Jason Luke

Jason Luke

Photograph by Stu Rosner

After graduation, Jason Luke ’94 supervised Dorm Crew—the trash-disposing, bathroom-cleaning student employment program he’d worked for in college—as a stopgap before graduate school. Soon he was offered a full-time position in “Special Services.” “What that really meant was doing anything anyone else did not want to do,” he says. He cleaned carpets, refinished floors, and moved furniture, often overnight—assembling teams from nothing. Graduate school would wait. When former Commencement superintendent Allan Powers asked him to take over another team, Luke said sure, unclear on the expectations. The job: supervising 250 staffers and setting up for more than 1,000 events during Commencement week, Harvard’s busiest of the year. No written instructions existed; the responsibilities, to be met alongside his regular duties, were merely explained to him. “I’d be at meetings with people about things that I was supposed to be doing, and I had no idea what they were referring to,” he recalls. More than two decades later, Luke, now associate director of campus services, approaches his Commencement role with both excitement and exacting standards. “The students who are there, they’re only going to graduate once. People only have one fiftieth reunion, one twenty-fifth reunion, one tenth reunion,” he says. For Luke, life is all about relationships. In his office, a class of 1994 photo sits beside a shot of his daughter’s basketball team—which he coaches—and souvenirs his staff have brought him from their home countries. Relationships are why he’s co-chaired all his class reunions, and how he became one of nine classmates nominated for this year’s Commencement chief marshal. “You can have bad days, you can have good days, you can have things that go well, don’t go well,” he says. But relationships, “that’s the one thing that can be a constant in your life.” 

Click here for the May-June 2019 issue table of contents

Read more articles by Jacob Sweet

You might also like

Making Money Funny

Matt Levine’s spunky Bloomberg column

Stand-Up to Simmer Down

In comedy groups, students find ways to be absurd, present, and a little less self-conscious.

Most popular

House Committee Subpoenas Harvard Over Tuition Costs

The University must turn over all requested materials related to tuition and financial aid by mid-July. 

Global Reach

A new center in Shanghai reflects Harvard’s growing engagement with the People’s Republic.

The New Gender Gaps

What to do as men and boys fall behind

Explore More From Current Issue

Julia Rooney’s Cyanotype Art At Harvard

Julia Rooney’s paintings cross the analog-digital divide.

Walter Wick’s I Spy Series

I Spy Creator Walter Wick at the Norman Rockwell Museum 

How Harvard Students Handle Political Disagreements

The Undergraduate asks if intellectualism is really on life support.