Selected Transcripts
Inauguration
Gianna Gonzalez '20
Presidential Inauguration Student Reading
October 18, 2019
I’m Gianna Gonzalez, William Smith student trustee from the Class of 2020.
The following is an excerpt from the Commencement Address that the author J.K. Rowling gave at Harvard University on June 5th, 2008.
“If you choose to use your status and influence to raise your voice on behalf of those who have no voice; and if you choose to identify not only with the powerful but with the powerless; and if you retain the ability to imagine yourself into the lives of those who do not have your advantages, then it will not only be your proud families who celebrate your existence but thousands and millions of people whose reality you have helped transform for the better. We do not need magic to change the world, we carry all the power we need inside ourselves already: we have the power to imagine better.”
It is on this important day as we inaugurate the Colleges' first female president, that I look forward to the future of the Colleges. President Jacobsen, thank you for giving us the power to imagine better. You have the full support of William Smith students.