Williams Seniors Urged to Be Open to New Experiences
 Bicentennial Medal winner Ethan Zuckerman delivers the convocation address on Saturday. |
Adam Falk used Saturday's Convocation to point out that it was natural for members of the class of 2015 to enter their final year on campus with a sense of what to expect and an expectation of what the year will be like.
"Resist that particular impulse," Falk told the students gathered in Chapin Hall. "It's natural to want to be comfortable, but you didn't come to Williams to be comfortable."
Falk urged the students to approach their last months on campus with a sense of openness that will serve them well in the "real world" many will enter in June.
"I hope that in your last year at Williams ... you'll become someone ever open to seeking new experiences and understandings."
Convocation day at the college, which included an afternoon ceremony to dedicate the new Sawyer Library, saw the return of six distinguished alumni to receive Williams' Bicentennial Medals at the morning ceremony.
Falk presented the medals to librarian and scholar David Spadafora of the class of 1972, educator Steven Rothstein '78, media mogul Kenard Gibbs '86, Internet scholar Ethan Zuckerman '93, composer and Oscar-winner Kristen Anderson-Lopez '94, and author and entrpreneur Mary Cotton, 2001.
"Six outstanding alumni ... none of them could have imagined where their lives would lead or how experiences here would guide them in that path," Falk said.
Zuckerman delivered the convocation address on behalf of the six honorees, and he picked up on Falk's theme of openness, imploring the students to be open to new ideas and engagements with their classmates.
Zuckerman, who made his mark as a Web developer and advocates for free expression online through his direction of the Center for Civic Media at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said that while humans have access to more information than ever, people are not necessarily receptive to it.
"When given a wealth of choices, we still tend to choose the familiar," Zuckerman said. "This is a basic human tendancy — to pay attention to our tribe."
But an interconnected world demands that its citizens pay attention to what's going on outside that tribe, Zuckerman said.
He said the Williams seniors can practice that engagement by making connections with their fellow students, who come from 49 states and dozens of countries around the world, and continuing to engage different people throughout their lives.
Recalling the apocryphal tale of the theft of Williams' library for the founding of Amherst College, Zuckerman said that story was from a time when information was scarce, but even then, the loss of a few hundred books was not as significant as "the loss of one quarter of the student body."
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