Chinese Activist Harry Wu Is Symposium Keynote

The 1999 Professionals Symposium this year drew 41 alumni participants — not quite a record, but a very good showing for this annual weekend of career workshops, networking opportunities, and an awards banquet. This year’s theme was "Voices of Courage: Forging New Nations of Learners."

The Saturday night awards banquet was sold out; guests included President Peggy Ryan Williams and Ithaca mayor Alan Cohen. The evening began with 14 students greeting the crowd in their native languages. Countries represented included Cambodia, China, Dominican Republic, Korea, India, Malaysia, Nigeria, Peru, Philippines, and Tanzania, as well as Puerto Rico, the Seneca Nation, and the United States. Sharnali Taves ’00 of Mexico also welcomed the group in American Sign Language.

A Buddhist invocation was offered by five members of Ithaca’s Namgyal Monastery before the dinner, which featured an Asian menu and music by Fe Nunn ’80. President Williams introduced the guest speaker, Chinese civil rights activist Harry Wu (see page 48), who spoke on his experiences as a political prisoner in China’s laogai (labor camps) and his subsequent efforts to document China’s human rights violations for the rest of the world. He also spoke on the importance of becoming involved in the fight for human rights. Wu received a standing ovation before and after his talk.

More than 130 students were honored with gold or silver awards — for those opportunity programs students and non-programs students of color who earned a minimum of 12 credits each semester and achieved a grade point average above 3.000 (gold) or between 2.7000 and 2.999 (silver) for the 1998–99 academic year.