THE WELLESLEY EFFECT
50 years ago, Wellesley women were of a generation steeped in compliance and conformity. And this compliance and conformity was part of our class of 1964 graduation: we were required to wear our caps and gowns without ornament and with our hair carefully coiffed to not touch our collars. Uniformity was important on such a solemn occasion where someone’s famous father, certainly no one’s famous mother, would give the speech to launch our class from the cloisters of Wellesley College into the wide, wide world, where the seeds of enormous change were already scattered. Every one of our class, each in her own way, helped nurture those seeds with whatever skills and ideals that we brought from our 4 years of rigor, examination and self-examination. We entered a changing society where we had to choose when to be conforming, where to be compliant and when to simply break the old rules. And we generated daughters and granddaughters who neither conform nor comply without making a decision whether to do so. They are of a generation of women who meet the world on their own terms and they make their decisions in a world that we Wellesley women have helped to change. And the Wellesley College of our generation has also evolved. The class of 2016 will graduate in a riot of color with the traditional caps and gowns festooned with flowers and scarves and whatever else celebrates the graduate’s own individuality. Diversity of thought and of culture will in every way be celebrated. And we of the past Wellesley have helped this to happen.