Class Note 2015
In the spirit of recent political and social activism, I asked ’15s to send me their stories from “marching, talking and sharing ideas and dreams.” What I heard were stories of collaboration across years of alumni and participation of all shapes and sizes. Thanks so much to the ’15s who shared their stories for this issue.
Meghan Hassett spent six months before the election directing a nonpartisan voter registration office in Denver, where her office registered almost 18,000 new voters! In the week before the election she was knocking on doors in Charlotte, North Carolina, to get out the vote. Since then Meghan has been organizing with Environment Massachusetts around renewable energy and climate action. In February she was at the statehouse delivering a letter to Gov. Charlie Baker signed by a coalition she built about the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative and getting interviewed by the local NPR station and local TV stations about it! She was also candidly photographed in Vanity Fair, HuffPo and The Intercept at the women’s march in D.C. In her words, “I guess you can say this election and its aftermath has kept me busy!”
Caela Murphy joined the hundreds of thousands of people who traveled to D.C. to attend the women’s march in support of the rights of all Americans, regardless of gender, race, religion, sexual orientation or citizenship status. She met up with fellow Dartmouth alumni there at a post-march meetup organized by Emily Fletcher ’13, and traveled back to New York with Una Lee, Maddie Abbott, Sarah Lund ’16 and Becca Burten ’16. Emily Fletcher writes of the meetup: “We had a great turnout of alums from across the decades. And U.S. Rep. Ann Kuster ’78 came—it was awesome to have a Dartmouth alumna in elected office show up and hang out with alumnae and current students.”
Still others participated in women’s marches in their own cities. In Boston Haley Shaw, Stephanie Sa, Sarah Morse and Emily Kochman marched with other ’15s in the city.
Outside of social activism ’15s have been busy achieving great things and beginning new adventures.
In January Sarah Hammer passed her Ph.D. general examination, earning a master’s and Ph.D. candidacy status in chemical and biological engineering at Princeton University. For (at least) the next three years she will be at Princeton conducting her dissertation research, focused on engineering yeast for the production of alternative fuels.
Our Dartmouth College Fund head agents Julia Weber, Maggie Fiertz, Shayn Jiang are launching a podcast for the class. Julia explains, “In 2017 our main project as head agents and members of the senior executive council will be to start a class of 2015 podcast. As ‘adults’ we thought it would be fun to have a 15-minute podcast once a month to hear what our classmates are doing or a brief catchup on the Big Green. We have laid the groundwork and will continue to get it going this quarter. If you have any ideas for podcast names or content or want to host a few, please let us know!”
Please send any stories, news, or updates you’d like to share in our Class Notes to 15classupdates@gmail.com or reach out to me directly via text, email or snail mail.
—Samantha Webster, 665 Washington St., Apt. 711, Boston, MA 02111; (484) 356-3678; samwweb15@gmail.com
