Proclamation Night unites WC students

Proclamation Night, Westhampton College's oldest tradition, is a ceremony that marks the beginning and end of the college journey for freshman and senior women.

May Keller, Westhampton's first dean, introduced the ceremony to the college in 1915 as a way to mark the importance of women's leadership, relationships and the honor code. These are still the founding principles that define Proclamation Night, although the ceremony has changed drastically since its commencement.

The annual ritual begins with the freshman and senior classes having their class pictures taken on the Westhampton Green. While the freshman women are dressed in white, the senior women wear their graduation gowns.

The women then proceed to the Cannon Memorial Chapel where the two classes sit on opposite sides of the church. Speakers from past classes, as well as Dean Juliette Landphair spoke to the women about friendships, opportunity and the Westhampton community.

Senior Rachael Specter, the Proclamation Night chairwoman, began the evening by saying, "For every woman in this chapel, tonight is a night of new beginnings."

During Specter's speech, she encouraged the freshman women to make the most of their next four years.

Specter said that, for the members of the senior class, Proclamation Night marked the beginning of senior year and their transition into the next phase of their lives.

She said, "I'm fully confident that we will all be able to move forward strong and bold as ever, wherever we go, having developed a strong sense of self and strength from our Westhampton community."

The guest speaker, Margaret Elizabeth Perry, a 2006 Richmond graduate, presented the Jane Stockman and the Westhampton Diamond awards to the two senior females who best exemplify the spirit of Westhampton College.

This year, the Jane Stockman Award was given to Rose Ann Gutierrez, and the Westhampton Diamond Award went to Sydney Cooke.

One of the newer additions to the Proclamation Night ceremony is the reading and writing of freshman letters. The freshman women take time to write letters to themselves, which they don't get back until their senior Proclamation Night.

Landphair offered her words of advice to both classes, while also taking a moment to acknowledge the life of Paige Malone, who died in a car crash during the summer of 2010 and would have been celebrating her senior Proclamation Night.

One of the reasons the ceremony is so important, Landphair said, is because it is encouraging for the freshman women to see the close bonds that the seniors share.

"For the first years, it is a very sensitive time for many of them," Landphair said. "Things are settling down, they're starting to miss home, wondering whether this [Richmond] was the right decision. But seeing the closeness, the comfort and fun-natured environment on the other side of the aisle is comforting."

After the senior women finished reading their letters, they were dismissed from Proclamation Night. Landphair used the remaining time to focus on the freshman class, emphasize the importance of the Honor Pledge and commemorate the signing of the pledge by lighting candles.

Landphair said that seeing the women standing with their candles and singing the alma mater was her favorite part of the ceremony.

"It always gives me goosebumps," she said. "As a historian, knowing that there has been almost 100 years of this is significant."

Landphair said she hoped that every woman in Westhampton College recognized how "extraordinarily fortunate" she was to have this kind of college experience. "I'm talking academically, socially and everything else," she said. "I don't want them to take it for granted."

Contact staff writer Markie Martin at markie.martin@richmond.edu