Alumnae Leadership Council
October 15, 2000

Diana Chapman Walsh
President
Wellesley College

This is the 77th annual Alumnae Leadership Council. Congratulations to the Wellesley College Alumnae Association, particularly the board and staff.

Phew … it's been a full week on campus. How many were at the campaign launch Thursday night? It was quite a party. Even if you weren't there, you've had a chance to see tower lit at night, banners and to feel the energy.

It has been a high-energy fall, starting with our 125th anniversary celebrations. In early September we had a birthday bash culminating with fireworks - borrowed from reunion last year.

There are exhibits on display of main floor of Clapp Library: Highlights from Wellesley's Past-photos, documents, significant moments through history of college: opening day in 1875, the great fire of 1914, photos of students helping with war effort in the 1940s, the debate over co-education in '70s and over investments in South Africa in '80s. There's another exhibit on 125 years of athletics at Wellesley.

On the CWIS, the campus website, there are two on-line exhibits, also prepared by Archives: (1) 125 years of dorm life, a photo essay; (2) Wellesley traditions, including Flower Sunday, hoop rolling, Junior Show, and step singing, among others. And an ongoing project this year, the person of the week on the 125th anniversary web page. We've highlighted 20 people so far, alumnae and non-alums, faculty and staff, women and men.

Some Alumnae Achievement Award winners (those who are deceased) are on banners lining the roadway. Women who did change the world, inspiring women who will (like the alumnae parade). The achievement awards are a WCAA program and a wonderful one. I have stories about two of them-two of the three I had a chance to meet before they died. They are emblematic for me of what Wellesley is all about.

I met Virginia Foster Durr '25 on Martha's Vineyard. She was a great lady. She often told the story of an experience at the dinner table at Wellesley College that set into motion her transformation from a self-described "deep-dyed Southern bigot" to an activist, organizer and leader in the civil rights movement. In 1922, as a sophomore, Virginia Foster was faced with the college's "rotating tables" policy, which required students to eat meals at tables with random groups of fellow students, including African Americans. When she protested, her Head of House said she could choose between abiding by the policy or withdrawing from the College. This daughter of an Alabama Presbyterian minister chose to stay at Wellesley, and then dedicated her life to the cause of racial justice. It was she who posted bail for Rosa Parks.

Margery Stoneman Douglas '12 is another. She was awarded the medal of honor at a White House ceremony at age 103. The Supreme Court justices were there because Thurgood Marshall was honored posthumously. She was sending the medal to Wellesley for her 104th birthday in Miami. There was a piece missing. Our Archives thought I had lost it. A couple of years later, when her estate being sorted out, the missing piece came to us. She had a generosity of spirit, an attention to detail, and stunning stamina. In her acceptance speech she mentioned not being someone who wakes up every morning looking for something to do for the college.

You are the people who do wake up, if not every day, then at least some days asking yourselves how you can help Wellesley … and for that we are eternally grateful. I hope we gave you a little something back this weekend. The goals of WCAA are to inspire, motivate, and empower alumnae in their roles for the College.

I hope you've enjoyed yourselves, reconnecting with old friends, making new ones (as Wellesley women always do), becoming re-energized for the work you're taking up for the College. And for your taking up of Wellesley's work-in its many manifestations--I can't thank you enough; it makes all the difference, this work you do for us, more than you may know.

Perhaps you've even had this weekend a few fleeting encounters with your former selves (I hope so): an ancient and vivid memory, a wave of nostalgia, or a new flash of insight into who it is you once were, or who it is you have become-or are becoming. It's hard for students to believe, I sense, how much we old timers keep growing and changing throughout our lives. But we know it's true, and that's part of what makes these gatherings meaningful.

Wellesley's year is off to a fine start, as I hope you've had a chance to see for yourselves. Celebrating a milestone anniversary with panache turns out to be a terrific way to open a new academic year on an upbeat note. Spirits on campus have been uncommonly high all fall.

And the trustees left in high spirits on Friday, after a meeting at which they reviewed a $366 million jump in the endowment this year (from $887 million on 6/30/99 to $1.253 billion on 6/30/00), launched our new $400 million campaign with not-one-but-two $25 million gifts (Lulu and Tony Wang and the Shelby Cullom Davis Foundation) and a full $184 million already in hand; and discussed a number of exciting projects that are underway (examples of why we need $400 million more; why one and a quarter billion isn't enough, as hard as that is to comprehend) …

· Planning for the campus center (Lulu's gift);

· Study of summer uses of the campus;

· Good progress in implementing new academic initiatives: internships and experiential learning; global education; technology for teaching and learning (thinking a lot about what the Internet revolution means for Wellesley);

· Progress on the landscape master plan (isn't it looking good?);

· Pendleton East renovation and Social Science Center (Knapp);

· Another strong admissions year-but can never let down our guard there. Financial aid funds are so crucial.

All the vital signs that trustees watch are exceedingly healthy right now. College is as strong as it has ever been. Alumnae giving participation is up from 48% to 53%. I want to thank Nancy Braitmeier, the recent Annual Giving chair, and the WCAA.

I did mention at the Campaign Leadership Conference yesterday that trumpeting a record-breaking campaign goal on Friday the 13th as the Middle East was going up in flames and the stock market was going south was evidence that we are neither superstitious nor faint-hearted. We did set the five-year timeline in part to allow for ups and downs, and we know there will be both. It would have been nicer, though, to have waited a little longer for the first big downer, but, oh well.

