With the breadth of Maine’s four seasons, �ֲ���ý’ campus is ever-changing throughout the year. 

But, even in the most extreme weather, a few things always remain the same — such as the Adirondack chairs dotting the Historic Quad. They stay put through winter blizzards, under colorful fall foliage, and during summer heat, like reliable friends waiting for company.

For Mia Wetzel ’26 of Mashpee, Mass., those chairs evoke a feeling of community representative of her �ֲ���ý experience. That’s why the biochemistry major, with a concentration in art and visual culture,  chose to depict them in her design for this year’s ivy stone, which features two empty Adirondack chairs surrounded by a cascade of falling leaves.

“The fact that they’re empty, it’s like: There’s an open chair, you never know who you’re going to meet, what’s going to happen,” Wetzel said. 

Since 1878, it’s been tradition for a graduating student to design a decorative stone to represent their class year. Any senior can submit an idea, and members of the senior class vote on the final design. On May 26, Wetzel’s stone joined the ranks of more than 130 stones dotting buildings around campus. In keeping with campus tradition, she helped Ron Tardif, a �ֲ���ý Facility Services mason, install the stone on the southeast side of Pettengill Hall. 

Though its design depicts an opportunity for new beginnings, the stone itself reflects not only the departure of the Class of 2026 but also the end of an era for Tardif, who has worked at �ֲ���ý since 2016. He is retiring later this year, making Wetzel’s stone the last ivy stone he will install.

“I feel blessed to have this job,” Tardif said. “�ֲ���ý is a generous employer. To be able to interact with the students is just one benefit. We have some really good kids here, and I enjoyed installing the ivy stones with them.”

For her design, Wetzel wanted to depict something that was personal but also specific to the Class of 2026. She remembered how, arriving at �ֲ���ý in 2022, she realized that her class would be the first since the COVID-19 pandemic to have a fully in-person campus experience.

“That’s when everything started returning to normal,” Wetzel said. “I used that as my inspiration — the idea of connection, reconnection, after being isolated or socially distanced.”

The Adirondack chairs came to mind as a fitting symbol of on-campus community. �ֲ���ý purchased the chairs in 2020 as a means to encourage socially distanced and safe ways to be together,  so they have always been a feature of Wetzel’s �ֲ���ý. She intentionally included two chairs in her design, representing the inherent connection in being a pair.

As for the personal side of the artwork, Wetzel arrived at �ֲ���ý ready to slow down and form deep connections after moving twice during high school — from Zimbabwe to the U.S., then from the U.S. to Germany — for her dad’s work with the Foreign Service. The chairs, with their wide, inviting seats and spacious arms, reflect the relationships she created on campus, including with her professors, who she said have been incredibly supportive, and friends she met through academics and extracurricular activities. Wetzel was the president of the Asian Students Association for two years, a violinist with the �ֲ���ý Orchestra, a Student Academic Support Center tutor, and, most recently, an emergency medical technician with �ֲ���ý EMS.

“Sometimes the people you connect the most with are the people you least expected to,” Wetzel said. “That’s part of what drew me to �ֲ���ý, knowing that there was a friendly atmosphere and that people can talk to whoever, and you might find a connection.”

Valentina Calastri ’09 and Grif Peterson ’09, dressed respectively as the Hindu deities Krishna and Kali, get into character before this year’s Pub Crawl, the Carnival-like annual kickoff to Senior Week. Calastri and Peterson’s costumes were inspired by �ֲ���ý travels: she through Sri Lanka and southern India, he in northern India during Short Term 2007 and again in 2008 under a Barlow Thesis Grant.

Photograph by Phyllis Graber Jensen

The �ֲ���ý mace, seen here cradled by Professor of Sociology Sawyer Sylvester, symbolizes academic authority — an understandable connection, since ancient warriors used maces to bash their foes. Borne by the senior faculty member leading the academic procession, the �ֲ���ý mace was fashioned by Leverett Cutten of the Class of 1904. Cutten, who earned a second bachelor’s degree from MIT, also crafted that school’s mace. Read more about the �ֲ���ý mace. Photograph by Phyllis Graber Jensen

Commencement speakers mostly direct their pearls of wisdom to the graduates and their families. But this year, when author and journalist Fareed Zakaria credited the Mexican government with impeding the spread of swine flu, we wondered if experts in the audience — �ֲ���ý biology professors — agreed.

Zakaria said: “We can all very easily describe the problems that the world faces…but what is always very difficult to describe is the human response to the problems.” He cited the swine flu as a hopeful example. Mexico’s rapid response, he said, “stopped the virus in its tracks.”

Hearing that statement was �ֲ���ý immunologist Pam Baker ’69. She mostly agrees with Zakaria’s assessment, saying that “we owe Mexico a debt of gratitude. Isolation was effective in containing the spread of the disease within and outward from Mexico,” she says. (That success, she adds, is separate from how the disease spread worldwide, since the virus was already global when Mexico shut down Mexico City, among other actions, in late April.)

�ֲ���ý virologist and microbiologist Lee Abrahamsen says that Zakaria’s statement rings especially true if one compares Mexico’s response to how other countries might react. She and Baker were among an international group of microbiologists who visited China several years ago. There, Abrahamsen asked authorities about HIV education and was told that “we don’t have HIV.” So when a country like Mexico reacts rapidly and cooperatively during a crisis, “it’s a gift to the world,” she says.

Zakaria was one of five speakers at �ֲ���ý this year, a tradition begun by President Hansen in which each honorand speaks very briefly (the five 2009 talks ranged from three to eight minutes).

Associate Professor of Rhetoric Stephanie Kelley-Romano says brevity improves the product. “Only a gifted orator can pull off more than about seven minutes,” she says. Most speakers, when speaking any longer, retrench into their own area of expertise and fail to articulate “the big picture,” she says. “A short speech forces the speaker to explain how their own field is relevant to the real world. And that’s why the graduates are listening, to hear what inspired these people.”

H. Jay Burns, photograph by Phyllis Graber Jensen ]]> /news/2009/07/01/pearls-and-swine/feed/ 0