The class of 2016 has done some absolutely amazing things. We elected the second-ever African-American student body president. This group has organized not one, but two successful demonstrations with tangible results like desegregating sororities and establishing a multicultural center on campus. Students who will graduate this year altered the way that our campus talks about a number of previously pushed under the rug topics such as sexual assault and mental health. The campus that I am leaving only vaguely resembles the one that I stepped onto in August of 2012, and I think there is something special in our class that was a catalyst for a lot of this progress. And so I spent a lot of time this past fall worrying about who will carry on this trend once we are gone.
But something changed the night before SGA elections in March. I was taking inventory of the people running for office and all the other students who were supporting them, and I realized how incredible most of them are. I noticed that the candidates running would never have been around, let alone had as much of a chance as they did this year, when our class was witnessing yet another uncontested white man running for all offices during our first SGA election cycle. I watched younger faces speak up about the mark they wanted to make and the things they were willing to do to make the University a better place to call home. I felt a weight start to lift off of my chest when I stopped to think about the bravery and passion for goodness that I saw in so many sophomores and juniors.
Over the past few weeks when looking at the new Blackburn class, hearing from friends about incoming University Fellows and listening to the accomplishments being read off on The Mound as the next order of the XXXI was tapped and pinned, the worry I initially had completely faded away. It became abundantly clear that these younger students are up for the challenge of doing true good here. I realized that though my class has made incredible strides over the last four years, the onus for change is no longer on us, but on these underclassmen. I feel a quiet calm now in passing on that responsibility.
I leave behind a house in which I laughed and loved, forming the truest of friendships over board games and bottles of cheap wine on the front porch. I say goodbye to the streets where I have backed into numerous inanimate objects and got into my first car accident. I’ll no longer burst into ten Hoor, running because I am just over the threshold of time that marks inappropriately late. But when we go, these buildings and halls left behind do not stand empty. They, like the lessons we have collectively learned over the last four years, are passed onto the next generation, the way that we received from the last. To this next generation of University of Alabama students: I am no longer worried about the future of this place. Do with this campus what you will because I am confident that you are capable.
Yardena Wolf is a senior majoring in political science. She is the immediate past executive director of Homecoming and a key figure in the Stand in the Schoolhouse Door of 2013.
