Welcome, Class of 2030 and All New Students!

(New Students Display Trinity Medals After Convocation)

Welcome, Class of 2030 and All New Trinity Students!

Remarks by President Patricia McGuire ’74
at the New Student Convocation

August 21, 2026

Good morning!  I am so pleased to welcome you — the Class of 2030 and new students in other classes — to the New Student Convocation for the College of Arts & Sciences, a ceremony marking the end of your orientation period and your official welcome into the Trinity community.  During this ceremony, you will sign the Honor Pledge and receive your Trinity medals, special symbols of your new lives as Trinity Women.  Congratulations!

We start with the invocation by Dr. Jeannine Marino, Assistant Professor of Religious Studies, who will also bless your Trinity Medals:

Gracious God, 

We thank you for gathering us here today as we begin a new academic year. We give thanks for the life of each new student and for their loved ones, who have encouraged and journeyed with them along the way. We also give thanks for all the faculty and staff at Trinity, who will guide, encourage, and walk alongside our students throughout their journey here. 

Dear God, may your wisdom guide us as we learn from one another, building relationships in which both students and educators are enriched and transformed. 

May the knowledge and experiences we gain at Trinity help us discover the deeper purpose of our lives and our careers, always in service to others, especially those most in need. 

May your hope fill us with courage, so that we never give up, even when the journey is difficult. 

May your love open our hearts to discover the richness and beauty of the diversity among us, helping us to find lifelong friends and a community where we truly belong. 

May your joy be with us throughout this journey. 

And may all that we learn, all that we become, and all that we do at Trinity contribute to a more just, peaceful, and loving world. 

Amen. 

……. 

And we ask You, O God, to bless these Trinity Medals, symbols of the new students’ entrance into the Trinity community and their commitment to its values.   
 
Amen.

Yesterday, August 20, was the 129^th birthday of Trinity, established with articles of incorporation dated August 20, 1897.  Intrepid, courageous women — the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur — founded this great college because they believed that women deserved a higher education equal to that of men back in that day.  (Trinity Founder Sister Julia McGroarty pictured on the left.)  Women were barred from admission to then-new Catholic University.  Not everyone was happy about the idea of women going to college back then — some conservative priests at Catholic University wrote to the Pope complaining that the Sisters of Notre Dame who were trying to start Trinity were engaging in heresy — a heresy called “Americanism” because the idea of women’s education was considered very liberal.

The sisters persisted, the students came, and history began to roll forward.

It took three years for Trinity to go from articles of incorporation to actual buildings, faculty and classes.  126 years ago, on a cold, rainy November morning, in the Year 1900, 19 intrepid young women first set foot on Trinity’s campus in what was then considered the “countryside” of the nation’s capital.  Michigan Avenue was a dirt road (below), and the college they came to inhabit had one building — or, should I say, a single wing of one building under construction, the south wing of Main Hall (below).

A century and a quarter later, we may look back at the quaint tale of those women (above, Class of 1904) and marvel at their fortitude and determination to make a go of it in a place that must have seemed very strange and foreboding to them.  They were pioneers, women destined to change the course of history for the generations who followed them here.

Today, you are the women of destiny, you are the new generation of pioneer women poised to make history yet again.

• Who are you?  We know some things about you from your class data profile:
• 34% aspire to be nurses; others plan to study Business, Criminal Justice, Biology, Psychology, Early Childhood Education and other subjects;
• 83% are U.S. citizen or permanent residents.
• You were born in 24 different countries including, in addition to the United States: El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Cameroon, Ethiopia, Afghanistan, Germany, Jamaica, South Africa, Dominican Republic, Haiti, Venezuela, and many others.
• The majority of you are from the District of Columbia and Maryland, with 17 states represented in this class including, among others, Virginia, Georgia, South Carolina, California, Alabama, Florida, Maine, New York, New Jersey and others.
• You are racially and ethnically diverse, including 46% who identify as Black or African American while 47% identify as Hispanic or Latina.
• You are Baptist and Muslim, Buddhist and Catholic, and many other faiths.
• You are graduates of Coolidge, Columbia Heights/Bell, Cardozo, Roosevelt, Jackson Reed, Don Bosco, Banneker, Eastern and many other high schools.

You are coming to Trinity because you have big dream for yourselves and your families — you know that a great education will make all the difference in helping you to realize your full potential throughout your lives.

Today we welcome you into this grand community and tradition of women scholars arrayed in a long line back to those first 19 students in 1900.  They started traditions that continue to this day — traditions like the class colors (The Class of 2030 is a Green Class!  So am I!!) and, most important, the Honor System  This morning you will take the Honor Pledge and sign the Honor Roll, and then you will receive your Trinity medals.

The Honor Agreement and Medal Ceremony

The Honor Agreement has been our tradition since the founding of Trinity.  We expect you to live lives of honor and integrity, and to help each other to do so.  This sets Trinity apart from many other schools and many places of business today.

The mission and values of Trinity, as embodied in our Honor System, reject any and all acts and words of hatred against other individuals; we welcome, honor and respect everyone here at Trinity and we expect you to treat every other person you encounter here with the respect and dignity they deserve.

This is the essence of the Honor Code, along with, of course, a deep commitment to being truthful in everything.

As part of this ceremony you will also receive the Trinity Medal, a symbol of your entrance into the Trinity community and commitment to the values of the Honor System.

