Here’s your chance to share your talents with your classmates. We expect to have new material often because ’55 is full of clever women. Please contact
Click on the URL below for a fun listen we call all relate to!
CAMPUS NEWS
The little arrow at the left hand top of your screen (pointing backwards) will take you back to wherever you were on your last screen. It is not necessary to find the "back to homepage" button each time.
As you all know our class has elected special faculty who we feel have been especially close to our
class over the years.
We all know that our 1955 Honorary Vinnie Ferraro is our most popular lecturer when we go back for our “Back to School” mini every fall. Here’s the exciting news. He writes a blog. A what you say? A Blog called World Politics. What it means is that we can access that blog anytime just by signing up to receive it over our email. Then you can read it, save it, delete it, whatever, but you”ll be connected to Vinnie’s thinking and teaching of World Politics from your iphone or computer whenever you want.
To sign up for his blog go onto google and type in vferraro1971 and the form to sign up will become available.
Happy Politics!
EXCITING NEWS!
Back when we were planning our 50th reunion (can we remember back that far?) we asked everyone to please send us their memories of Mount Holyoke. Back then everyone cooperated and actually did it. Not all of them could go into our presentation or our book but now on our website we have unlimited space so we thought we should share some more of these
wonderful memories.
Our latest memory comes from
Barbara Gates Johnson
Others are from Deb Hazzard Nash,
Gay Hartman, and Pat O'Keeffe,Barbara Muehrcke Allen, et al.
We hope that these entries will
inspire you to think of some of your memories to share with our class.
You can view these sessions by going to our zoom page and seeing everything about our zoom program. Just click on the blue and white camera above and you'll be there!
Since only a few of you answer my request for photos (Hint Hint) click below to see a whole slew of wonderful memories!
STORYWORTH
How Much Does College Really Cost?
“It is an understatement to say I am excited to join the vibrant and dynamic Mount Holyoke community. ... There hasn’t been a more important and critical time in recent history in which we need students who are empowered through their liberal arts education to go out and improve communities both here in the United States and around the world.”
There is also a gender dimension to our American dilemma that further complicates the outcome. Do we fully and finally believe the last six words of the Pledge of Allegiance to the flag, “with liberty and justice for all”? Even more than Barack Obama, Ms. Harris puts that question to the acid test. And polls will not provide a reliable answer, because many white and Black men will not reveal their deeper motives, even to themselves. Namely, that they cannot vote for a woman.
As we prepare to celebrate the 250th anniversary of American independence, the idea of human equality pronounced at the American founding will be front and center. We will be bombarded with Jefferson’s lyrical tribute to human equality. But we will also hear about the reality of racial and gender prejudice embraced by several prominent founders and the vast majority of American citizenry over which they presided.
A discernible shift on the latter score did not occur until the middle decades of the 20th century. So the historical record cuts in both directions. The Trump constituency has the bulk of American history on its side. Ms. Harris has the ideal declared at the founding, recent American history, and the demographically projected future on her side.
In that sense, then, the polls have it right. It’s going to be close. A few thousand voters may decide not just who wins the election, but also whether we are, at long last, ready to live up to the ideals of the American founding.
If Mr. Trump is president on July 4, 2026, the celebration will become a eulogy, for we will be honoring the corpse of the American republic.
Joseph J. Ellis:
The Ideals of the Founders Are on the Ballot
The jury remains out on the verdict of the American electorate. While historians are virtually omniscient at predicting the past, we are not much better than most observers at predicting the future.
Two predictions are, however, reasonably obvious: first, that Donald Trump will struggle to accept the verdict if he loses; second, that Kamala Harris will almost certainly win the popular vote, but could lose the election because of that strange American contraption called the Electoral College.
More broadly, a longstanding American dilemma is on the ballot. Are a majority of American voters prepared to accept and even embrace the fact that we are a multiracial society — in effect, that Martin Luther King Jr.’s dream has become reality? Ms. Harris’s supporters are betting that we are. Mr. Trump’s supporters are betting that we are not.
The founding fathers did not think about the popular vote and electoral college vote the way we do. Yet that disjunction looms over this election.
