At Barnard, looking forward

When Meryl Streep returned to her alma mater Vassar 27 years ago, the speech she gave was “much, much easier to construct than this one,” she said.

Streep headlined Barnard’s Class Day Monday as the keynote speaker, where she lauded the progress women have made in society while urging graduates to continue pushing for change.

“You are going to have the opportunity and obligation, by virtue of your provenance, to speed progress in these areas,” she said. “There’s only change, and resistance to it, and more change.”

In her speech, Streep described how she had, in a way, been acting for most her life: She tried to imitate the standard high school girl, and had to transform her “slightly bossy, opinionated, a little loud” attitude.

“Pretending is not just play,” she said. “Pretending is imagined possibility. Pretending or acting is a valuable life skill. … We change who we are to fit the exigencies of our time.”

Still, there is a seedier underbelly to her profession, Streep noted.

“One is obliged to do a great deal of kissing in my line of work,” she said, saying that “much like hookers, we have to do it [kissing]” with occasionally undesirable people. She added to laughter, “As have many women here, I’m sure.”

President Debora Spar also awarded Streep a Barnard Medal of Distinction, and commended the Academy Award-winning actress for “staying in the spotlight but staying off Page Six.”

Outgoing Board of Trustees chair Anna Quindlen was facing her own graduation of sorts, as this marked her final Class Day as head of the board.

“We talk often of our great future,” Quindlen said. “It is so great each year to see our future spread so conspicuously. You’re ending your time as Barnard students, and I am ending mine as chair of the Board of Trustees.”

While Barnard does not select a valedictorian or salutatorian, Alicia Mountain, BC ’10, was chosen as a student speaker to give the academic reflections address, in which she said that Barnard had helped her further appreciate her country.

“I’m not sure what I’m going to do with my life—most of us aren’t sure of what we want to do with our lives,” Mountain said. “In all of my uncertainty about the future, I still feel that America is a place filled with potential.”

Amy Chen, the Student Government Association’s outgoing vice president of campus life, was awarded this year’s Frank Gilbert Bryson Prize for her contribution to campus, while Sally Davis and Melissa Lasker, chairs of the Senior Fund, presented the senior gift—the Class of 2010 Contingency Fund, which will supplement financial aid packages and cover start-up costs such as bedding and clothing for some students.

As SGA senior class president Chelsea Zimmerman called on parents to share in the excitement of Class Day, Streep also stressed the importance of family, emphasizing that her happiness does not come from fame.

“I can assure you that awards have very little bearing on my personal happiness,” she said. “You don’t have to be famous—you just have to make your mother and father proud.”