By Megan Locatis '16

This year, Kim Bottomly’s speech at Convocation was met with lukewarm applause. The tension between the face of the college’s administration and the student body saturated the air, cutting through what had been a moment of nostalgic joy and emotion for seniors such as myself. The chosen topic? Civility. But when you address a group of highly intelligent, capable students on the importance of controlled debate and the willingness to entertain and consider all ideas, regardless of how ill-conceived or outright offensive they may be at face value, your words come off as a rebuke more than anything. And I believe that it is only human nature that, feeling rebuked, we close our ears and tell ourselves that these words are poorly-chosen and irrelevant, that we are being dismissed as temperamental children who have yet to learn to control ourselves and engage in adult conversations.