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Class Of 2021 Commencement
Scan to watch the 2021 Webb School of California Commencement
CLASS OF 2021
Scan to watch the 2021 Vivian Webb School Commencement
CLASS OF 2021
CLASS OF 2021 COMMENCEMENT Judge Praises VWS Class of 2021’s Commitment to Community
Vivian Webb School’s Class of 2021 should be proud of preserving their sense of community and tackling social issues despite pandemic disruptions, commencement speaker Judge Maame Ewusi-Mensah Frimpong ’93 told graduates.
“The story of what you have accomplished is a magnificent one which will inspire everyone who knows you – your family, your friends, your teachers, your community and the world that is waiting to meet you,” Frimpong said.
About 200 family and friends joined 49 members of the Class of 2021 – including nine present virtually – for the 38th commencement of Vivian Webb School held June 12 on Webb’s new Centennial Field.
Frimpong, a Vivian Webb valedictorian, Harvard graduate and Los Angeles County Superior Court judge, said students surmounted considerable challenges in earning their diplomas, including the pandemic that required them to shift to online learning in spring of their junior year.
Because of the pandemic, the class missed out on some traditions, including a senior trip to climb Yosemite’s Half Dome, though seniors returned to campus in 2021 for limited study groups, afternoon activities, sports and a special end-of-year program.
“That diploma represents that you can complete anything that you start. You have literally stared down a global pandemic and beat it. I felt pretty proud of myself when I hiked Half Dome, but I’m sorry, you ladies have really done something,” Frimpong said.
“You carried on. You kept learning and teaching and leading. You kept setting goals and reaching them. And even when you failed, you tried again. When you were told you had to go home and you couldn’t build community on campus, you kept building community virtually. You did not let anything stop you.”
Students lost some traditions, but created new ones and kept the most important of all, Frimpong said.
“You still have sapientia amicitia atque honor – wisdom, friendship and honor,” she said, quoting the school motto. “Wisdom, friendship and honor does not live in a particular place and does not need a particular platform or format. You have it. And here’s the secret. Vivian Webb didn’t give it to you. You brought it with you. Vivian Webb just helped uncover it. The pandemic revealed it. And the rest of your life will display it.”
On top of that, students continued to deal with major community issues.
“During a year when the world and nation was grappling with very difficult questions around race and gender and equality and politics, you grappled with those questions. You proposed answers. You revised those answers, you came up with new vocabulary to make those answers better and better,” she said. “No matter how difficult the question, you did not stop trying to come up with answers.”
The ceremony also featured addresses by Head of Schools Taylor B. Stockdale, Associate Head of Schools Dr. Theresa Smith and valedictorian Jenny Han. Class President Ashley Munguia shared that the class gift would help fund weekend programs for future students.
Scan to watch Judge Frimpong’s address
CLASS OF 2021 COMMENCEMENT Alumnus Urges WSC Class of 2021 to Become ‘Authentic Leaders’
Logistics expert Dakota Santana-Grace ’11 told members of the Webb School of California Class of 2021 to admit when they need a helping hand and to work to discover their authentic selves.
Some 200 families and 52 of the 55 graduates – including 15 who attended virtually – gathered June 12 on Webb’s new Centennial Field for the school’s 99th commencement ceremony.
Santana-Grace graduated cum laude from Harvard in 2016 with a degree in government. He is a project leader for the Boston Consulting Group specializing in global package delivery and serves as a leader for PRIDE@BCG, the organization’s LGBTQ+ professional inclusion program.
During the ceremony, he shared with students his rocky first year at college when he was diagnosed with a seizure disorder and had to return home to Claremont. It was a difficult time, made more so because he had not yet come out to his family.
Through it all, he was supported by his Webb classmates and faculty, especially Dr. Don Lofgren and Stefanie Plumley.
“Here I was in this moment wholly insufficient to independently chart this time forward,” Santana-Grace said. “But in that time, I learned something that made that seizure worth it. I learned that ‘I’ is an illusion, and I am at my best when I accept I am a ‘we.’”
He urged the graduates to learn from his example.
“Find the humility to accept that you are a ‘we,’” he said. “Finding that humility makes it possible to grab on to the extended helping hand.”
When the pandemic hit, Santana-Grace said he’d almost forgotten that lesson – until he finally reached out to his Webb network and family while living alone and feeling depressed.
Santana-Grace also urged the new graduates to come out.
“It has little to do with being gay and everything to do with becoming authentic leaders, something we so desperately need as a world,” he said. “It is a process where the beliefs you have about yourself – core beliefs – and the expectations others have for you are challenged. It is a process that requires re-evaluating who you are at the core and finding a truer expression of yourself.”
The graduates will have many opportunities for this exploration during their college journeys, he said.
“The next four years will fill you with doubt, confusion, discovery and excitement. The finish line you have for the years ahead will inevitably move. Your academic passions will evolve beyond what you initially ever imagined you wanted to study. Your ambitions will change from what you walked in with as you learn about new careers and new frontiers. And your friendships and love lives will both hoist you up and put you through memorable and formative turbulence.
“My advice to you is to not fight this. Come out. Come out about your evolving view of who you want to be. Find that thing that makes you come alive and be willing to surprise yourselves. We call it commencement because it is the starting line. You can run straight, missing the opportunity to learn more about yourselves, or you can come out, accept the detours, move the finish line.”
