Wisdom of elders, mentors and trailblazers of color
Sophomore Destiny Pond ’28 was one of the organizers of this year’s Trailblazers of Color Leadership Conference at Mount Holyoke; its theme was “When Wisdom Speaks.”
Elders, even those with whom I’ve never met, have played a pivotal role in who I am. I meet them through stories, smiles and strips of photos. Some notable elders in my life are my mother, brother, neighbors and older adults I have met. One elder of whom I think fondly is Ms. Ruffin, the founder of a camp I attended when I was younger. She constantly instilled a need to be excellent in whatever we did. Whether it was martial arts; art; science, technology, engineering and math; humanities; or anything else we pursued, it was always,“Good, better, best, never let it rest until your good is your better and your better is your best.” This is a quote she always made the children in camp say, alongside a speech about being a person of character. The biggest takeaway I’ve had from my elders’ teachings was the importance of community.
My upbringing made me strive to build and maintain community on campus, so I joined organizations like the Students of Color Committee (SOCC), the Mount Holyoke African and Caribbean Student Association and Dreamscape Diaries. SOCC has been one of the best organizations I’ve joined. The organization aims to aid and support students of color through holding open houses, supporting organizations and planning the Hortense Parker Celebration and the Trailblazers of Color Leadership Conference (TOCLC). SOCC prides itself on uplifting voices of color and providing opportunities to network beyond just Mount Holyoke, extending it to the broader South Hadley–Springfield–Holyoke community. The TOCLC provides one of the many times where this connection is highlighted. The TOCLC is an annual conference for students of color to network, experience different workshops, such as vogueing (my personal favorite), wellness and financial literacy, and see amazing performances.
I am honored to be the person writing about this year’s TOCLC theme, “When Wisdom Speaks.” We emphasized the importance of hearing the stories and words of our elders who blazed the trail for us. Through this theme, we hoped to inspire students to keep taking action and writing things down to preserve our stories as future elders. For the opening plenary, President Danielle R. Holley was unable to be in attendance, but we had Student Government Association President Nathania Amadi ’26 open the conference with an amazing speech on storytelling and its importance in this political climate. We had Dr. Carolyn Jefferson-Jenkins, an activist and the first Black woman to serve as the President for the League of Women Voters, as our keynote speaker. I am not calling Jefferson-Jenkins an elder because of her repeated disliking of it. Her candidness allowed for open communication and inspired all students and staff alike at the TOCLC; even in the VIP meet and greet, she took time to uplift students and urge them to persist to ascend to greater heights and enter spaces they never would have dreamed of before.
Jefferson-Jenkins employs a sense of humor in her speech and can be described as a storyteller. She doesn’t give direct, clear instructions on how to be like her, yet she implores people to use her story as a guide for their own careers. A key idea I took from listening to her was to break through barriers that are either self-imposed or created against you; that is how you gain resources and network properly. In addition, it is pivotal that we care for our community and, most importantly, ourselves. “You may not be into politics, but politics is into you,” she said. We need to care about all that is going on in the world because until all of us are free, none of us is free.
