SOUTH HADLEY — Mount Holyoke College welcomed new President Danielle Ren Holley onto its campus on Thursday, but the way the students cheered and lined along the entranceway upon her arrival, it may as well have been Beyoncé.

Holley was officially inaugurated Thursday as the college’s 20th president and first woman of color to hold the position during a nearly 2½-hour ceremony held at the campus’s Chapin Auditorium. Outside the auditorium, more than 100 students of the historically women’s college gathered for a pep rally, leading chants and holding signs welcoming their new president, some of which compared her to the aforementioned famous pop singer.

“Who runs the world? Holley!” one sign read, while another stated, “President Holley, we can see your halo,” a reference to the Beyoncé songs “Run the World (Girls)” and “Halo,” respectively.

For juniors and seniors of the college, the hiring of Holley as Mount Holyoke’s president follows a rather unsettled period for the position, after former president Sonya Stephens stepped down in 2022 to become president of The American University of Paris. Beverly Tatum, the former president of Spelman College, served as interim president before Holley, a legal educator and social justice scholar, was hired to the position.

“I can say on behalf of the 2024 class, we’ve had three presidents and this one so far has been the most connected and most valued, in our personal opinion,” said Danyah Tarabulsi, who serves as vice president for the board of the college’s Class of 2024. “We’ve met with her earlier this summer, and she’s very sweet, very loving and so smart.”

Some students say that they’ve already noticed signs of improvement on campus under the new administration.

Aria Mallare, a junior and biology major at the college, said that when she left campus last year, parts of the school’s Clapp Laboratory had felt disorganized and outdated. But when she returned to the lab this year, she noticed it had been cleaned and set up with exhibits featuring research done by the lab’s professors.

“It’s just a lot more appealing and I’m really excited about what else she’s going to do with our science building,” Mallare said. “I think the general culture at Mount Holyoke is that we are excited.”

Adding to the excitement of Holley’s inauguration is that she is first full-time Black woman president of Mount Holyoke. Tatum, the interim president before Holley, is also Black.

“That’s really something significant,” said Emily Mock, a senior and chair of the school’s Student-Athlete Advisory Committee. “We’re all really proud of her. I haven’t even met her yet and I love her.”

In her inauguration speech, Holley named two famous Mount Holyoke alumnae as having a profound influence on her own career: Frances Perkins, the U.S. secretary of labor under Franklin D. Roosevelt and the first ever female U.S. presidential cabinet member; and Barbara Smith, one of the founders of the Combahee River Collective, a Black feminist lesbian organization active in the 1970s.

“[Perkins’] skills as a policy maker and her ability to create lasting and positive change impacted the way I viewed my own potential to make change throughout my career,” Holley said. “The Combahee River Collective statement became a foundation for concepts such as intersectionality, which says so much of how I think and conceptualize racial and gender identity.”

Holley also said the mission of historically women’s colleges like Mount Holyoke is more important than ever, with the U.S. Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade and the ongoing global gender inequality in education.

“We champion the full equality and voices of people who have been marginalized on the basis of their gender identity,” she said. “Our gender identities and other forms of identity are not a reason for us to feel cast away, but instead to feel a sense of empowerment, a sense of hope, and a true vision of the future in which we are all equal.”

Holley ended her speech by thanking her late mother, Joyce Holley, who worked as a professor of accounting at both Texas A&M University and Texas Southern University, at a time when Black women in academia were exceedingly rare.

“She taught me a myriad of things, love and devotion to family, a love for music, everything from Sam Cooke to the Beatles to Prince,” Holley said. “I feel her presence with me every day, but especially today.”

Before becoming president of Mount Holyoke, Holley served as dean of Howard University School of Law. She holds a bachelor’s degree from Yale University and a law degree from Harvard Law School.

Alexander MacDougall can be reached at amacdougall@gazettenet.com.

]]>