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Commencement Day Articles
Duck Story · The Day Itself · Honoris Causa · Let There Be Awe
"Gone Outta Here" · Learning On Line · Commencement Confetti · The Return of the Obstinate

An omnium-gatherum of notes and statistics, vital and otherwise.

Staff work. University marshal Richard M. Hunt, Ph.D. '60, carries a symbol of office, a bit of ritualistic paraphernalia called a "verge." He is, in effect, a verger.

A SCHOLAR OF BEOWULF
The dinner for honorary degree candidates in Annenberg Hall on the evening before Commencement brought a multitude (480) to table for a festive occasion. President Neil L. Rudenstine introduced each of the honorands. When he came to Dr. Harold Varmus, A.M. '62, Rudenstine explained that the two of them had been graduate students of literature at Harvard in the early sixties, before Varmus moved from Middle English to microbiology. Varmus the Renaissance man would give the principal Commencement address next afternoon. "The first half of his speech will be in Anglo-Saxon verse and the second half in DNA," said Rudenstine. "We'll find the real text on the Web."

SUMMA INFLATION
During the ten years from 1986 through 1995, the number of seniors graduating summa cum laude ranged from a low of 66 in 1986 to a record high of 83 in 1992, and last year was 79. This year Harvard handed out a whopping 115 summas.

COMPORTMENT
The job of the Commencement caller is to form and launch the procession from the Old Yard into Tercentenary Theatre on Commencement morning. Frederick Abernathy, Ph.D. '59, Lawrence professor of engineering, had his second turn at the podium as caller after many years as understudy to William Hutchison, Warren professor of the history of religion in America, who was on leave this spring. Abernathy seemed to find both

Candidates for degrees summa cum laude draw nigh. Excellence proliferates.

the dignitaries and his faculty colleagues more obstreperous than usual, possibly due to the fine weather.

"President RudenstineÉPresident RudenstineÉPresident Rudenstine! We are ready to go, please," Abernathy implored at one point. He was also heard to mutter into his microphone, "Anyone who is not here is missing."

FAMILY AFFAIR
Norton Q. Sloan Jr. '58, M.B.A. '61, of Ipswich, Massachusetts, and Norton Q. Sloan III '90, of Cambridge, each took home a graduate degree from this year's Commencement. Father Sloan earned a master's degree in the history of science from the Extension School. Son Sloan received a Ph.D. in applied mathematics.

RITES
So packed with seniors fresh from champagne breakfasts was Memorial Church at 8:30 on the morning of Commencement Day that the church's center aisle was clogged with young people sitting in a jumble on the floor. Rev. Peter J. Gomes, B.D. '68, Plummer professor of Christian morals and minister in the Memorial Church, proceeded with the utmost dignity down the aisle, parting the student waves with his staff, to deliver a short, sweet sermon to the departing flock. "Welcome," Gomes intoned, "to your last rites."

The church overfloweth on Commencement morning. Standing, in the balcony, is Michael Preston '96 of Lowell House and Madison, New Jersey.

Gomes is an enthusiast about the symbols and rituals that give expression to the spirit animating such occasions as Commencement. "We ought to appreciate," he has said, "as the young fully do, the transcendental nature of our public ceremonial. We are not dressed up just for fun, or to cover our nakedness, but rather to take on symbolic parts larger than ourselves or our own personal customs, habits, or preferences. Ritual is the acting out by humans of phenomena and forces greater than themselves, and in whose service they find themselves. That, rather than the mere reckoning of 'merit,' is what Commencement and its regalia and ceremonial are all about."

DRESS RIGHT
As the morning Commencement exercises got underway, William Cordingley '71 of San Anselmo, California, who sports a ponytail, joked, "Remind me-when they graduate, I flip my ponytail from left to right." A nice sentiment, but no meaning attaches to whether the tassel on an academic cap drapes right or left. Otherwise, an expert in such matters has noted, "A gust of wind could change your academic standing in a moment."

HUNGRY, THIRSTY ELDERS
The price tag for a meal at the general alumni spread in the Old Yard on Commencement Day zoomed this year to $15, up from $12 in 1995. Attendance was sparse. Business was brisk, however, at the Tree Spread, for post-fiftieth reunion classes. Said a member of the Happy Observance of Commencement Committee, "Twenty-five years ago we had perhaps 1,000 people at the Tree Spread. Now there are at least 1,500, and they're eating and drinking more."

