This year marks the 25th anniversary of coeducation at Dartmouth. Perhaps it is fitting that, like the first female College students, the first College commencement participants were, in fact, transfer students.
The students honored at the August 28, 1771 ceremony began their undergraduate careers at Yale and studied at Dartmouth for only one year.
The ceremony, held where Reed Hall now stands, was a combination of pomp and confusion.
According to a Commencement history by late College Professor Francis Lane Childs '06, the ceremony included orations delivered in Latin and English and concluded with a prayer. The four graduates were honored by College founder Eleazer Wheelock and New Hampshire Governor John Wentworth.
Wentworth came from Portsmouth to attend the ceremony and brought 60 guests, rum and ox for the celebratory banquet. However, the College cooks drank the rum and never actually roasted the ox.
A Native American student was rumored to have delivered a graduation address while standing on a branch of a pine tree.
The four graduates received unsigned diplomas, since the ceremony lacked enough Trustees to form a quorum.
Since the College's first Commencement, the ranks of its graduates have expanded to include women as well as men, and the class has been addressed by the likes of United States President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and poet Walt Whitman.
Many of the traditions and the spontaneity of the first commencement remain, however, despite 200 years of change.
The Legacy
Some practices from the first Commencement continue, and others have evolved over the years.
Orations have been given in not only Latin and English, but also in many other languages. In 1807, the program listed orations in the two originally featured languages, as well as Greek, Hebrew, Chaldaic and French.
Latin was the official language of the ceremony until 1827. This language barrier led to some confusion. Once President John Wheelock had to tell the band "Musica expectatur!" several times until finally, exasperated, he shouted "Play it up!" and the band started playing.
The revelry evident during the first Commencement was also apparent in later celebrations. Childs' history describes a Commencement early in the 19th century as "in much the same manner as fall muster or the agricultural fair ... The entire South end of the Green had every available spot occupied by booths and tents."
"Jugglers, mountebanks, sideshows, and auctioneers were numerous," Childs wrote.
The 1833 Commencement was marred by undesirable "peddlers, gamblers, drunkards and shows" on the Green.
The Class of 1879 donated money for music to be played at graduation, provided it was performed in the Baker Library Tower by members of the College community.
Student and faculty members have played in the Class of 1879 Trumpeters at every graduation since 1929.
When and where
Although many Commencement traditions have survived the test of time, the date of the ceremony has been altered on several occasions.
The first Commencement was held in August, but, starting in 1835, ceremonies were held on the last Wednesday in July, and, starting in 1872, the last Thursday in June.
Commencement was first held on its current date, the second Sunday in June, in 1939.
The College has also experimented with Commencement locations. In 1795, the ceremony was moved from Reed Hall to the brand-new College Church. In 1709, after more renovations, the ceremony was held in the larger Webster Hall.
From Webster Hall, Commencement was moved to an outdoor amphitheater on the Bema, and then, in 1953, to its present location in front of Baker Library.
That move, prompted by the 10,000 people who came to hear Commencement speaker President Dwight Eisenhower, was echoed in 1995, when the ceremony was moved to Memorial Field to accommodate the security and crowds expected for President Bill Clinton's Commencement address.
Commencement was moved back to its current location, the Green in front of Baker, in 1996.
World leaders, poets and politicians
Over the years, several presidents, including Dwight Eisenhower and Bill Clinton, have attended Dartmouth commencements.
In his impromptu 1953 address, Eisenhower denounced McCarthyism and censorship.
"We have got to fight [Communism] with something better, not try to conceal the thinking of our own people," he said.
"Don't join the book burners," Eisenhower urged graduates. "Don't think that you're going to conceal faults by concealing evidence that they ever existed. Don't be afraid to go in your library and read every book, as long as any document does not offend our ideas of decency. That should be the only censorship."
During his 1995 speech, Clinton praised the merits and importance of an education in today's society.
"If you live in a wealthy country and you don't have an education you are in trouble," he said. "We cannot walk away from our obligation to invest in the education of every American at every age."
The Dartmouth reported that the day after graduating and shaking hands with Clinton, Peter Hecht '95 fell ill with meningitis, sparking an alert with the White House physician.
Presidents Eisenhower and Clinton are, however, only two on a long list of illustrious speakers and guests who have attended the College's Commencement ceremonies.
Finnish Prime Minister Paavo Lipponen '64 reflected on his country and his time at Dartmouth during his 1997 Commencement address. He said that the United States and Europe can learn from each other to "create a real transatlantic trade and investment community."
Literary, as well as political giants, have spoken. In 1838 transcendentalist Ralph Waldo Emerson spoke on "Literary Ethics."
Poet Walt Whitman spoke at the 1872 Commencement. He was described by an observer as wearing a "flannel shirt with a square cut neck, disclosing a hirsute covering that would have done credit to a grizzly bear."
The College has awarded honorary degrees to alumni and to some who have made outstanding contributions to society but are unaffiliated with the College. Robert Frost, a member of the class of 1896, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Leonard Bernstein, Walter Cronkite and David Halberstam have all been honored by the College during Commencement ceremonies.
The seniors
Involvement of the graduating students has taken different forms over the years, from orations to other contributions. In 1793, 10 members of the class performed a dialogue titled "The Trial of Louis XVI."
Believing in the 1830s that "ambition and emulation are selfish principles," College President Nathan Lord abolished class ranks and honors designations.
Instead, he required each graduate in the class of 1835 to give a 10-minute speech, a practice that led to all-day graduation ceremonies with 48 speeches and bored audiences.
Four years later, trying to cut down the length of the ceremony, Lord required only half the class to deliver addresses. Despite this shortening, with Lord's resignation in 1863, the practice was abandoned.
The tradition of a single student speaker began in 1939, when the Commencement Committee picked the student, whose address was entitled "Valedictory to the College." Today, the selected speaker is the student with the highest grade point average in the graduating class.
In 1997 the College's first co-valedictorians, Daniel Fehlauer and J. Brooks Weaver both addressed their class during commencement. The two students' GPAs were separated by only .00026455 points. Fehlauer had earned 34 A grades while Weaver had 35, and both men had received only one A-, their lowest grade, while at the College.
Fehlauer urged his class to consider the College's motto "Vox clamantis in deserto" and what it meant to each of them.
Weaver called Commencement "an invitation to view life holistically, without artificial dividers and boundaries."
