Founders’ Day: a long-honored Bryn Mawr tradition where every member of the Bryn Mawr community gathers in the Graduation Garden (or the KVB if we have the misfortune of a rainy day) to celebrate the founding of our school. In recent years, Founders’ Day has become less about the founders of Bryn Mawr themselves, five women who, for their time, were bold yet flawed innovators, and more about Bryn Mawr as an institution. 

This year’s speakers, Phoebe Kilby (Class of ‘70) and her cousin, Betty Kilby Baldwin, spoke of their pasts, their families’ connection through slavery, and how they are working to repair the harm done by slavery in America. The efforts of these two women strongly speak to the recent changes surrounding Founders’ Day and to the changes the Bryn Mawr community has needed to make surrounding the school’s history and we celebrate it. 

But the change in how we think about Founder’s Day isn’t the only aspect of the event that has been different this year. As is no surprise to anyone at Bryn Mawr, this was the first year following the Covid-19 outbreak that the Bryn Mawr community was able to experience Founder’s Day together once again. Despite the undeniable trepidation at gathering so closely together amid a global pandemic as the Graduation Garden filled with faces covered in masks, the excitement felt by the school community at the chance to return to such a long-honored tradition was impossible to ignore. 

While Founder’s Day may not be the most anticipated event of the year for the student body, being able to listen to Ms. Sadler’s opening remarks, the scattered cheers across the crowd as awards are given to members of the faculty across divisions, and Dayseye’s familiar rendition of Jerusalem in person once more brought the Bryn Mawr community a little closer than it has been allowed to be in the past year and a half.