prevailed.

<<< Greetings from Bill--President Creighton listens as Melinda Phelps '78, a representative of Congressman Richard Neal's office, reads the letter President Clinton sent to Mount Holyoke honoring Mary Lyon.

Accolades for Lyon arrived from off campus, too. President Bill Clinton and Governor William Weld both sent written statements praising her foresight in establishing Mount Holyoke. Melinda Phelps '78, a representative of Congressman Richard Neal's office, read the letter from President Clinton. It conveyed the president's warm greetings to the gathered crowd, and said that "Because of heroes like Mary Lyon, women today enrich every facet of our national life, excelling in professions once tacitly closed to them, and attaining ever greater heights of achievement. The 'new experiment' that Mary began with the founding of Mount Holyoke in 1837 has succeeded beyond even her highest hopes."

Massachusetts State Representative Nancy Flavin presented Governor Weld's proclamation naming February "Mary Lyon Month" throughout the Commonwealth. State Senator Stanley Rosenberg and Representative Shaun Kelly assisted in securing the month-long honor.

President Creighton announced a new World Wide Web site devoted to Mary Lyon. Now online at www.mtholyoke.edu/ marylyon, the Web site shares the story of Mary Lyon's struggles to open a women's institution at a time when higher education for women was unheard of, discusses her lasting influence on education for women, and shows what it was like to be female in Lyon's era.

Creighton also announced the new Mary Lyon Lecture Series, which will bring to campus leaders in significant fields "whose courage and conviction are reminiscent of Mary Lyon's." The opening event will be a February 16 lecture by journalist and civil rights pioneer Charlayne Hunter-Gault. She and the other speakers have in common, Creighton said, "dedication to the idea that one person's activities can make a difference."