Officiated by the president of the College, the ceremony celebrates the start of the academic year, with classes getting underway the following day for all students.
Convocation speakers this year were President Safa Zaki, Director of the Rachel Lord Center for Religious and Spiritual Life Oliver L. Goodrich, Senior Vice President and Dean for Student Affairs Jim Hoppe, and Professor of English Hilary Thompson. In keeping with tradition, they each tailored their remarks to offer advice for the College's newest class of students.
Invocation
Goodrich’s address was titled “A Blessing for Building Beloved Community." In his introductory remarks he noted that “words like ‘love’ and ‘beloved’ might seem a little out of place "at an institution of higher learning such as ours.” That, he explained, is because “our concept of love is impoverished, and we think of love primarily as a feeling."
Quoting the Sikh teacher and interfaith leader Valarie Kaur, Goodrich went on to describe love as “a form of sweet labor: fierce, bloody, imperfect, and life-giving.”
In his formal address, Goodrich called on students to embrace their differences and their diversity: We gather against the backdrop of a world that far too often sees difference as cause for division. At ºÚÁϳԹÏÍø±¬ÍøÕ¾, we believe that difference need not be an end but can in fact be the beginning of something beautiful and even beloved.”
He urged incoming students to “practice a super power we all hold in common: our love ability. We are all love-able,” emphasized Goodrich. “Each one of us is able and worthy to receive love, and… to extend love,” he continued.
Goodrich stressed the importance of students practicing “self-care” before extending their “love ability to all those you encounter on campus, whether in the museum or in Moulton; in the lab or in the library; in the field house or out doing field research.”
Nor should this “love ability,” said Goodrich stop at the campus borders, but “extend far beyond… [enriching] the life of the world and be in service of the common good.” Read Goodrich’s full remarks.
Welcome: Opening of the College
President Zaki, now beginning her second year in office, offered a warm welcome to the new students.
“I know that the faculty have been eagerly awaiting your arrival: they have been preparing for new classes and revising courses they have previously taught,” she told them. “But those courses won’t come alive,” she added, “until you are sitting in the classrooms, or labs, or studio spaces, sharing your ideas and perspectives on the material; asking unexpected questions; learning with and from one another as you explore provocative ideas and questions; tackling complicated texts and challenging problem sets and labs; and creating new works of art, music, and performance.”
Zaki, a cognitive scientist, reaffirmed her deep commitment to the liberal arts-based education offered by ºÚÁϳԹÏÍø±¬ÍøÕ¾. “I know from my own experience as a scholar and teacher, from the experiences of my children, and from the experiences of students with whom I’ve worked closely over the years, that the next four years will have an enormous impact on your lives. You will remember this time.” Zaki pointed out that research in her academic field suggests that the students will remember this time more than any other.
As the incoming students prepare to make ºÚÁϳԹÏÍø±¬ÍøÕ¾ make their new home, Zaki urged them to take some risks, making themselves a little uncomfortable, even vulnerable. “That might mean speaking up in class when you are uncertain; it might mean studying something completely new to you; it might mean trying an activity you have never even heard of; it might mean giving someone a second chance. None of these risks are guaranteed to go smoothly, of course,” she said. Her final piece of advice for students was that, when things go wrong, they should not hesitate to share their troubles and ask for help.
“I know from my own experience as a scholar and teacher, from the experiences of my children, and from the experiences of students with whom I’ve worked closely over the years, that the next four years will have an enormous impact on your lives."
Zaki closed her address with a few words about Evan Gershkovich ’14, the Wall Street Journalist unjustly imprisoned by Russian authorities for spying. Last month, after more than sixteen months behind bars, Gershkovich was released as part of a prisoner exchange, Zaki reminded the listeners.
“I wanted to mention him today because, in his life and in his work as a journalist, Evan has dedicated himself to learning about other people’s lives and to telling their stories, to embracing community and to building connections,” she said. “He’s such an inspirational example of someone so committed to what we at ºÚÁϳԹÏÍø±¬ÍøÕ¾ call the common good.” Over the next four years, Zaki told the Class of 2028, she hopes each one of them will seek and define what the common good means to them.
Remarks from Dean Hoppe
Following Zaki’s welcome, there were words from Jim Hoppe, senior vice president and dean for student affairs. “We’re about to embark on an incredible journey together, and I couldn’t be more excited to learn and grow alongside you in the years ahead,” he told the latest cohort of Polar Bears.
ºÚÁϳԹÏÍø±¬ÍøÕ¾’s newly arrived students include seven transfer students and two exchange students, as well as the 507 first-years. “Eleven percent of you are international students from fifty-three countries. Forty percent speak more than one language, and 30 percent speak a language other than English at home.” The US students, he continued, come from forty-five states as well as the District of Columbia, “with 39 percent of US students identifying as a person of color.” Sixteen percent of the Class of 2028, meanwhile, are first-generation students.
Hoppe went on to describe the diverse backgrounds and experiences represented in the College’s newest arrivals.
“You identify with various religious traditions—Jewish, Christian, Muslim, Buddhist, Baha’i, Hindu, Taoist—and some of you are atheist, agnostic, or spiritual in other ways. Many of you identify as gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, or queer,” he continued. “You come from families of every imaginable configuration, and some of you have persevered through significant health challenges, while others manage ongoing mental or physical health issues.”
