I gave this speech for my Baccalaureate Graduation ceremony at Wellesley College.

When I first came to Wellesley 4 years ago, I felt callouses forming at the corners of my heart. The parts that rubbed up against the anger and pain and violence that breathes through our body and scorches our lungs. We live in a tragic world after all – raging wars, genocides, state-sanctioned violence, deforestation. To protect my peace, I tried looking away, keeping busy, working hard then not at all, but ears can still see past shut eyes. I was really confused and angry because I didn’t know the language of these cries so it all blended into deafening noise. I know you feel the this thing I’m talking about. The rat on your chest. Maybe you call it something different though… like anxiety? Reguardless, Shit sucks. Shit hurts. And shit is so valid to feel. 

That’s where I was when I came here. Even though I often forget this: We’re at Wellesley because we go to school together. Education is a double edged sword. We really did work so hard for our education here. Wellesley uses the term imposter syndrome for when that work feels so empty. When our learning estranges us from our own humanity. When what we learn in class frames the dogma of our oppressors as truth. 

But one thing about me, is I’m going to take a little mid-seminar smoke break to ki, especially when class is testing me. During these breaks, we don’t just talk about what was said, but who said what and how we feel about what they said and why our lived experience and theirs contextualize the way we see the world. The way we navigate it. The way we know it. This is deeply personal. And personal is imporant because it’s what makes education empowering insteads of indoctrinating. 

When education empowers, students are brought to their own seat of wisdom grounded in their own history as well as the one in the books. We recognize how history moves through us. When education indoctrinates, we’re forced to parrot violent takes as truth. The system rewards those who are complicit in it. 

I’m sure we’ve all experienced both sides of education at Wellesley: empowerment and indoctrination. I think my favorite moments at Wellesley are those where empowering education is shared in friendship.  Radical friendship is relation beyond identity markers. It is embodied, relational, and sensitive. It is creating relationships built on mutual care instead of contractual obligation. Caring for a friend ilike this requires holding space for the paradox of the personal and political. It is holding space for the understanding of the specific social and political privileges certain identities and phenotypes have without forsaking the personal experience beyond those identities. It means I listen to my friends’ stories and the stories they carry. It means I listen to the birds chirp and the trees breathe because their stories are not separate from mine. 

When I cook Filipino breakfast for my friend, I chop the spam up just the way she likes it since it’s the winds of diaspora didn’t blow longganisa into Wellesley. When I visit my friend’s house and they’re overwhelmed in tears, I know she is not crazy or overreacting for feeling overwhelmed by the world. I know it is not built for her. I hold her in her favorite blanket; she deserves all softness in her grief.

Everyone has certain gifts, and its communities responsability to loosen and nurture and scatter them. When I say responsibility, it can sometimes feel like this overwheliming burdon. But, I think responsability can also be thought of as the ability to respond–where we recognize our capacity moment to moment and respond as thing arise. If someone is hungry feed them. If someone is tired, give them a bed to rest. When someone is hurt, help them.

There are a lot of people hurting right now in Palestine, Congo, Sudan, Ukraine, and so many more places around the world. And we can only do what we can. In fact, the struggles of our own community is not separate. We are not separate from them.

When I demand Wellesley divest all economic ties with a Zionist state genociding Palestine, I’m speaking with the voice of Wellesley’s students, faculty, staff, and alums who are petitioning, organizing and revolting as we speak. Because we the people are Wellesley, not the admin nor board of trustese nor the invisible hand of economic motive. We must do what we can to dismantle the Zionist state that is founded not on Religion but gross wishes for economic and political power. I say Zionism is not religious like hw Christianity was used to justify slavery even though that is not Christianity.

And we must care as much as our bodies will let us because apathy kills. We can only do what we can so come as you are so sometimes that means you can’t be at that encampment or protesting or sending esims But we can commit ourselves to reorganizing community so that it is not dependent on the values of colonizers. Kill the cop in your head is killing the psychiatrist in your head is putting the people in front of you before the system that kills the stranger. I weep for this system that kills the stranger.

As we say goodbye, let’s reflect on what we are truly rewarded, in addition to the very expensive piece of paper we’re getting tomorrow. We came in as covid year during a pandemic desecrating culture, communities, safety. Trust, we know we suffered. We know how we suffered. 

But we are not rewarded for our suffering, but the truth we carry through our suffering. 

The truth I carried these past 4 years emerged in late night hammock kikis and morning grind seshes post beauty salon sleepovers and card games and drag race and devouring tacos made in these dingy res hall kitchnettes. I’m quite forgetful, so I can’t remember exactly what this truth is. I know it is true since the callouses at the edge of my heart melted in the face of it. I trust I’ll remember this truth though, and then forget and remember and forget all over again as I walk the world beyond our Wellesley bubble. I trust we all will, because I trust that we find the family we need along the way like we all did here.