Welcome

By Carlos Alamo-Pastrana, Dean of the College

Thank you, Reverend Speers, for that land acknowledgement. Members of the faculty, students, administrators, staff, Reverend Speers, Professor Leonard, VSA President Parikh, and President Bradley, welcome and good afternoon.

A special welcome also to the outstanding classes of 2021 and 2024. I’m excited to virtually convene this wonderful group of peers, students, staff, and administrators, and faculty. Typically, we would have gathered in the Chapel as a community to celebrate Convocation, which marks the beginning of the academic year, and in its current form dates back over a century to 1914.

Convocation is a special occasion because it’s perhaps the only institutional tradition where we ask seniors and first-year students to hold space with one another as we simultaneously celebrate both. Convocation embodies institutional memory in ways that it asks seniors in the presence of their new first-year colleagues to reflect back on their own time and history at the College. The practice and ritual of reflection are similar for first years, as we bring to a close the excitement and work of your week-long orientation week at the College.

As we start the year together, I hope we’ll take time to remember to seek balance in our own lives and go for extended—or, even better—unexpected walks on our beautiful campus. Let us work together with one another as we show the world what a caring, challenging, and happy residential community is and can be. Let us be a community that accepts the scientific value of physical distancing, but rejects the implication that it means we must be socially distant from one another. Most importantly, let’s remember to work together and show one another that “we” proceeds “me.”

Welcome and best of luck as we begin another chapter in the transformation of ourselves and this special place. And now I would like to introduce Vassar’s President, Elizabeth Bradley.

About the Speaker

Carlos Alamo-Pastrana, Dean of the College and Associate Professor of Sociology, received his PhD from the University of California, Santa Barbara. His teaching interests focus on comparative racial formations, Latino/a Studies, Afro-Latina/o intellectual history, popular culture, and prison studies. The dean of the college area oversees and coordinates the activities of the dean of studies, the dean of residential life and wellness, administrative services that directly impact the quality of student life, and offices that support and facilitate extracurricular activities.