500 EXPECTED TO RECEIVE DEGREES AT MOUNT HOLYOKE COLLEGE'S 164th COMMENCEMENT

For immediate release
May 21, 2001

500 EXPECTED TO RECEIVE DEGREES AT MOUNT HOLYOKE COLLEGE'S 164^th COMMENCEMENT

Obie award-winning playwright Suzan-Lori Parks to deliver address in morning ceremonies.

SOUTH HADLEY, Massachusetts—Five hundred seniors are expected to graduate during Mount Holyoke's 164^th commencement ceremonies Sunday, May 27. Ceremonies begin at 10:30 AM in 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.

Lena Zuckerwise has been chosen by the senior class to speak on behalf of her classmates. Zuckerwise, a politics major with a self-designed minor in theories and practices of discrimination, wrote her senior thesis on democratic legitimacy in the European Union. She is from New York City.

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, 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, an acclaimed teacher and scientist.

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, are among 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.

Commencement speaker 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 she 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."