Randolph College Commencement Address
Lynchburg, Virginia
May 11, 2008
Suzanne D. Patrick, R-MWC ‘77
President of the Senior Class Dani Hanson, Past President of Student Government Hillary Peabody, President Klein: thank you for the honor of helping to commemorate this historical moment as the last class of women graduates from this hallowed and deeply revered institution. And to the Class of 2008: few other days in your lives are likely to be as "all about you" as today. Thank you for choosing me to make this journey with you as you receive the diplomas marking this major milestone in your lives.
As a Class, you are resolute, composed, and tempered in ways unlike any other classes that preceded--or will follow--you. These qualities have made you stronger, more focused, and more disciplined as you have stretched your minds. The bonds of friendship with your fellow students and professors have also been forged and tested in epic circumstances and will be all the stronger because of the energy and passion you have invested in them. Of all that this College has given you, the most important gift of all are these lifelong friendships.
I would like to add a special welcome to the families of students who have come from faraway places in the world to share an iconic American rite of passage with us today. Nearly 35 years ago, my parents entrusted me to this institution and returned to a home an ocean away. Then, our only lifeline was my parents’ 142 letters—and mine in the self-addressed and stamped envelopes my Father sent three at a time in their letters. By the time I left here, nearly 400 letters must have made their way across the Atlantic between Lynchburg and a small town of comparable size in Germany. E-mail was a quarter century out in the future, and phone calls were way too expensive for anything but dire emergencies—which, I am pleased to report, the College successfully averted! President Quillian: job well done!
Then as now, an education that is global and cosmopolitan is nothing new here. Eleanor Truitt Weekes (R-MWC, Class of 1942) told me, "If you were a girl in Shanghai—especially if you were Methodist, there was only one college you would consider going to: Randolph-Macon Woman’s College."
For over a century now, young women have come to this campus on transcontinental trains, ocean liners, and then, international flights. Daisy Jenkins Fletcher (Class of 1950) even came from England on the original "Queen Mary!" And in 2000, Randolph-Macon Woman’s College was the first American college to educate a young woman from a Masai tribe in Kenya. Kakenya Ntaiya is now a doctoral candidate at the University of Pittsburgh intent on returning to her village to make a difference for other young women.
But the College today embodies internationalism in ways like no other small college in the United States. In addition to students from over 40 states, 12% of the student body is from 41 countries. The Class of 2008 has 5 citizens of Nepal, 3 from the Ukraine, and one each from India, Myanmar, New Zealand, Poland, Russia, Sri Lanka, and Vietnam.
In a Senior Seminar I attended this February, only two of the students were American—which certainly lent authenticity to our discussion about international human trafficking! For someone like me who has spent their entire professional life in global industries, international finance, and the military, this aspect of our College is truly unique and all the more relevant in an increasingly globalizing world.
Being strong minded and standing your ground is nothing new here, either. In 1955, Randolph-Macon students rode in the back of Lynchburg city buses every Friday afternoon to protest segregation. In the 1960s, students staged sit-ins at segregated Lynchburg lunch counters and got to do their homework in jail as a consequence. And in the 1992 Congressional elections that attracted an unprecedented number of women candidates for office, only one academic institution had more than one of these women candidates: Randolph-Macon Woman’s College. Not bad for a school that historically has graduated about 150 women a year!
And yet another example of standing your ground: In President Clinton’s 1998 court proceedings involving Paula Jones, it was a Randolph-Macon Woman’s College graduate of the Class of 1970, Judge Susan Webber Wright, who stood up even to her former law school professor, finding President Bill Clinton in contempt of the court for his willful failure to obey the court’s discovery order. Judge Wright fined the President $90,000, ruling that he had knowingly lied in a deposition. We are well known for being made of "stern stuff."
