Way to go, class of 2023!

Eighty-seven students walked across the stage on Brooks Field to collect their diplomas on June 2 in front of family, friends and faculty in a ceremony dedicated to Campus Safety Supervisor Courtney Grant.

In her commencement address, Head of School Kate Windsor noted that Sarah Porter’s success was largely based on “her ability to marry convention with community” through Traditions that remain relevant today. One of those is the presentation of school rings to New Girls from their Old Girls at the end of ninth grade.

“In 1843, when Miss Porter founded her school, a woman’s career usually consisted of being a wife and a mother, and the exchange of wedding rings was a rite of passage,” Dr. Windsor said. But Sarah Porter believed that a woman’s life “could and should be much fuller if a woman had an education and understood her agency. Porter’s rings are an enduring symbol of belonging to a community of consequence the most powerful all-girls network in the world.”

“COVID-19 disrupted many Traditions for the class of 2023, whose members spent the spring of their freshman year learning remotely at home. They received their rings via the U.S. Postal Service and their Old Girl blessings via Zoom. But they used their agency to chart their own course and write their own history, and they turned their feelings of loss into momentum,” Dr. Windsor noted. The class became dedicated to building community, “and we all benefited,” she said.

Commencement speaker Vanessa Roanhorse ’96, recipient of the school’s 2022 Evan Burger Donaldson award, talked about being the school’s first Native American student at a time when it “was not ready for me and my lived experiences.” But she said she stayed and “learned how to thrive here. And I left ready and armed for the world not built for me, and I brought it.”

Reflecting on the meandering path she took to find her life’s purpose, she urged the graduates to look at the journey ahead and “remember, it’s not when you get there but how.”

In her student head of school address, Elizabeth Akomolafe thanked classmates and teachers “for teaching me about camaraderie, community and family.” She reminded undergraduates that “the next years will challenge you but you’ll make it through. … We’re expected to shape a changing world, but never forget that Porter’s is a world of its own, and it’s a world that succeeds because it constantly evolves.”

Outgoing Second Head of School

Lucy Newmyer ’23 announced that the class gift would go toward air-conditioning three undergraduate dorms being renovated this summer. Every member of the class contributed. The Daisy Wreath was placed by Frances I. (Izzy) Sutherland, the senior with the most direct line of Ancient relatives. Her legacy began with great-greataunt Dorothea Morrell Coleman, class of 1926.

How can I join Moonbeams Circle and get one of the new pins?

It’s simple!

860–409–3626 porters.giftplans.org