2023

Alamu encouraged her classmates not to be afraid to take risks and try new things. “Life is like Berkshire,” she said. “It is full of many opportunities, and you never know where they might take you.”

In a nod to the similarities between the Class of 2023’s graduation and her own “graduation” from Berkshire through retirement, Loose-Brown opened her remarks with a familiar line from all-school meetings: “I’m Anita LooseBrown, and this is my senior speech.” She continued to explain that holding the title of Senior Faculty Member “just requires that you hang around long enough … or, put another way, one just needs to be the Last Bear Standing.”

Drawing on a comparison from the world of science, specifically Newton’s first law of motion, she said, “being the Senior Faculty Member just requires inertia— the tendency for a stationary body to remain stationary unless acted on by an unbalanced force.”

Reflecting on her own experience at Berkshire, Loose-Brown shared that the strongest forces that kept her under the Mountain were not only the connections to her colleagues past and present, but, most importantly, the interactions with her students over the years. “There is something special about you all, and also something special about Berkshire, that helps to foster relationships across this community that, if not unique, are quite rare.”

In closing, Loose-Brown shared that Berkshire is at its best when it functions as a biological community, stressing the interdependence of the groups that make up that community.

“In biology, if you remove a species from a community, the community changes; it becomes less stable and loses what biologists refer to as ‘species richness.’ . . . See yourself in the light of community. Be one of the ones the community can count on to call it back into its better self when it goes astray. Healthy communities don’t construct themselves; they have to be constructed by their members. Decide to be one of those constructors . . . You and I will be learning what our new communities need. Let’s make a pact to get to work when we get to all of those new ones.”