During our Baccalaureate ceremony on Friday, May 22, 2026, the crowd was addressed by Nikki Chambers, Dean of Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging. Below are her remarks in full.
Thank you, Mr. Hill, faculty, staff, families, friends, friends who are like family, and most especially, the Class of 2026.
It is a true honor to speak with you this evening. As many of you know, this is our last chance to gather before you cross the threshold from Williston student to alumnus.
Tomorrow, many of you will drive over Mount Tom with your cars packed to the brim, some of you with far more than you arrived with last September. You will head off to celebrate Commencement with celebrations of your own, surrounded by the people who have loved you, supported you, and watched you grow into the version of yourself we see before us tonight.
And then, before long, you will be on your way.
You will head toward new places, new roommates, new routines, and new versions of yourselves that you have not met yet. Some of you, after years surrounded by this bucolic beauty, are headed to schools where you will not know where the campus ends and the city begins. Some of you are headed to colleges that are bigger than this entire town. Some of you are headed somewhere even quieter and more rural than Easthampton. And some of you are simply headed somewhere new.
Regardless of where you are going, I know many of you are ready. Ready for freedom. Ready for a new rhythm. Ready for something bigger, louder, faster, or maybe just different.
But before you go, I want to invite you to pause and think about what it means to leave home.
Not just the home you came from before Williston. Not just the home your family created for you, though that is sacred. But this home. The one you built here, day by day, in classrooms, dorms, dining halls, teams, rehearsals, advisories, friendships, and ordinary moments that may not have seemed important at the time.
As many of you know, “home” was the theme of this year’s Upper School speech contest. And, if it is alright with our English department, I would like to take this moment to offer my own insights on the subject. Because tonight, home is not just a prompt. It is the thing you are preparing to leave, the thing you have helped create, and the thing you will carry with you into whatever comes next.
So what is home?
Home is one of those words we use all the time but rarely stop to define. We say, “I’m going home,” and sometimes we mean a house, a dorm room, a familiar street, a person, a meal, a song that reminds you of something or someone, a group chat, or simply a place where we do not have to explain ourselves quite so much.
At its deepest level, home is not just where we live. Home is where we are known. It is where we can exhale. It is where we feel safe enough to be honest, understood enough to relax, and rooted enough to grow. Home is the place, or the people, that remind us who we are when the world asks us to become too many things at once.
Home can be where we are from. It can be where we are going. It can be something we inherit, something we miss, something we outgrow, or something we have to build. And sometimes, home is a place we only fully understand after we have left it.
I know something about that.
Some of you may not know this, but this is my second time living in the Pioneer Valley. The first time, I was around your age, in the middle of my own college search, trying to figure out what school I might one day call home.
And because I am both a millennial and a part-time history teacher, I feel a responsibility to properly situate us in the early 2000s. So, for the teenagers in the room, allow me to offer a brief explanation. And for the adults in the room, please enjoy this small moment of nostalgia.
Gwen Stefani was teaching us how to spell “bananas” in “Hollaback Girl.” Kelly Clarkson was making heartbreak sound like a power anthem with “Since U Been Gone.” Beyonce had recently gone solo after Destiny’s Child. AOL Instant Messenger away messages read like emotional diary entries. MySpace Top 8 selections had real social consequences. And many of us were dressed in outfits suspiciously similar to what I see many of you wearing now, down to the wide-leg jeans and the miniskirts with Ugg boots.
So there I was, with an iPod full of bops and maybe a few songs from Napster, if you know, you know, searching for a college where I could be challenged, stretched, and seen.
That search brought me here, to western Massachusetts, and eventually to Mount Holyoke College. I still remember what I felt when I saw the beauty of this region for the first time: the hills, the trees, the mountains that seemed to hold everything in place. But what I remember most is the feeling that a school could make room for a person who was still figuring herself out.
I spent four of the best years of my life being challenged academically, learning how to be a leader, learning how to think critically, and, most importantly, learning how to use my voice to speak my truth.
After graduating from Mount Holyoke, I spent nearly ten years working in college admissions. I lived out of a suitcase, traveled across the country and around the world, and met bright, talented students who were searching for their next intellectual home.
That work taught me that, on the surface, the college search can look like applications, essays, deadlines, recommendations, and decisions. But underneath all of that, it is often a search for belonging. Students are really asking: Where will I find my people? Where will I become more fully myself? Where will my voice be cultivated? Where will I be able to grow?
That work changed the way I think about schools. It taught me that the best educational communities do more than prepare students for what comes next. They shape how students understand themselves. They give students confidence, questions, new passions, friendships, courage, and sometimes even a new definition of home.
Years later, I returned to the region that gave me my first real dose of belonging. The first time I came to western Massachusetts, this place gave me room to grow into myself. The second time, Williston invited me into the work of helping young people do the same.
And that has been one of the great joys of my life: working in partnership with all of you to build spaces where young people feel seen, known, challenged, and cared for. There is joy in watching a student find their voice. Joy in seeing a community learn to ask better questions. Joy in creating academic, residential, and community spaces where people can bring more of themselves into the room.
And Class of 2026, whether you realize it yet or not, you have built something here.
