June 12, 1932

When the Reverend Arthur Lee Kinsolving, rector of Trinity Church Boston cancelled his appearance due to illness, Dr. Charles R. Watson, president of the American University in Cairo and father of Evelyn Grace Watson ’32, delivered the baccalaureate sermon, “New Emphasis for This New Day.” The “new day,” he said, was expressed “in its conception of world unity, in its consciousness of law and development, and in the attitude of present-day humanity toward change, which is now regarded with expectancy instead of fear.” Noting that “America is regarded by the outside world as a nation of amazing individuals, but individuals who are lacking in social cohesion,” Dr. Watson challenged the graduates to realize that “The future lies in social integration.”

—The New York Times

After the service, President MacCracken dedicated a bronze tablet in the Chapel’s Memorial Hall honoring five alumnae: Ella M. Liggett ’69, founder and head mistress of the Liggett School in Detroit; Ella Weed ’73, organizer and first executive of Barnard College; Abbey Leach ’85, professor of Greek at Vassar, the first woman president of the American Philological Association (1899-1900) and president of the Association of Collegiate Alumnae (1899-1901); Ethel Moore ’94, founder of the Oakland Social Settlement, pioneer in the development of public playgrounds and a key figure in California’s ratification of women’s suffrage and Christine Ladd-Franklin ’69, discoverer of an historic solution in symbolic logic, the “antilogism,” mathematician and pioneer in color vision theory.