ELEANOR, FRANKLIN, ET AL.
The recipient of the Radcliffe Medal this year was Doris Kearns Goodwin, Ph.D. '68, author of No Ordinary Time, the Pulitzer Prize-winning biography of

James L. Tierney '96 of Mather House and Chicago, just commissioned a second lieutenant in the Marine Corps.

Eleanor and Franklin D. Roosevelt, newly elected Overseer (see page 96), and mother of Joseph, who comes to Cambridge this fall as a member of the class of 2000. In an after-lunch speech in Radcliffe Yard on Friday of Commencement week, she spoke of the tangled personal relationships within the Roosevelt White House. "Imagine," she invited her listeners, "what the press of today would make ofÉa secretary in love with her boss, a princess from Norway visiting on the weekend, a woman reporter in love with Eleanor. Somehow, however, there was a code of honor on the part of the press at that time that the private lives of our public figures were relevant only if they had a direct impact on their leadership. How I wish we could return to that today."

MUSICAL NOTES
At the Boston Pops concert for the twenty-fifth reunion class in Symphony Hall on Monday of Commencement week, the orchestra presented the world premiere of Spirit of the Eagle, by Parmer Fuller '71, of Los Angeles, a five-part suite written in honor of the hundredth anniversary of the Harvard-Pops tradition and based on melodies drawn from two family Western films scored by Fuller in Hollywood. Later in the program, pianist Philip Aaberg '71 of Oakland, California, performed two of his pieces, "Nevertheless, Hello" and "Westbound/Don't Stop Now."

When the Commencement choir sang Randall Thompson's ravishingly beautiful "Alleluia" during the morning exercises, degree candidates from the Divinity School seated in the Theatre blew soap bubbles into the air, creating visual and aural synchrony in the sunlight.

"Commencement is the oldest public fantasy in the country," the Reverend Mr. Gomes told seniors. "You play the part of earnest students, and we play the part of wise professors."

Champ Lyons '62 of Mobile, Alabama, outgoing president of the Harvard Alumni Association, asked the audience at the annual meeting of the HAA on Commencement afternoon to join in singing "Fair Harvard." He proposed that those with daughters (he is the father of Emily O. Lyons '92) change the words "thy sons" to "we sibs."

A PEACEFUL COMMISSIONING
Despite recent demands by student activists and the Undergraduate Council that the commissioning ceremony for Harvard members of ROTC no longer be held on the steps of Memorial Church during Commencement week, it was. Sixteen students became officers.

THE WINNERS ARE...
The Phi Beta Kappa Teaching Prizes, based on nominations by undergraduate members of the society, each year recognize faculty for especially distinguished work in the classroom. At its annual literary exercises on Tuesday of Commencement week, the Alpha Iota chapter of PBK awarded its prizes to David Lewin '54, JF '61, professor of music; Everett Mendelsohn, Ph.D. '60, professor of the history of science; Dan L. Perlman, Ph.D. '92, lecturer on environmental science and public policy; and Margo Seltzer '83, G '87, assistant professor of computer science.

The Undergraduate Council confers its own Joseph R. Levenson Awards for excellence in teaching. This year's winners are Kamal Khuri-Makdisi, assistant professor of mathematics; Elaine Scarry, professor of English and American literature; and Peter G. Weyand, teaching fellow in biology.

The Ames Awards, presented to an outstanding man and woman of the senior class for community service, as well as leadership, self-reliance, and character, went to Michael K. Tran '96, of Mather House and San Francisco, who has been deeply involved in Phillips Brooks House, and Marta R. Rivas '96, of Leverett House and Edmore, Michigan, who has worked with a number of groups fighting violence against women.

Leora Idit Horwitz '96 of Currier House and Great Neck, New York, won Radcliffe's highest undergraduate honor, the Captain Jonathan Fay Prize, awarded to the senior woman who "has given evidence of the greatest promise" by her scholarship, conduct, and character. Some of Horwitz's research on electrophysiology has been published in the American Journal of Cardiology.

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