The Trinity Medal has, on its front, the image of Our Lady – Notre Dame – the patron of the Sisters of Notre Dame who founded Trinity in 1897.  On the back is the Celtic triangle symbolizing the Trinity.  Your Trinity Medals are symbols — symbols of the power of women to change the world.  Wear them well, wear them with pride, never do anything to disgrace them!

To conduct this part of the program, I am pleased to recognize Dean of Students Meechie Bowie will lead you in the Honor Pledge.  After you recite the Honor Pledge, Dean Meechie will call you forward to receive your medals and sign the Honor Roll.

“I realize the responsibility involved in membership in the Trinity College community. I agree to abide by the rules and regulations of this community. I also affirm my intention to live according to the standards of honor, to which lying, stealing, and cheating are opposed. I will help others to maintain this responsibility in all matters essential to the common good of the community.”

[The students then came forward one-by-one.  Each announced her name with the guidance of Dean Bowie.  Next, Provost Carlota Ocampo and Dean Sita Ramamurti handed each student her medal.  Then the students signed the Honor Book.  Photos below capture the phases of this beautiful traditional ceremony.]

CLOSING REMARKS

As you came forward for this ceremony, I was so impressed by the way each one of you stepped up to the microphone and proudly declared your name.  Yes!  You are here because you are strong, proud women with big dreams, and  you should always be ready to say your name, loud and strong!  Congratulations!

As I watched you walk in procession for this ceremony, I also imagined you on the day that you will walk up this aisle in your caps and gowns.  What a day that will be!  Always remember:  graduation is the goal!!

You have received your Trinity medals and signed the Honor Book signifying your commitment to continue in that long line of women reaching back to the start of the last century.  Across the last 126 years, thousands of Trinity Women have sat in your places, studied in our classrooms and library, conducted research in our labs and played on our fields and courts.  They have formed lasting friendships and cultivated a great love for learning throughout their lives.

You may have heard of some of the famous women who once were Trinity first year students just like you — women like Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi ‘62, or former Chief of Staff to the First Lady Maggie Williams ‘77, or former Kansas Governor and HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius ‘70.

You will hear about and even get to know some of our more recent women of achievement — women like Beatrice Peterson ‘12 who was just named as the Journalist of the Year by the National Association of Black Journalists; or women like Tekedra Mawakana ’93 who is the CEO of Waymo, Google’s self-driving car service; or women like Sydney Cross ’10 whose career in foreign service has taken her from the State Department to the US Transportation Command and soon to the Middle East; or Ewa Obutuse ’20 whose advocacy for Dreamers led to a new Maryland law paving the way for undocumented persons to work in licensed professions.

These are just a handful of the thousands of accomplished women who, like you today, once sat in this chapel on their very first week as Trinity Women, wondering what the future might hold.

Who among you will be cited in the future as exemplars for new generations?  Never forget this opportunity and obligation:  from your first day at Trinity, you are writing your history for the future to see your example, for other women to take inspiration and determination from what you have been able to do.

You are joining the Trinity community in an historic year, the 250^th year of the great American experiment in Democracy.  We know that our nation is stressed right now — politically, economically, socially, spiritually.  You will be the citizen leaders for your communities, our city and nation well into the latter half of the 21^st Century.  What will you contribute to the protection of civil rights, the achievement of justice, the relief of poverty, education of children, improvement in healthcare, establishment of peace at home and abroad?  Those may seem like lofty, ephemeral goals — but they are goals that we all must work to achieve every single day.

You are joining this academic community on the cusp of an entirely new technological revolution, a brave new world shaped by Artificial Intelligence.  We know little about AI except that it has been created and controlled by a few very powerful men — mostly men — and that there are some very good uses for AI, but many pernicious and even evil applications.  Whether you choose to work in healthcare or education or business or politics or government, you will have to learn about and develop a healthy philosophy toward the application and management of AI across almost all facets of our lives.

Many of you will be pursuing careers as nurses and healthcare professionals.  We need you!  Your ability to care for your patients will lean on the very best of your Trinity education.  And you will be on the front lines of some of the most contentious issues of our society — the controversy over vaccines, the issue of gender affirming treatments, ongoing questions about reproductive rights, and access to good healthcare for all people regardless of their ability to pay.

The scientists among you will engage the important issues of environmental health and climate change, regardless of what politicians say, the problems are real; the journalists in this class will find yourselves at the center of an increasingly worrisome conflict between wealthy corporate owners of media and the public’s right to know the news unfiltered by political diktats; those who will be teachers face the essential imperative to improve literacy and the ability of students to recognize the difference between real facts and fake news.

In all of this, you will be using the best of your Trinity education to investigate the facts, to engage critical and moral reasoning to solve problems, to write and speak clearly and persuasively, and to exert leadership for progress, for good change, for justice and peace in all of the communities you inhabit.  In doing this, you will emulate the Trinity Women who came before you, and blaze trails for those who will follow you.  You will prove the wisdom of our founders, the great Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur, who never met you but who would be so proud of you today.

May the power, wisdom, love and light of the Trinity go with you all through your college days!   Congratulations, Class of 2030!

(Below:  the images on the Trinity Medal include the Celtic symbol for the Trinity, and on the front, the image of Madonna and Child, taken from the pediment over Notre Dame Chapel, see bottom photo.)