Barnard College - Mortarboard Yearbook (New York, NY)

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The Mobtmboard

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Barnard College COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY, NEW YORK 10027 MORTARBOARD ERRATA P. 46, top French department P. 46, bottom Geography department P. 47, bottom Geology department Photo: Prof. John E. Sanders Photos left to right: Prof. Hubert Doris Assoc. Prof. Patricia Carpenter Asst. Prof. James M. Baker Assoc. Peter Schubert Double major: BIOCHEJIISTRY and LATIN AMERiaA.M STUDIES P. 51, bottom Music department P. 162 Margeret Liv Blom P. 205 Lower right photo: Sharon Simpel Lower left photo: Marcie Serber

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TO THE CLASS OF 1979: You know better than I what your college experience has meant to you and what you will take from it, what has touched you most closely. The discovery of an area of interest, the development of intellectual and emotional strengths, the experience of friendship based on both admiration and equality — it is for you to discover what has mattered to you. But at the same time that each of us has her own experiences we also share in them. In talking with students at Barnard, I sensed that for many of you this has been a time of great intensity. I have an image of light not diffused gently but focused sharply, making some things extraordinarily vivid and at the same time surrounded by dark shadows. Perhaps I have that particular image because of the energy crisis. I do believe there are some developments in the world around us that prevade our lives and are felt as moods even when we do not think about them consciously. The world-wide energy crisis has made us suddenly aware of the vulnerability of a way of life that was taken for granted, both in its everyday aspects and in the more removed yet important sense we have of the relations of different nations and peoples to each other. We have all begun to feel a need to pull in, to conserve, to value what we can have. At the same time, the financial crisis and nation-wide economic difficulties have added to the feeling that, despite us (and that in itself is a special and difficult realization) options are fewer and choices harder won. As a result, you have worried about finding jobs as well as choosing careers and that has given the work you have done at Barnard a dark and serious side. You have also begun to be familiar, if not always comfort- able, with studies and reports demonstrating that as a woman you face problems in the job market as well as elsewhere that may affect you no matter how carefully you plan and how hard you work. College has been, then, a time of preparing to face hard challenges as well as of learn- ing and discovering strengths and interests and friendships. In this time of intensity, you have been magnificent. You have worked hard and found joy in your accomplishments that mitigates— and sometimes even replaces— anxiety. You have perhaps found fewer friends than those who went to college in expansive times, but the friendships you have are stronger, and more strengthening, for their intensity. In addition, some of you have found that there is a possibility of heightened individuality within supportive groups and that the other side of the illumination of problems is the invitation to join together in dealing with them even when they cannot be solved. Your college years may have been difficult and intense, but I da not believe they have often been dull or arid. We will miss you at Barnard but I do not worry about you. I think you are strong and I hope that we have had some part in helping you discover that strength. Time and time again graduates of Barnard answer my question about what Barnard meant to them by telling me it is a place where it is simply expected that they will excel. There is no- thing easy about living with such expectations, but then you did not choose to make things easy for your- self when you chose Barnard. That is why Barnard graduates are such remarkable women. My compliments and warmest wishes, Jacquelyn Anderson Mattfeld President