Illustration by Jon Krause c/o theispot.com
I had been at Wellesley 4½ years when hijacked planes slammed into the World Trade Center towers on Sept. 11, 2001. All the details of that day on campus are seared into my memory: staring at a TV in disbelief with colleagues, emailing students to check on them, answering the phones at the Alumnae Office, which began to ring incessantly. The calls were from alumnae looking for other alumnae, hoping to learn whether dear friends were safe. In that era before social media, we spent days helping to locate and connect people.
这是那些推动家庭的经历之一，即Wellesley女性到处都是，大多数大新闻故事都有一些Wellesley连接。不幸的是，我们有野火和飓风，地震和海啸，恐怖主义袭击和大规模枪击，以及在世界许多地区的选举，政变和抗议游行。在大学工作的任何时间，你都会发现自己从世界特定地区听到消息，思考，“谁是我们的Wellesley人？他们是怎么负低的？他们需要帮助吗？“当他们常见的时候，他们经常是，新闻被给予全新的人类。
例如，服用飓风哈维。No matter how many times you watch time-lapse clips of overpasses disappearing under floodwaters, the urgency of the situation becomes entirely more tangible when you hear that a member of the class of ’00 and her family endured hours in their home waiting to be rescued as sewage-filled water seeped from room to room. The kicker: They had to buckle their screaming 2-year-old into her high chair for five hours to keep her safe. (I asked Debbie Blumberg ’00 to share her story: See“Waters Rising.”)
Or another example—the debate on immigration that rages in this country. Hearing even one student’s or one alum’s story helps move the discussion out of the abstract and into the realm of people we care about, who are part of our community.
I recently got to know an extraordinary student, an immigrant who became a U.S. citizen some time ago. She gave me a glimpse of the lives of farm workers picking fruit in fields on the West Coast. As a child, she was afraid of being walloped by the apricots her father was tossing down to her to pack and kept closing her eyes. “It’s OK to be afraid,” he said, “but you can’t let fear blind you.”
From this student, I learned how kids of farm workers from all over the world—Russians, Mexicans, many others—built a community on the soccer field. “We decided we didn’t need to speak the same language,” she says. “We just needed to kick the ball.” (Maybe we adults should take note?) And from her, I learned what an impact a gift of kindness can have. As a child, this student struggled to learn English. An elementary-school teacher saw her difficulties and gave her an English dictionary that became her constant companion—and a lifeline. She became a truly voracious reader, and, of course, eventually ended up at Wellesley. Full of intellectual curiosity, energy, and genuine warmth, she is an absolute joy to be around.
我们的扩展社区充满了移民故事的人，这些叙述与我们的社区本身一样多样化和复杂。它们是分离和团聚的故事，其身份已重新弄清楚，以及家庭重建感。你会发现其中六个“Immigrant Journeys.”
These stories—and many others like them—matter. Let’s not forget the people behind the news reports.
