This article is from The Wellesley News’ annual satire edition.

Wendy* has chosen to remain anonymous, not out of fear of retaliation (“I already have a six-figure defense consulting post-grad job secured”) or the Honor Code (“it isn’t actually real”), but because she wishes to avoid damage to her perfectly curated Wendy reputation. 

At 2:41 a.m. on April 6, Wendy* broke into Dean of Students Helia Shorton’s office and found a list of names written in Comic Sans. 

“I almost got caught because I bumped into some CS student emerging from their Sci hibernation,” she said, scoffing. “And I thought I was a Wendy. They almost stopped me from creating Watergate 2.0, in honor of my political idol Richard Nixon. Please don’t include that last line.” 

While this list omitted the confirmed speaker, Wendy’s* Raytheon-worthy analysis skills confirmed that it was a list of runner-ups that were considered, but ultimately not chosen, to be the 2023 commencement speaker. Wendy* granted The Snooze permission to publish the list below, which included handwritten notes about why each person was ultimately not selected (Wendy* said that administrators got so infuriated with Shorton’s preferred font that they threw away her computer following the initial distribution of the list):

• Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA)
  • “Did not respond to our repeated attempts to contact her. Her Congressional office sent back an automated response featuring MTG’s ‘conspiracy theory of the day’ column. Took some notes on it for inspiration for my weekly Dean emails.”
• Kristan Hawkins, president of Students for Life of America
  • “She loved her previous experience at Wellesley when she gave her ‘the future is anti-abortion’ talk — although she was slightly annoyed at having to walk over the bodies of student protesters — so she initially agreed to speak at commencement. Unfortunately, we had to decline her offer after realizing the school could not afford her security fees.”
• Madeleine Albright ’59, 64th U.S. Secretary of State
  • “To be honest, we forgot she was dead. Oopsies!”
• Elizabeth Holmes, formerly the CEO of Theranos, currently convicted for fraud
  • “She declined the request because she didn’t know if she would be able to Zoom in from prison during her 11-year sentence. Probably for the better — we fear she may be too inspirational for some of the girlboss graduates. Note to self: design a new distribution requirement that teaches students how to be decent human beings.” 
• Isis Gaston ’22, more commonly known as rapper Ice Spice
  • “Her lawyers sent us a cease and desist asking us to stop saying she attended Wellesley because she doesn’t want to be affiliated with us.”
• Rosalina, a recurring character in the Mario series of video games  
  • “If we couldn’t afford Hawkins’s security fees, we DEFINITELY can’t afford the royalties to Nintendo. She also just kept making weird, unintelligible noises when we called her.” 
• Danielle R. Holley, president-elect of Mount Holyoke College
  • “She graciously accepted our offer, on the condition that we shift our admissions policy to align with Mount Holyoke, which admits all marginalized genders. Like that’s ever going to happen.” 

The Snooze leaked the list to a small group of students prior to publication, chosen for having the most karma points on Wellesley Sidechat, to gauge student responses to the list:

• Greene: Kelleyanne Sansway ’23, president of Wellesley College Republicans, said she was disappointed — but not surprised — that Greene had refused Wellesley’s invitation. “It’s because everyone on this fucking campus, including administrators, are brainwashed by the liberal media,” she said before going on a 20-minute rant about liberals. (Editor’s note: Who’s going to tell her most of us aren’t even liberals, we’re leftists?) 
• Hawkins: Anty Abbor Tione ’24, president of Wellesley for Life, refused to comment on the article. She pointed to the organization’s Instagram page @wellesleyagainstfeminism (formerly @wellesleyforlife, but someone had hacked into the account and she couldn’t figure out how to change it back). The Snooze is confused about what she meant by that referral, because the page solely consists of Tione begging people to subscribe to her Substack, where she posts 20,000-word anti-abortion rants. 
• Albright: Bout Lique Her ‘23, who participated in the Albright Institute during Wintersession 2022, could hardly choke out her words due to her incessant crying: “I’ve been crying non-stop since March 23, 2022, the day my idol Madeleine Albright died. Don’t call or text,” she said, throwing my phone recording our interview into the bushes. 
• Holmes: Future Cee Eeh Oh ’23, computer science and economics double major, said she was disappointed that Holmes wasn’t able to make it to commencement. “I’ve studied Holmes’s business career in detail, and I want to be just like her someday,” she said. Upon hearing that Holmes was recently convicted of fraud, Oh added, “Well, at least she looked stylish at her sentencing.” 
• Gaston: Gaye Musick ’23, WZLY president, said that they didn’t care about Ice Spice speaking at commencement. “However, we are begging on our hands and knees for her to lower her appearance fee so SBOG can put on a good FDOC concert for once,” they said.
• Rosalina: Leslie “Lez” Bienne ‘’24 expressed dismay at the College not being able to afford Rosalina’s appearance at commencement. “She’s such a lesbian icon,” Biene lamented.
• Holley: College President Jaula Pohnson (to our surprise, the number 1 contributor to Wellesley’s Sidechat) said that she was secretly happy that Holley had denied Wellesley’s commencement request. “Off the record, Danielle and I have a long-standing feud over who makes a better College president. She was not happy last time we spoke, when I bragged about my achievements for two hours. Please don’t put any of this in the article. Just say I refused to comment,” Pohnson said. 

While Wendy* doesn’t use Sidechat — “my prospective manager at Raytheon says that the U.S. government collects our user data and sells it to Russia, it’s totally not secure,” she huffed — The Snooze wanted to know who she hoped would be on the list. Her response?

“Honestly, I was hoping I would be selected for all my amazing achievements at such a young age,” said Wendy*. “I’m definitely reducing my annual donation to Wellesley by $1,000 to a paltry $14,000/year.”