Jen
Hensley Commencement Address May 16, 2000
Esteemed faculty, administration, parents, alumnae,
friends and fellow graduates-over the past four
years, we have created memories that will forever
tie us to this day, to this institution and to one
another. These memories, like all things human,
find their greatest power in their duality: they
are at once intimately personal and shared collectively.
As
part of my sociology thesis research, I have studied
collective memories in their various forms. I have
researched the ways that people ascribe meanings
to histories and then pass on those meanings to
future generations. It is a process of commemoration
during which history is turned into tradition and
the past is infused with profound and complex meanings.
Commemoration, often times, also turns memories
into places-tangible, physical, geographical locations
that house a sense of the past.
In
particular, I have studied the Vietnam Veterans
Memorial Wall in Washington D.C. That Memorial is
a physical space, a landscape that holds within
its borders two long, black, granite walls etched
with the names of 58,214 dead soldiers. The Walls
are sunken below the natural surface of the earth
and on an average day, the path that runs alongside
is decorated with hundreds of relics-photos, letters,
poems, and medals left for the dead soldiers. In
this space, debts are paid with cigarettes left
by veterans for their fallen comrades. Reunions
are held by family members who touch the names etched
on the Wall in an effort to connect to the parents
they never knew or the children they outlived. That
space was created for private reflection and communal
grief, and it happens in Washington every day.
Through
innovative new technologies, the Wall has been made
available in a different space: in the virtual space
of the Internet. In that space, as on the Mall in
Washington, veterans share their pain and grief
in the form of stories about life in Vietnam, about
the war and the horrors of combat. Surviving family
members share memories and post photography. Tears
are shed in chat rooms and when you log on, you
can even print out a virtual rubbing of a soldier's
name. There is private reflection and communal grief
happening every day, too, on the Internet.
Changes
in technology are resulting in profound shifts in
the ways that people connect to the past. And just
as these connections are changing, so are our connections
to one another. We are the class of 2000, at the
start of a new millenium, and today, we are leaving
Barnard. We are venturing out of the community that
we have created here in these dormitories and classrooms,
and among the broader backdrop of New York City.
We are leaving this space and we are leaving each
other. But as we go, we will carry with us all of
the experiences we have had.
During
the past four years, we have shared the challenges
and the triumphs of living, the pains and the pleasures,
the joys and the overwhelming sadnesses. In this
space, we have read books, attended lectures, met
with professors about innovative research topics
and talked with our friends over lunch on sunny
days. We have gotten good grades here, and also
bad ones. We have been applauded and also criticized.
We have laughed here, and we have also cried here.
Within these gates, our lives have changed. And
now we will take all of those experiences with us,
out of this space and into adulthood.
The
space that the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall inhabits
is no longer confined to Washington, D.C. Likewise,
the experiences that we have all had at Barnard
will no longer be confined to the space within our
University gates. The connections that we have to
this place, to this time in our lives, and to these
people around us are not bounded by traditional
ideas of space. They are not leaving us; today they
are merely changing shape.
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