You came to Williston as one version of yourself. Maybe confident. Maybe nervous. Maybe pretending to be more confident than you felt. Maybe excited to leave home. Maybe not sure you were ready. Maybe certain you knew exactly who you were, only to discover that life has a way of complicating our certainty.
And then, slowly, Williston began to shape you.
Not all at once. Not perfectly. Not in the same way for everyone. But through ordinary days, this community became part of you.
It happened in assemblies when our Wildest Cats, Nina, Francesca, Daryn, Jack, and Owen enthusiastically planned weekend activities to bring people together. It happened during Why Not Speak Day workshops that expanded your perspectives and challenged you to think more deeply about identity, community, and belonging. It happened on athletic fields, in art studios, on stages, in classrooms, and in the quiet conversations that helped you understand yourself a little better.
Some of you did not know you had artistic gifts until you took Ceramics with Mrs. Staples. Some of you did not know you could become scholars of history until you took World History with Mr. Brooks. Some of you arrived here already talented athletes, but your gifts reached new heights under Blayne’s coaching. Some of you are now ready to fully embrace your identity as writers because you learned the craft from published authors like Mrs. Sawyer and Ms. Levine.
That is what home can do when it is at its best. It does not simply nurture who you already are. It helps you discover who you are capable of becoming.
Williston has taught you more than you may realize. It has taught you how to live in community. How to be more independent. How to be known. How to sit with discomfort. How to listen across difference. How to ask better questions. How to keep going when something does not turn out the way you hoped.
And, perhaps most importantly, it has taught you that home is not only the place that holds you. It is also the place that prepares you to leave.
Those lessons are not always dramatic while they are happening. Growth does not always announce itself. Sometimes it looks like walking to class half-awake but finally figuring out exactly how much time you need to get dressed and out the door before Ms._Byrnes calls you out for being late to first block. Sometimes it feels like being corrected, challenged, disappointed, or humbled. Sometimes it feels like failing at something you thought you should already know how to do.
And then one day, you realize you are different. Not because one single thing changed you, but because you kept showing up. You kept learning. In the words of Aaliyah, you dusted yourself off and tried again.
That is one of the gifts of a place like Williston. It gives you space to try, to stumble, to surprise yourself, and to grow into parts of yourself you did not know were there.
Class of 2026, tomorrow you will not just be leaving a campus. You will be leaving a place that has witnessed your becoming: the small attempts, the ordinary days, the moments that did not seem important at the time but together became your life here.
And leaving a home is complicated. There is joy, sadness, anxiety, gratitude, and sometimes all of those things at once.
Some of you may be ready to leave and still find yourselves emotional tomorrow. Some of you may be excited for what is next and still feel the ache of what is ending. Some of you may not fully understand what Williston has meant to you until you are somewhere else. All of that is okay. That is part of leaving home.
But when you find yourself somewhere new, somewhere louder or faster or stranger or farther from home, I hope you remember what Williston has taught you. I hope you remember how to make a place feel less unfamiliar by showing up fully. I hope you remember how to build community with people who are different from you. I hope you remember how to ask for help, how to offer it, and how to keep becoming yourself without forgetting where you have been.
And I hope you remember this: home is not only something you find. Home is something you practice. It is something you build through attention, generosity, courage, and care.
To conclude, I want to leave you with a poem by Alberto Rfos titled “A House Called Tomorrow”:
You are not fifteen, or twelve, or seventeen-You are a hundred wild centuries
And fifteen, bringing with you
In every breath and in every step Everyone who has come before you, All the yous that you have been,
The mothers of your mother, The fathers of your father.
If someone in your family tree was trouble, A hundred were not:
The bad do not win-not finally, No matter how loud they are.
We simply would not be here If that were so.
You are made, fundamentally, from the good. With this knowledge, you never march alone. You are the breaking news of the century.
You are the good who has come forward Through it all, even if so many days
Feel otherwise. But think:
When you as a child learned to speak, It’s not that you didn’t know words-
It’s that, from the centuries, you knew so many,
And it’s hard to choose the words that will be your own.
From those centuries we human beings bring with us
The simple solutions and songs,
The river bridges and star charts and song harmonies All in service to a simple idea:
That we can make a house called tomorrow.
What we bring, finally, into the new day, every day, Is ourselves. And that’s all we need
To start. That’s everything we require to keep going.
Look back only for as long as you must,
Then go forward into the history you will make.
Be good, then better. Write books. Cure disease. Make us proud. Make yourself proud.
And those who came before you? When you hear thunder, Hear it as their applause.
Class of 2026, that is my hope for you.
That you understand you are not leaving here empty-handed. You are leaving with every version of yourself that had to grow, stretch, stumble, laugh, learn, and begin again in this place.
You are leaving with the people who shaped you, the lessons that challenged you, the friendships that sustained you, and the memories that will make you smile when you least expect it.
And as you go, I hope you remember that home is not only a place you return to. Home is something you know how to build now. You have practiced it here. You have built it here. You have been part of it here.
The house called tomorrow is waiting for you. And Williston will always be here to cheer you on as you make your own versions of history.
Congratulations, Class of 2026. Thank you.