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Douglass Residential College

Official Speech from Class of 2019 Student Speaker, Megan Coyne 

Official Speech from Class of 2019 Student Speaker, Megan Coyne

"Good morning, everyone. Dean Litt, honorees, faculty, staff, families, friends, loved ones, women in the Class of 2019: thank you for the honor of speaking at the 98th Douglass Convocation.

Three days from now will mark the 100th anniversary of the U.S House of Representatives’ vote to approve the 19th Amendment, granting women the right to vote. Today is an opportunity to reflect not only on the past four years, but also on the past one hundred. The right to vote was not easily won. For years, women organized marches and protests, drafted legislation, wrote letters, gave speeches, and sustained the intense commitment the movement required. Above all, the movement proved the limitlessness of human endurance - and what we can achieve when we work together. Throughout the past four years, we have been tested by the challenges of academia and by heart-wrenching social realities. But we endured and survived those moments together and we will work toward a better future.

After the ratification of the 19th Amendment in 1920, Alice Paul, a proud daughter of New Jersey and a chief architect of the suffrage movement, stated, “It is incredible to me that any woman should consider the fight for full equality won. It has just begun.” That is the spirit I hope you take with you in life; while we are the benefactors of an empowering heritage of pride and purpose, there remains a great deal of work to be done.
 
Take, for instance, that 2018 was dubbed the “Year of the Woman.” Now, in the United States, a nation where women make up 50.8% of the population, women comprise an astounding 23.7% of Congress. On the state level, women hold 9 out of 50 governorships - a whopping 18%. Women have been doing remarkable, groundbreaking things since the beginning of time, but barriers still exist that both hinder a woman’s ability to prosper and make it seem as if even a morsel of success is remarkable.

This attempt to minimize the success of women, to constrain female empowerment and restrict it to just one year, to degrade our achievement as a fad, to write our achievements off as an anomaly, is nothing new. For far too long, the world has taught us that the crux of a woman’s experience is to be diminished, silenced, and forgotten. Douglass has given us all the tools we need not only to challenge this condition, but to shatter it: with an insatiable thirst for knowledge, a profound passion for justice and equity, wells of self-confidence, and the courage to speak truth to power. 

Through our transformative experience here - an education focused not just on textbooks and exams and job placement - but on learning alongside people with entirely different life experiences, we were able to hone and refine these strengths while challenging old assumptions and embracing new perspectives.

Today we are graduating as women with strong voices and even stronger values, putting us in the unique and critical position to support and uplift women and girls, and all human beings, worldwide. Women and girls who do not have access to the same resources and opportunities we do, but whose dreams and lives and hopes are every bit as worthy. Likewise, each and every one of us possesses a boundless capacity based on our unique insights, knowledge and experiences.

Now consider the potential when we multiply that individual capacity by 39,000 alumnae who came before us. For over 100 years, Douglass has been producing fierce women. Today, we officially join the ranks of a global army comprised of bold, brilliant, badass women who share the Douglass DNA. Our strength comes from the collective, generational effort to move toward a better world, a more just and inclusive community. As we continue to navigate this intricate ecosystem, our experiences, identity, and bond as Douglass women will be our guiding lights.

One last thing – do not let yourself be limited by the myths of what a powerful woman is - unlikable, shrill, difficult, arrogant. Help shatter the myths and show the world that women are intelligent and confident and dynamic - you, as much as anyone else, have the right to be ambitious and successful. As the playground rhyme goes, “Girls go to college to get more knowledge.” At Douglass, we go to college to get more knowledge and power.

 

I hope that today and every single day you feel nothing less than blazing pride in yourself from deep within your own soul.

 

Congratulations to the class of 2019!" - Megan Coyne