The Senior Executive Committee will announce the names of this year's Commencement and Class Day speakers, marshals and historians today.
This year's faculty speaker is Education Professor Andrew Garrod, the class orator is Min Lee, and the class historians are Carlo Corti, Jason Hsiao, Carrie Spring and Jo Weingarten.
Class 1998 President Katy Bieneman will be head marshal due to her position within the class, SEC President Kevin Walsh said. The Class of 1998's other marshals are Candace Crawford, Shannon Jarosh, Marene Jennings, Anat Levtov, Rob Nutt, Khalid Osbourne-Roberts, Asa Palmer, Andy Smith and Simone Swink.
Garrod said he was "extremely pleased" to have been selected for the second time in six years to be a Class Day speaker. He said this is the third time in six years an education professor has been selected to speak.
The choice of speakers is the students' way of "telling us the issues we deal with are important," Garrod said.
He does not know yet what he will speak about.
Lee said she was surprised and "very honored" to be chosen class orator. The orator gives a speech to the class on Class Day, which is June 13 this year. Class Day is usually held on the Bema.
Traditionally, the orator's speech is a short, literary speech reflecting on the class's four years at the College.
Lee said she did not know what she would speak on, since she had only learned of her selection a short time before. She said she would look at previous speeches by class orators and "see where [she] can go this year."
The class historians' job is to present a performance that outlines the class's four years at the College at Class Day, Weingarten said. She added that the historians' performance often includes "events in the world at large that happened in the past four years."
Hsiao said the historians' part was to "take a look back at the four years in a light-hearted, kind of funny way."
The class marshals' job is to "lead the whole crowd down the middle aisle" at Commencement and to "stand up and tell people when to stand and when to sit," Palmer said.
Nutt referred to class marshal as an "honorable recognition."
These students were selected by the SEC after being nominated by the 1998 class at large.
"The SEC chooses people from within the class -- the people they think are best for the position," Swink said.
The class was contacted by letters and BlitzMail messages to make nominations, according to Weingarten, a member of the SEC.
The SEC met, took all the nominations and "talked about those nominated," Weingarten said. After that, it was a "basic voting process" to choose the students.
