Each year, the Senior Class Gift provides a special opportunity for us, as near-graduates, and for you, our parents, to both express appreciation for the role Sarah Lawrence has played in each of our lives and, as we are doing here today, to join together in celebration and recognition of the last four years. This has proven to be our true coming of age, and the Senior Gift ensures the same encouragement and support of personal and intellectual passions for future students.
This year the Senior Gift Committee felt strongly that our attention should lie not predominately on the amount of the Gift, but instead, on the participation of students and their families. We spoke individually with our classmates; we spent an evening signing several hundred letters to families. We asked seniors to take a moment—to pause—to reflect on these last four years, on this place which became our home, this place which for each of us means something quite different. We hoped that this reflection would provide a context for giving, a means by which to remember why we want to support the College, our teachers—our friends in their first year, their sophomore, their junior year, the hot rock behind Dudley, the moving stacks in Esther, and on and on. As graduating seniors, our reasons for why we want to give back are as myriad as our reasons for coming here that hot, muggy day in August four years ago.
It is with pleasure that we announce that 30% percent of the senior class and 23% percent of families gave this year. And on behalf of the senior class, we would like to present you, Karen, with this check for $124,271.