Women’s Centered College Week (WCCW) has been an annual Simmons tradition since the late eighties. Throughout its existence, the Student Government Association (SGA) has been responsible for the planning and execution of the week.
To celebrate the 2024 WCCW, SGA set up several events throughout the week. They began with a blood drive on March 15 and ended with a showing of the film “Mona Lisa Smile” in Quadside on March 21.
Also as part of the week, SGA hosted a time capsule event on March 19 in the Trustman Gallery. Students were encouraged to submit physical items such as printed-out photos. SGA also gave students a QR code to submit digital items.
During the event, students took turns writing their names and class years on the back of their physical items before placing them into the small wooden box.
In an interview, Bella Yee, the Communications Director for SGA, said, “This began as a tradition by the Student Government Association, again, to celebrate our women’s centered community.”
Yee, a senior, explained that emerging out of COVID has created a new push to unite the Simmons community.
President Lynn Perry Wooten also commented on the impact COVID has had on the Simmons community. “This is really a year where people are starting to feel comfortable, and it gives us the opportunity to celebrate who Simmons is and what our future is, and bring our community together just to have some joy,” she said in an interview.
Part of the inspiration for the time capsule event came from the Simmons Memory Project, a student-driven project that aimed to preserve life on Simmons Residence Campus in the past decades.
“The whole idea around the time capsule is that it’s student-based,” Daniela Gil Veras, the Student Affairs Officer of SGA, explained. “It falls further into the purview of the SGA, as the representatives of the student body, to take the reins on something like this.”
Another inspiration was the commemoration of the 125th anniversary of Simmons. “It’s the 125th anniversary of the founding of the college. That’s not a year that comes around all the time. I think that at this stage in particular, there are also a lot of changes that are happening to the institution that impact student life… with the time capsule at this time, we all feel like it would be the perfect moment to just capture this little snapshot in Simmons history,” Gil Veras said in an interview.
“With projects like One Simmons, we are all aware of those physical transitions. It feels really poignant right now to literally have physical photographs…to have this physical history,” Yee added.
In her speech at the event, Gil Veras, a senior, remarked about the beauty of the moment students and faculty shared in that time. She commented that we will never again be in that same moment. The beauty of the time capsule is that it can capture the experiences of all who contribute to it.
The time capsule will remain in the archives for the next 50 years.