“When we do this, we become brighter. We lift ourselves and those around us up. It is not easy. It is scary. And there can be unfair consequences for it. But those are far outweighed, many times and most times, by the joy and opportunities for being yourself,” he said.
The ceremony also featured speeches from Head of Schools Taylor B. Stockdale, Associate Head of Schools Dr. Theresa Smith and valedictorian Calvin Xu. Class President Gregory Tolmochow announced the Class of 2021 gift will provide funds for students to engage in weekend outings.
CLASS OF 2021
Residential Program Keeps Alive Senior Year Traditions
ebb’s Class of 2021 W celebrated the end of their high school journey with an on-campus senior trip experience that kept alive the traditions of senior class hiking trips canceled because of the COVID-19 pandemic. In years past, seniors from the Webb School of California visited the Grand Canyon, tackling a grueling 17-mile hike to the bottom and back. Vivian Webb School seniors visited Yosemite, scaling the iconic 5,000-foot Half Dome. During the trips, Vivian Webb students reviewed letters they wrote to themselves as freshmen and shared their reflections. Webb School of California students passed around a rock hammer as they shared final thoughts with classmates.
CLASS OF 2021
In spring 2021, those trips couldn’t happen because of the pandemic.
But conditions improved enough to allow seniors to come to campus for a week-long residential program that represented the first-ever joint celebration by the two schools.
The program featured the best of the trips – camping under the stars, hikes, campfires and s’mores. Students also enjoyed a few extra activities made possible because they were at Webb – beach excursions, snorkeling, a formal dinner with an open mic and music, movie night and food truck visits.
Each school also held its own reflection event.
“ It seems appropriate for them to join together for much of the event – they navigated this incredibly weird year together and now they get to celebrate it together,” said Stephen Caddy, senior class advisor for the Webb School of California.
Webb Students Accepted to Top Colleges
Every student in The Webb Schools’ Class of 2021 earned acceptance to a selective, four-year college or university amid a historic leap in college applications and an equally historic plunge in acceptance rates.
Students at Vivian Webb School and Webb School of California were accepted to Amherst, Brown, all five Claremont Colleges, Cornell, Columbia, Dartmouth, Emory, Johns Hopkins, Kenyon, Northwestern, Princeton, NYU, Rice, all UC campuses, University of Chicago, University of Michigan, University of Pennsylvania, Stanford, USC, Wellesley and more.
More than 90 percent of the Class of 2021 are matriculating to a college ranked in the top 10% of the more than 1,700 selective, fouryear colleges in the U.S., as ranked by U.S. News and World Report.
“The best part is that every senior this year has found a college that fits them and will serve them well after they graduate from Webb,” Dean of College Guidance Hector Martinez said. “We are enormously proud of our seniors and their impressive accomplishments, especially when it comes to where they were admitted into college.”
It was harder than ever to get into college in 2021 as application numbers surged.
Colgate College saw a 104% increase in applications, Columbia jumped 51%, Boston College 36% and USC 21%. UCLA, the most popular college to apply to in the U.S., received 140,000 applications for 6,300 spots in the freshman class, a 28% increase.
Meanwhile, Stanford’s acceptance rate dropped to 3.3%, down from 5.1% in 2020, Columbia admitted 3.7% and Pomona College 7%.
The college guidance process at Webb begins early, with guidance counselors meeting with each class twice a term to discuss college planning. Starting in January of junior year, counselors meet individually with students to tailor the college journey to their needs. In senior year, counselors develop and refine a customized list of colleges that match student profiles and interests.
Head of Schools Taylor B. Stockdale noted the unprecedented challenges faced by the Class of 2021, which completed junior year and all senior year in online instruction.
“The Class of 2021 will not soon be forgotten. Their hard work, dedication and relentless perseverance under truly extraordinary global circumstances are to be acknowledged and honored,” Stockdale said. Amherst College Babson College Bates College Baylor University Boston College Boston University California State University,
Channel Islands California State University, Fullerton Carnegie Mellon University Case Western Reserve University Central Washington University Claremont McKenna College College of the Desert Cornell University Emory University Fordham University Franklin and Marshall College George Washington University Harvey Mudd College Haverford College Johns Hopkins University Kenyon College King’s College, London Lake Forest College Lewis & Clark College Lone Star College, Montgomery Macalester College Montana State University Mount Holyoke College Mt. San Antonio College New York University New York University Shanghai Northeastern University Northwestern University Oberlin College Occidental College Oxford College of Emory University Parsons School of Design -
The New School Pepperdine University Pitzer College Point Loma Nazarene University Pomona College Reed College San Diego State University Santa Clara University Savannah College of Art and Design School of the Art Institute of
Chicago Scripps College Smith College Stanford University Syracuse University Texas A&M University Tufts University University of California, Berkeley University of California, Davis University of California, Los Angeles University of California, San Diego University of California, Santa Cruz University of Chicago University of Hawaii at Manoa University of Miami University of Pennsylvania University of Richmond University of Rochester University of Southern California University of Utah University of Virginia Washington University in St. Louis Wellesley College Westmont College Xavier University