A propos of the campaign, those of you who were here at Council last year know that I've been fussing about the fact that so much of the lexicon of fund raising draws on a language of war.

Last year, as I began focusing more seriously on a question that's been on my mind--who I might be as the leader of the next campaign for Wellesley-I started to notice some of the unspoken, but potent, assumptions that structure the way such activities are generally construed. When you begin to examine critically the conceptual systems that govern the fund raising efforts of non-profit organizations, it really is striking how much of the thinking is couched in war talk (or sports talk derivative of war talk).

· We launch a "campaign" when we have our "strategies" and "tactics" lined up (strategies, we secretly hope, that will defeat our competitors).

· We assemble a "war chest" and we're careful to "keep some powder dry."

· We structure internal contests (mini-battles)-between donors, classes, regions-complete with banners, flags, cheers, and marching songs. We have our front-line battalions and our headquarters staff.

· We "target" our solicitations and hope we won't be shot down.

· And when I go off to greet the troops, the talking points the staff give me are called my "bullet" points.

· In our (very legitimate) desire to "rally the troops" and attack the target, we hope that the campaign won't assume a life of its own (as the Pentagon does); we hope it will remain only a means to a larger end.

The problem is that the metaphor of war, so pervasive in our culture, is far more than a linguistic trope. It organizes our thoughts, structures our actions, defines our reality. Metaphors do that.

And therein lies my dilemma. As I've grown in this role as Wellesley's 12th president, I've become increasingly clear that what I want to be offering is a leadership of peace. I won't take the time to develop that now … maybe at a future alumnae summer symposium.

So that's where my head had been-incubating this metaphor of peace-as we prepared to engage in a war-like campaign. And-in my usual way when I'm worrying about something I enlisted everyone else in worrying this through with me-staff and volunteers. They came up with various lovely alternatives and, I believe, a very different approach to the campaign than one commonly sees. Our campaign is a celebration-of Wellesley's past and Wellesley's future. It's a journey of discovery that we will be taking together. I hope you will agree with me, when you get your copy of the blueprint, that the materials the Resources Office has developed for the campaign are unique and really creative.

All of this has been unfolding slowly and somewhat serendipitously as new inspirations have come to us. I spoke at Council last year about a visit I had from a Buddhist monk that offered me one alternative vision of how to think about the campaign-as a king of pilgrimage. We've talked about gardening, and seasons and cycles-organic metaphors to replace industrial ones.

At one point we were referring to the opening event-the dinner on Thursday night--as the campaign "kick-off," as if it were the beginning of a five-year football game. (Sounded exhausting). But then we began calling it a "launch," a term that crept into the planning lexicon before we were aware of the synchronicity with our alumna Pamela Melroy's scheduled launch into outer space. As it turned out the timing was perfect.

For those who may not know, Pam Melroy, class of 1983, is the pilot of the shuttle Discovery. She was scheduled to take off last week but because of various factors, was delayed several times. Several of our faculty -- two of whom, Dick French and Wendy Bauer, taught Pam during her Wellesley years -- went to Florida only to return after the delays. A group of about 40 of us gathered in the observatory to watch the launch -- students, faculty, staff, including several young girls who sat in the front row, enraptured -- along with a local TV crew who filmed our reactions. We were able to replay the launch on the big screen in field house at end of evening of our campaign launch celebration, while the Wellesley Widows led us in "America the Beautiful." There were laser lights and confetti to top it all off. It was quite a liftoff for our campaign - a campaign of exploration and discovery, not of war, and yet requiring the discipline, commitment, intelligence, teamwork, and courage that a space mission requires.

We set out on this adventure with a combination of the satisfaction and excitement-and even with a little of the edge--that Pam Melroy must have felt waiting to be shot into space.

We're mindful that we have hard work to do-that we can't take anything for granted. We can't really know what is in store for us, what the specific challenges will be. I know we can assume that there will be challenges.

We're mindful of how personal and profound-and also how particular-the sense of gratitude is as we advance in this work. Sitting in a group, looking around the room, knowing that everyone here has given generously of herself to this College. We are so grateful for the partnerships-and the friendships-that I know will ground, nourish and sustain us through this great adventure.

I know our friendships will deepen as we take up this work together, celebrate the triumphs, absorb the setbacks, and experience, together, the great pleasure of seeing our dreams for Wellesley actualized, step-by-step--as we complete some of the big projects that the campaign will allow us to actualize.

As we see the plans take shape, they will give us a glimpse of the legacy we can leave. What greater privilege for us mortals than to have the chance to create something of value that will outlive us all.

At the campaign launch on Thursday night, Frank Bidart, professor in Wellesley's English Department and a nationally-recognized poet, read three poems on a theme he has been exploring, the theme of "making."

"We are creatures who need to make [he said].… Making is the mirror in which we see ourselves. … In the United States at the end of the 20th century, the greatest luxury is to live a life in which the work that one does to earn a living, and what one has the appetite to make, coincide-by a kind of grace are the same, one."

And so … in this beautiful setting, rich with history and alive with possibility, with the world exploding around us and our own Pamela Melroy orbiting the earth, I am so grateful to have this luxury-this gift of grace--to be here, now in this place, with these partners (all of you) possessed of the rare opportunity to make something enduring, something that will make a difference and will outlive us all. It's hard to think of a greater privilege or satisfaction than that. Thanks so much for your help. I hope it will give you as much pleasure as this work is giving me.

Mary Ann Hilll mhill@wellesley.edu
Office for Public Information
Last Modified: October 26, 2000