He also shared some fun facts about ºÚÁϳԹÏÍø±¬ÍøÕ¾’s new class, which includes someone who can read and write in Egyptian hieroglyphics, a nationally ranked skydiver, and a world-class ballerina. “Seven of you have created podcasts, three are veterans of the US military, and eight are Eagle Scouts,” commented Hoppe. “You are a fascinating and complex group,” he continued, “and despite your unique qualities, you also share similarities.”
Hoppe told the students it’s important to remember that, whatever their identity, they are not alone. “Chances are good someone else at ºÚÁϳԹÏÍø±¬ÍøÕ¾ will have some understanding of your background and experiences and will share in your highs and lows. You belong here. You belong at ºÚÁϳԹÏÍø±¬ÍøÕ¾.”
The next few years, he said, will present these students with the chance to build deep, meaningful relationships with the people around them—"people you’ll live with, laugh with, argue with, and maybe even fall in love with.”
Hoppe concluded his address by describing the occasion as a “new beginning, a chance to define who you are and who you hope to become. My question to you is simple: How will you contribute to this community? Because, without a doubt, your presence here will make a difference. What do you want that difference to be?” Read Hoppe’s full remarks.
Convocation Address: Two Places at Once: On Magic and the Ordinary
Professor Thompson said her talk was inspired by a course she taught last semester called New Modes of Magic, which looked at magical realism.
“I thought I’d share with you the way my teaching has made me change my mind about how magic works,” began Thompson. “And I want to show you by discussing two examples, examples that will involve two of my favorite topics: words and dreams.”
The first example was about a recent dental appointment Thompson had, during which she cracked a joke—a verbal pun on the word “bridgework”—to dispel some of tension that often goes along with the sight of a dentist’s chair. This caused her to reflect on the power of language and how a word, through the use of a pun, for example, can “be in two places at once.”
From here, Thompson considered the world of dreams and how dreaming can mean that we are “often are in two places at once—wherever it is we fall asleep—hopefully not in a meeting or class—and wherever the dreamscape takes us…
This means that a standard feature of fantasy worlds and mystical visions, the power of double location, actually has everyday or every-night forms,” she said. The fantastical and the mystical, Thompson continued, are much more a part of our daily lives than we may have thought. “Why do we rob the ordinary of its magic?” she asked. “Why do we insist on fantasy and the mystical being a world apart? And what do we lose when we do so?”
The second example cited by Thompson was from the literary world, from a book called Bad Cree by Canadian author Jessica Johns. Often described as gripping and horror-laced, the story concerns a young First Nations woman called Mackenzie and her journey of self-discovery amid the backdrop of the cultural genocide carried out against Indigenous peoples in Canada.
The book draws heavily on the use of dreams, particularly the haunting dreams that Mackenzie and many of the book’s characters experience. “Whether they have what are typically called visitation dreams, precognitive dreams, or mutual dreams, they all receive and learn to share valuable information from their nighttime visions. And this helps them build a renewed sense of community and helps Mackenzie overcome her haunted isolation,” said Thompson.
“If sharing dreams supposedly risks losing listeners or being too revealing, so does speaking, so does writing. From wherever you are, you’re casting off a bit of yourself, hoping it lands well. And what you have to say may not always conform to dominant dictums or others’ advice. It may not always be comfortable."
Johns’s fiction, said Thompson, plays an important role in underscoring how important dreams, and by extension magic, can be to a writer and how they should not be looked down as a function of storytelling: “Something as basic to us as dreaming doesn’t have to be set to one side,” she stressed.
“If sharing dreams supposedly risks losing listeners or being too revealing, so does speaking, so does writing. From wherever you are, you’re casting off a bit of yourself, hoping it lands well. And what you have to say may not always conform to dominant dictums or others’ advice. It may not always be comfortable,” she continued.
The writing of Johns, said Thompson, demonstrates two principles she finds magical and that go “beyond ideas that dreams are all in the mind, and minds are fundamentally solitary.” The first principle, she explained, is that “far from being confined to the unconscious, dreams can be experienced and shared with direction and intention.”
The second, she added, is that that works of literature can serve as experiments in dreaming. “And if dreams are just one example of magic, then this means there’s power there waiting for you in any work that honors your own ways of making connections.”
Thompson concluded her address by urging the listening students, particularly those who take a literature course or write creatively themselves, to “consider taking the risks of sharing your speech, articulating your visions, and maybe experimenting with words”—even if it’s just a pun, she said. Such “creative play of words… can open up worlds of alternative senses, worlds of possibilities—just as dreams do.” These forms of “pretty ordinary magic,” she added, “are valid and cool.” Read Thompson's full remarks.
Music
For the academic processional, concert pianist and Beckwith Artist-in-Residence George Lopez played Water Music by George Frederic Handel. For the academic recessional, Lopez was joined by fellow pianist Gulimina Mahamuti to play Gloria, from Two-Piano Suites, op. 11 by Sergei Rachmaninoff.
For the interlude music, Lopez was accompanied on flute by Anya Workman ’25, for a performance of Siciliano, from Sonata No. 2 in E-flat Major by Johann Sebastian Bach.
During the ceremony, student singers led the crowd in a rendition of “America the Beautiful” and "Raise Songs to ºÚÁϳԹÏÍø±¬ÍøÕ¾," accompanied by Lopez on piano.