But there are other aspects to our cultural identity: feminism, sisterhood—and yes, even femininity. I cannot tell you how often the world over, some gentleman over a late night cognac has gone misty-eyed telling me about a Randolph-Macon girl he still remembered decades later after only a slight acquaintance. One retired Navy captain even followed a car license that said "R-MWC 1943" all over Hampton Roads, Virginia--to learn from its owner whether she knew an alum from a sister class whom he had known as a midshipman. Today, that gentleman and Kitty Rinehart (R-MWC, ’42) still play Scrabble every night in Virginia Beach—having re-connected later in life. So: if every once in a while on your life journey, someone around you startles at your "je ne sais quoi," they will have undoubtedly just gotten a whiff of that ‘Macon magic.’"
I have spent a lot of time as I prepared for these remarks thinking about feminism and about what sisterhood means. I have it on good authority from fellow alumnae that long before the word feminism was coined, Fathers of alumnae preparing for discussions with would-be fiancés had one epithet for men who would choose to spend a life with Macon women: "brave man!"
Well, characteristically, we make a unique amalgam of femininity, feminism and sisterhood here. After a professional life spent in the male-dominated professions of defense and finance, I have come to believe that it is precisely these standards of friendship and character we learned as Macon women and as part of this unique sisterhood that made us so successful in our communities and in business settings.
And I am not sure that the behavior that goes with sisterhood has to exclude men—in fact, my two brothers would have a thing or two to say about that, having been important influences in my life as their little sister! In fact, they spent a lot of time in my "sister-hood" of interesting women. These women served as role models for them and their own sons and daughters about what strong women are supposed to be all about.
So I think that the young men who come to this campus could do a lot worse than to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with girls as formidable as "Macon women." The standards of sisterhood they assimilate here will serve them well as they deal with the increasing numbers of women in their professional lives. In fact, I am sure that many Mothers the world over would wish for their sons as life companions women of our education, fortitude...and, yes, charm.
And I do think that the "sister" model of behavior is just as relevant in the work place as it is in the family and among your peers here. So as you go forth from here, remember that the way you act as part of the sisterhood isn’t only for your interactions with Macon women or other women in general, but for the breadth of your personal and professional interactions. And as you become part of the alumnae community, it will be the sisterhood you extend to current students on campus that will help perpetuate what has been unique about this College for over a century.
Now we come to the advice part of my wishes for you. Commencement speakers all over the nation will have their own particular advice for the graduates from the academic institutions they are addressing this year—and I certainly have mine.
First, hard work and early preparation are the best predictors of professional success and leadership in women—as is usually the case for men. Professional knowledge is the basis of the confidence so critically important for you as you aspire to leadership. Grace, poise, fairness, and diverse interests are also invaluable in all of life’s settings, professional and personal. These you have learned here.
So:
And on this matter of boldness, let me turn to my military roots to share a favorite quotation with you. It is by Theodore Roosevelt, Army officer as commander of the Rough Riders during the Spanish-American War and early 20th century President of the United States.
This quote is just as relevant to your years in this College as it is to the rest of your lives. May this quote serve as a bridge to your and the College’s future and a testimonial to your contribution to the fiber of this institution and to the young women--and men--of distinction that it will continue to produce.
This is what Theodore Roosevelt wrote then and could have been writing about the women here today about to graduate:
"It is not the critic who counts, not the one who points out how the strong man stumbled or how the doer of deeds might have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred with sweat and dust and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, and spends himself in a worthy cause, who if he wins, knows the triumph of high achievement; and who, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory or defeat."
All of you have been "in the arena" in ways that we of earlier classes were never called to be. You have been devoted to your alma mater, you have spent your time in worthy causes, and I know you will all strive for high achievement as you shape the rest of your lives.
President Klein: you are now "the man in [this] arena," with its rich and nuanced cultural heritage of providing a distinctive education to women in a global setting. The 12,000 alumnae who embody this heritage are as principled as they are passionate. Together, I hope that we can build a bridge to a future:
And for the Class of 2008: May you--and may all of us--never outgrow the boldness that we learned here, its vibrant spirit of inquiry, and the commitment to learn and cherish the views of others whether from far or near.
Vita abundantior—may you all live the life more abundant as you first learned here.
