Students celebrate 'Lost at Sea' Founder's Day

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I hope I am more than a mark on a wall

end the night, Vassar provided a ten minute firework show and free cupcakes at Sunset Lake.

Students dressed as underwater sea creatures, mythical figures and pirates, all in celebration of Matthew Vassar’s birthday. Sabina Lopez-Jensen ’26 discussed their costume saying, “I dressed up as a crab, and I thought that was a unique costume but then I saw like, seven other people dressed as crabs.”

Founder’s Day is organized each year by the VSA Programming and Traditions committee in conjunction with the Campus Activities Office, Health Promotion and Education, Safety and Security, Dining Staff, Big Night In and the Residential Life Office. This undertaking requires months of planning and around 30 volunteers. Programming Chair Dhriti Seth ’24 said in a written statement, “Founder’s Day has many moving parts so we establish [a] few subcommittees that are chaired by volunteers that handle different aspects of the day.” Seth continued, “The most important aspects to coordinate was recruiting volunteers to help out, finalizing vendor contacts and establishing plans of actions with other offices of the school such as Safety and Security and Health Services to ensure that the student body remained safe and well during the day.”

While the weather proved to be an unexpected hurdle for Founder’s Day planners to overcome, Seth reported it ultimately did not affect the day’s outcome saying, “The weather definitely threatened to put a [damper] on the event. We tried to plan for it by changing our tents to be fully covered with sides in order to protect against the rain. All in all, despite the weather we had a great turn out and it seems that people were able to enjoy themselves.”

In the week leading up to Founder’s Day, Vassar’s Engaged Pluralism Race and Racism in Historical Collections Working Group held an event entitled “Complicating Found- er’s Day” on April 25 in the Villard Room. In a collaborative written statement, Brian Scannell ’23 co-chair of the Working Group and two librarians, Deb Bucher, the Head of Collections and Discovery and Melanie Maksin, Head of Academic Engagement, stated, “Our group hoped to use historical materials to reveal aspects of Founder's Day that may not be known to current members of the Vassar community—including the ways in which Founder's Day, particularly in the first half of the twentieth century, has been a site of racial and ethnic exclusion, cultural appropriation, and blackface and other forms of racial and ethnic masquerade.”

The event drew 120 attendees of both students and faculty. Attendees enjoyed a catered dinner while exploring the different materials present. Sections included acknowledging the many “founders” of the college, examining the recently uncovered photographs, and learning more about the tradition’s historical evolution. Scannell ’23, Bucher, and Maksin reported positive responses from the event’s participants.

What Founder’s Day will look like in the future will continue to be an ongoing conversation on campus. Scannell ’23, Bucher and Maksin commented, “We think it's important to think critically about who has been excluded from these traditions and why, and how we might develop more inclusive, expansive celebrations that reflect our community as it is now and as we want it to be.”

Seth expressed similar sentiments, “Founder’s Day is definitely one of those and it is incredibly heartening to see the community come together to celebrate in such a manner. We must acknowledge that the history of the tradition is problematic in its own right though and actively work to educate ourselves about how far we’ve come in order to ensure greater inclusivity and respect within our community.”