From The Editor

Before commencement, our magazine student assistant Akasha Brahmbhatt ’25 asked me for a favor: Could she borrow the handmade Wellesley magazine stole I have displayed in our office and wear it to graduation?

These days, graduating seniors wear a colorful array of stoles and pins representing their majors, student organizations, and identities, and Akasha wanted to represent the mag. I was touched and took the stole off its corkboard, but I had a request—that she sign it before she returned it, a physical reminder of her years with us. Next year, I’ll ask our student worker Hanna Matsukawa ’26 to sign it before she graduates, and I hope to keep up the tradition over the years.

That same week, I was browsing our back catalog of alumnae magazines and came across a sticky note in the spring 1989 issue from Grace Ramsdell ’22, our student assistant before Akasha, addressed to me and Catherine O’Neill Grace, the mag’s senior associate editor: “I miss the magazine!” she wrote.

As it happens, earlier this spring, Grace left her position at the WCAA as communications specialist and magazine class notes editor for a new job. “I found your note!” I texted her. “We miss you, too!” Grace responded that she had actually left a bunch of those notes when she graduated in 2022—but I didn’t find any of them until she had left the College for a second time. (However, as I told her, as an alum, you never really leave Wellesley.)

It’s a common impulse to leave your mark in places meaningful to you, and at Wellesley, it’s a joy to come across these reminders of former students—especially those near and dear to my heart, like Akasha and Grace. I also enjoy coming across marks from much further in the past. Recently, while working on an exhibition for the Davis Museum for spring 2026 titled Only To Be There: Student Traditions at Wellesley, I got a close-up look at the ceremonial spade used on Tree Day when the sophomores plant their class tree. It is covered with class years, carefully painted on by students in their class colors. But in the past decade or so, students haven’t put their class year on the spade—maybe feeling that they can’t write on a historic object. So I plan to attend Tree Day this fall with a red Posca pen, and encourage the class of 2028 to leave its mark.