Senior column by Clara Jane Hendrickson | Thank you and farewell

By Clara Jane Hendrickson 05/13/16 11:39am

“It’s on / Again you nod your head and take my hand / Though I’m not sure where we’ll go (amen) / To worship more than what we know (amen) / As long as you’re there I won’t be alone (amen).” These lyrics come from the song “Familiarity” by the Punch Brothers. For me, these words capture the task I believe lies before our extremely discombobulated but extremely competent student body.

Surrounding myself with poetry and song lyrics seems appropriate for my graduation season. It is a time that brings an odd combination of itching to move on from college and not being ready at all to leave.

When I arrived in Philadelphia, the airline lost my luggage. I remember the first time I made my way down Woodland Walk (before construction began on the new dorm). It was a sticky August day but I was surrounded by green and brick buildings (we don’t have brick buildings in San Francisco because they’re not earthquake proof, so this was a novel experience for me). I made my way to the Quad and my jaw dropped. “Ok, I guess I’ll be going to Hogwarts for the next four years,” I thought. I laid down on my green mattress in my dorm room completely empty-handed and utterly overwhelmed. While my time at Penn has not been without its tough moments, I grew up more than I ever wanted to, and there is nothing more magical than that.

While alone in my dorm room and freshman hall that night, I soon found myself inducted into full-fledged membership at this university. Being part of a university community is a rather nebulous idea. The only thing we all seem to have in common is a memorized hodgepodge collection of some of Benjamin Franklin’s more frivolous quotes from strolling down Locust Walk every day. What, if anything, does it matter or mean to be a student at the University of Pennsylvania? I believe there is something important to seeing ourselves as belonging here even if this community is imagined.

But here are some things we do have in common: by virtue of having graduated from this university, we will possess an extraordinary amount of social capital. As political journalist Thomas Edsall writes, it is no longer the top 1 percent but the top 20 percent of earners who appear socioeconomically, geographically and educationally insulated. This insulation constitutes a social empathy crisis. As Penn students, we are nearly all in that isolated, insulated 20 percent.

According to new population estimates released this month by the U.S. Census Bureau and analyzed by the Pew Research Center, millennials have officially surpassed baby boomers as the largest living generation in the United States. Until now, baby boomers, defined by the explosion of births after World War II and born between 1946 and 1964, have constituted the U.S.’s largest living generation. It is our social and political moment whether we like it or not.

At a time when political anger reigns and Donald Trump is likely to be the Republican nominee, it is appropriate to consider which of the old values we want to keep and what new ones we want to inspire. We have inherited decades of political disaffection and pain. Many of the forces that led to this moment began rumbling long before we were born. While we are not responsible for this exceptionally divisive climate, our generation and status as Ivy League students endows us with an exceptional amount of political and social clout.

So here is my slightly patronizing message to you all before I leave and no longer have access to a platform that always allowed me to spew my thoughts out to thousands of my peers.

The best thing we can do as students sharing classrooms, dorms, apartments and coffee shops is commit ourselves to the task of establishing open and thoughtful communication with one another. We are in a scholastic environment full of extremely smart individuals, but that doesn’t matter at all if we can’t listen to one another. While I am a proponent of social criticism, I think it is important to remember that being a critical thinker is not about constantly rejecting and dismissing. Being critical is about refusing unconsciousness and paying attention more than is comfortable. I’m in if you are.

CLARA JANE HENDRICKSON was an opinion columnist at The DP (June 2015–May 2016). After graduating she is moving to Washington, D.C. to learn from clever people and intern at The Brookings Institution.

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