Sunday, May 24, 2026
by Callista Isabelle, Associate Dean of Religious and Spiritual Life and Contemplative Practices

Welcome to the 162nd Commencement of Vassar College!

As we gather to celebrate the Class of 2026 on this beautiful day, I invite us to join in a moment of reflection.

We pause in gratitude for the lives of these 623 graduates. For what you have learned, and for what you have taught the rest of us along the way, we are in awe. We acknowledge the ways you faced the realities of our beautiful and broken world, and dared to hope and work for change.

I invite us to take a moment to remember the many people who helped you reach this Commencement Day: family members, friends, mentors, professors, administrators, staff, and others. For all who listened and encouraged you, challenged and taught you during your years at Vassar, we are grateful.

We also pause to recognize that there are family members and friends who are not with us today, and whose absence we may be grieving. We remember them.

May this time of celebration remind us how connected we all are to one another, whether we’re gathered here on this hill or scattered around the world, doing our part to make this world more peaceful, caring, and just.

Finally, we remember our connection to the land on which we gather today:

We acknowledge that Vassar stands upon the homelands of the Munsee Lenape, Indigenous peoples who have an enduring connection to this place despite being forcibly displaced by European colonization. Munsee Lenape peoples continue today as the Stockbridge-Munsee Community in Wisconsin, the Delaware Tribe and the Delaware Nation in Oklahoma, and the Munsee Delaware Nation in Ontario.

This acknowledgment, however, is insufficient without our reckoning with the reality that every member of the Vassar community since 1861 has benefited from these Native peoples’ displacement, and it is hollow without our efforts to counter the effects of structures that have long enabled—and still perpetuate—injustice against Indigenous Americans.

To that end, we commit to continue to build and sustain relationships with Native communities; to expand opportunities at Vassar for Native students, as well as Native faculty and other employees; and to collaborate with Native nations to know better the Indigenous peoples, past and present, who care for this land.