Other than the fact that the names and faces change, commencements, no matter where they are or when they take place, all seem to be very similar.
Each year, a number of students clad in caps and gowns walk down an aisle to music, receive advice about the "real world" from some speaker, are handed their diplomas and throw off their caps while expressing some sorts of emotions, whether they be joy or sadness.
But the repetition can be deceiving, especially when it has been accompanied, in Dartmouth's case, by Commencement happenings that have included, among other things, drunks, gamblers, secret service agents and a Native American standing on the branch of a pine tree.
The first Commencement
The College's first Commencement in 1771 - an event celebrating the graduation of four students, all of whom had spent only one year at Dartmouth after having received the first three years of their undergraduate education at Yale University - was characterized by debauchery initiated by College founder Eleazar Wheelock.
To celebrate the graduation, Wheelock planned a large banquet and provided rum for his guests, who included New Hampshire Governor John Wentworth. But the College's founder was a tad too generous with his liquor - the cooks partook rather liberally in the festivities and were consequently unable to prepare the meal.
But a ceremony that included some semblance of sanity did take place on Wednesday, August 28, 1771 in the location where Reed Hall now stands, according to a Commencement history by former College professor Francis Lane Childs '06. It included orations in Latin and English and began and ended with a prayer.
But mixed in with the sanity was some strangeness - a Native American student is reputed to have delivered a graduation address from the branch of an overhanging pine tree.
In addition, although the four graduates received their diplomas, the documents could not be signed because there were not enough Trustees present.
You think class is long?
While the College's first Commencement included only four graduating students, by 1835, not only were there more graduates, but there were 48 graduating speakers which caused the ceremony to last all day.
Student participation in Commencement had changed through the years. In one of the more unusual ceremonies, ten students in 1793 were required to perform a dialogue on "The Trial of Louis XVI."
Ceremonies around 1807 typically included 10 to 20 speeches and were in languages including Latin, Greek, Hebrew, Chaldaic, French and English.
But College President Nathan Lord dramatically increased the number of senior orators in 1835, when he required all graduates to give a 10-minute speech on an assigned topic.
Believing that "ambition and emulation are selfish principles, and therefore immoral," Lord abolished all competitions, class ranks and honors designations. By insisting that every graduating student deliver a speech, Lord prevented students from competing to speak - and most likely put some audience members to sleep.
The number of student speakers was reduced to six in 1898, then to three in the 1920s, and finally to one speaker in 1939.
The Commencement Committee chose this student and his speech was titled "Valedictory to the College."
Today, the student with the highest grade point average speaks at the ceremony - and the whole ceremony is in English, as opposed to those ceremonies of the past that included many different languages.
Perhaps the current decision to stick to English is a good one - considering the problems College President John Wheelock had during one early 19th century Commencement ceremony.
At one point, Wheelock announced loudly, "Musica expectatur!"
Nothing happened, leading Wheelock to repeat his command twice with increasing emphasis. Finally, Wheelock got fed up with the unresponsive band and shouted, "Play it up!" at which point the band kicked into action.
Unusual guests
It is almost impossible to predict who is going to show up at Dartmouth's Commencement. All sorts of people have attended, and not all of them were invited.
In the early 19th century, Commencement was a major social event in New England and it was not the academics that attracted people.
According to Childs' history, "the inhabitants for twenty miles around celebrated Commencement 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, from which were dispensed all kinds of food and drink, patent medicine, knickknacks and gewgaws, soap and cologne, and an endless variety of miscellaneous articles. Jugglers, mountebanks, sideshows, and auctioneers were numerous."
An 1833 account of Commencement cites "peddlers, gamblers, drunkards and shows" as undesirable elements on the Green.
"I should think there were in sight of one another 30 places of gambling," said one observer. "During the graduation exercises in the meeting hall, the vociferations of a dozen auctioneers were to be distinctly heard in the house."
Commencement has also moved to different locations throughout its history, including the Green, inside Webster Hall, an amphitheater in the Bema, the front lawn of Baker Library and the football field - often moving due to changes in the size of the audience or the arrival of speakers such as Dwight Eisenhower or Bill Clinton.
Eisenhower spoke in front of 10,000 people in the Bema in 1953, giving an impromptu address that 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."
Tight security measures accompanied Eisenhower's visit to the College.
Donald Goss '53 said there were "secret serviceman in the windows of Baker and machine guns on the roof." Several bodyguards were also hidden under caps and gowns.
History Professor Jere Daniell '55 said his most vivid memory of that ceremony was the secret serviceman stationed in the revolving door at the front entrance of Baker.
"A German shepherd dog came running out of the library and headed for the platform. Without flinching a muscle - I mean these guys must have had eyes in the back of their head - one of them lifted the dog right off the ground," he said. "That was one surprised dog."
Clinton's large 1995 audience was accommodated by Memorial Field, where the president praised the merits and importance of 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.
The ceremonies reached their current location, the Green, in 1996. Last year, however, many of the audience members retreated to Spaulding Auditorium and Collis Commonground in order to watch the ceremony on closed-circuit television due to a downpour that was drenching the Class of 1998 during Commencement.
Franklin D. Roosevelt was another esteemed Commencement speaker at the College, but not all of them have been political types. Other graduation ceremonies have included Ralph Waldo Emerson, Walt Whitman, Robert Frost, Leonard Bernstein and Walter Cronkite.
When the members of the Class of 1999 walk down the Green to music, listen to former Senator George Mitchell give them advice, receive their diplomas and throw off their caps, don't think this is just another Commencement - after some of the Dartmouth graduations of years past, even the absence of any strange or noteworthy happenings would make it unusual.
