Earlylast week seniors received a letter from Acting President James Wright stating, "After considering a whole range of factors and possible options, we have decided that the 1995 Commencement will be held in Memorial Stadium." Graduate on the football field? An outrage! A heresy against sacred Dartmouth tradition. "Keep it at Baker!" was the rallying cry.
Students mobilized. The pages of The Dartmouth quickly filled with letters from angry seniors. The Senior Society Council arranged a Question and Answer session with Director of News Services Alex Huppe. BlitzMail messages from concerned seniors buzzed back and forth. One such blitz called for "unhappy, upset and frustrated" '95s to show up at President Wright's office hours on Monday. "Maybe if a couple hundred '95's showed up we might be able to make our voice heard and initiate some action."
Who said Dartmouth students were apathetic? We seem to have a genuine student movement on our hands. Grass-roots support, spontaneous political action, benefit concerts, bargaining sessions with higher-ups. This is exciting stuff. We are taking a stand. We are rallying around a common cause. We are voicing our opinion, questioning the system and defining ourselves, our class, our generation.
Because the "Keep it at Baker" movement is the biggest political happening since the "Save Webster Hall" campaign, it is worth finding out what is at stake. We have the unique opportunity to peer inside the political consciousness of the Dartmouth student body. What makes us angry? What concerns rouse us to take direct action?
Why do we want our ceremony to be at Baker? The answers are obvious. Every spring for the past three years we have walked past the graduation platform and envisioned our own graduation day. We have imagined ourselves gathered together in Baker's womb, savoring our last minutes of easy security before being born into the "real world." In contrast to an intimate and elegant setting, a Memorial Stadium graduation would seem sterile, anonymous, almost hollow.
Why does the administration want to move the ceremony to Memorial Field? According to President Wright, graduation on the Green was becoming a logistical impossibility. If graduation remained at Baker, students would receive a limited amount of tickets. Say, six. Which means your grandmother would have to stay at home.
The bottom line is clear. A Baker ceremony would mean that we would have to accept one of two things: that a large number of friends and family could not see us graduate or that President Clinton could not come to speak. Have angry '95s faced these trade-offs? Are they willing to tell Mummy and Daddy that they won't have a nice view? Do they want to tell Clinton to find some other Ivy League graduation to address?
In short, outraged seniors are unwilling to make any sacrifices for their beliefs. Rather than weighing the options and making choices, they are throwing a tantrum. "But Mummy, you let the other classes graduate in front of Baker!" Is this the sound of our barbaric Yawp?
Sounds more like a bunch of spoiled children. More disturbing, however, are the students who justify their naked self-interest with righteousness. Many students have a sense that we deserve a ceremony at Baker. They feel the College is violating their rights, committing an injustice! Like many other privileged Americans, Dartmouth students believe they have an inalienable right to privileged lifestyle.
What have we been doing for the past four years? Supposedly, we have been getting a liberal arts education -- four years to explore the beauty of language, to think critically about society and history, to expand our moral imaginations. Four years to find out who we are and what we love. If "Keep it at Baker" is the sound of our "voces clamanting" in deserto, then we have missed something fundamental.
Leaving these troubling questions aside for a moment, let us turn to a more serious question about the graduation ceremony. Why is the person with the highest Grade Point Average guaranteed an opportunity to speak? The practice itself reveals a lot about the values of this institution: The one who dies with the highest grades wins. Commencement addresses of years past have proved the fallibility of this system.
Because many students still labor under a Harvard inferiority complex, let us see how the issue is resolved in Cambridge. They invite the top students of the graduating class to submit speeches long before the actual ceremony. A committee of faculty, students and administrators hear the candidates speak and vote a decision. This process takes away the divine right of the valedictorian and replaces it with a more democratic and rational system. Dartmouth graduation would benefit from such a change, and more than one sweaty-palmed valedictorian down the line would thank us for letting him or her off the hook!
We envision ourselves sitting, be-robed, with the arms of Baker wrapped tight around us. The library serves an important ritual function: it is an outward representation of the inner knowledge and intelligence which we have supposedly gained at Dartmouth. True, the ceremony would feel more complete with this symbol in front of us. Yet where does the real value of our education lie? In outward symbols or in inner thoughtfulness? The graduation ceremony should do more than represent intelligence. It should be intelligent. If we continue to stomp around like angry children, then we are mocking the very education which the ceremony honors.
