Graduates of the class of 2000 crossed over a moment in time—not only from one century to the next, but into a new millennium. They and their new millennium sisters witnessed huge historical moments in the first decades of the 2000s: Katrina and 9/11. The demotion of Pluto. The election of Obama. And they stepped into an unprecedented era of innovation. They were the first to use flash drives, Bluetooth, smartphones and smart speakers. The first to read books on Kindle and listen to music on iPods.
Shannika Bacchus remembers college administrators saying that “the class of the new millennium” would be part of the cutting-edge. Yes, it was a strange new world, but whatever the new era brought, Belles would be ready because Bennett prepared them for whatever they would encounter.
They took that energy of change and novelty, and used it to create, to build, to discover. These young women have taken the last line of the Belle’s Creed to heart: “Whatever I envision, I can achieve.” They envisioned li
