Today, over 1,000 young men and women will have one thing in common: long black robes. No matter their names, their majors, their interests, their backgrounds, their dreams and their passions, each will don traditional commencement attire.
If only for a day, almost every member of the Class of 2001 will match their peers in more than just geographic location.
But look beyond the venerable robes and you will find that members of the graduating Class of 2001 deserve recognition for more than just successfully completing their Dartmouth education. Many have stretched the boundaries of academia to contribute to the College -- and in some cases, the community at large -- in a variety of ways, both inside and outside the classroom.
Four such seniors spoke with The Dartmouth about their myriad, often work and time-intensive commitments. Here are their stories.
Margaret Kuecker
Margaret Kuecker is perhaps best known on campus for her heavy involvement in the Student Assembly. Interested in the dynamics and responsibilities of student government, Kuecker attended an organizational meeting for SA in the fall of her freshman year.
Her commitment to SA was solidified almost immediately.
"At the organizational meeting, they mentioned they needed a secretary," Kuecker said, "so I volunteered."
This year, Kuecker served as SA secretary during the fall of 1997 and was a regular SA member for the remainder of her freshman year and during her sophomore fall. Her sophomore winter, Kuecker was elevated to the chairmanship of SA's communications committee. The following spring, Kuecker ran for SA vice president and won, going on to fill the responsibilities of that role for the entirety of her junior year.
Kuecker also served last year on the communications committee as well as on SA's student involvement council, which holds summits with administrators, faculty members and Trustees of the College about students' participation in College decision-making.
Surprisingly, though, it is not her involvement with student government that she considers to be her "most rewarding" activity.
Rather, she regards her work as an undergraduate advisor as her most gratifying commitment. Kuecker said that being a UGA was more than just fun -- it provided her with extraordinary insight into people's lives.
"I learned that we all have different sides to us and we may present one side of ourselves to the world, but everybody has problems," she explained. Engaging in discussions with first-year students and helping them work through some of their problems, Kuecker said, "was just really, really amazing."
While her many commitments -- Kuecker is also a sister at Delta Delta Delta sorority, a sexual abuse peer advisor, an area coordinator for the Office of Residential Life and a participant in the Navigator Christian Fellowship -- did, at times, make her academic workload difficult to manage, Kuecker said she relished being able to integrate what she learned in class with the activities she pursued outside the classroom.
Her work as a government major, for instance, overlapped with her work in Student Assembly, she explained. Meanwhile, the classes she took as an education minor, particularly those relating to youth development, helped her better understand the students in her UGA group.
Overall, Kuecker says that her experiences at the College, both academic and non-academic, provided her with an "additional level of depth."
"I've gone through a lot of stages of development," she said.
Upon leaving Dartmouth, Kuecker plans to move to Boston, where she hopes to establish a career in either education or nonprofit work.
Anthony Luckett
Watching Anthony Luckett manipulate his body through countless, complicated hip hop moves could make anyone break into a sweat.
That's just the way Luckett likes it.
"I dance and I come up with ideas so that we can make our shows hot," the longtime member of Sheba, a campus dance troupe, explained.
Luckett first joined Sheba during his the fall of 1997, following a suggestion from a Dartmouth student he met at Moosilauke Lodge during his freshman DOC trip.
He credits himself and two other members of the class of 2001 with bringing "a different flavor" to the group. Luckett, who had never participated in any formalized dance ensemble before coming to college, said that Sheba was one of the most important factors shaping his Dartmouth experience.
"I don't know what my Dartmouth career would have been like if I weren't in Sheba," he said.
In general, Luckett feels his time at the College has allowed him to explore his artistic side. In addition to his work with Sheba, Luckett has helped organize several poetry "slams" on campus.
Originally from New York City, Luckett frequented clubs that hosted performance poetry acts and often performed himself. Finding that there seemed to be an interest in bringing such a forum to Dartmouth, Luckett proceeded to organize the College's first performance poetry event, known as a "poetry slam."
"Dartmouth is the type of place that if you want to bring something here its relatively easy to do," he said.
Despite his involvement with Sheba and bringing performance poetry programs to the College, Luckett has made room in his life for endeavors that are not necessarily artistic in nature. He considers his membership in Alpha Phi Alpha, a historically black fraternity, as his primary commitment. Luckett has served as the organization's president and vice president.
Luckett worked as Dean's Office Student Consultant for the College. As a DOSC, Luckett's duties include organizing academic programming, such as major enlightenment, and assisting students in their course selections.
Luckett's other commitments have included the African American Society, the College's programming board and the student advisory committee at the Hopkins center. He has also worked for the Office of Residential Life, as a programming assistant for the Choates cluster.
As a engineering science major modified with studio art, Luckett admitted that striking a balance between his extracurricular activities with his academic workload was a difficult task.
"It's been very, very challenging, but everything's managed to work out somehow," he said, explaining that a large amount of his success is due to "perseverance and faith."
Luckett will be working at a New York architectural firm this summer, and will return to Dartmouth in the fall to complete the College's five year bachelor's degree program at the Thayer School of Engineering (he will receive a bachelor's degree in his major today.)
Yesterday, Luckett served in the honored position of class orator, speaking at the Class Day ceremony.
David Latham
The idea may seem unthinkable now, but once upon a time, not quite so long ago, checking BlitzMail while off campus was nearly impossible.
Then along came two Computer Science majors who founded "WebBlitz" -- a Internet-based version of BlitzMail -- and gave Dartmouth students the ability to check their beloved e-mail from almost anywhere in the world, without the benefit of BlitzMail software. One of these founders is a member of this year's graduating class: David Latham.
Latham, along with Dan Skolnick '00, conceived of the idea for WebBlitz while working on a project for their computer science class during the spring of Latham's freshman year.
At the time, the computers in the computer science labs -- where the two spent many an hour -- were incapable of running BlitzMail software, but were browser-ready.
Latham and Skolnick decided to ease their blitz separation-anxiety by creating a net-based version of BlitzMail that would work on those computers. They succeeded in their endeavor, called it WebBlitz.
The rest is BlitzMail history.
Off-campus Dartmouth students subsequently began using WebBlitz to access their BlitzMail accounts. Latham and Skolnick eventually joined with the creators of the Dartmouth Interactive Directory to form "The Basement" -- a site offering various informational services for Dartmouth students.
Latham said that his experience with WebBlitz made him more enthusiastic about pursuing a career in computer science.
"What I learned is that it's much more exciting to write something people actually use, which was not something we were getting in class," he explained.
In addition to his involvement with "The Basement" team, Latham, is an active member of The Campus Crusade for Christ and, has sung with X.Ado, a Christian a cappella group, for the last three years. Latham also served as X.Ado's business manager during his junior year.
Latham, a math minor, said that, in general, he was more than satisfied with his time spent at Dartmouth.
"It's been awesome. I've loved being here," he said, adding that "the place and the people are really what's been wonderful," about his experience at the College.
Following graduation, Latham will head to San Francisco, where he will spend a year working for a computer software company before continuing his education at Stanford University. At Stanford -- to which he was already accepted but chose to defer enrollment -- Latham plans to pursue a Master's Degree in Computer Science.
Bernette Tsai
When Bernette Tsai was approached by an administrator at the beginning of her sophomore year and was asked to help organize a movie series focusing on Asian Americans, she knew little about film. That didn't stop her.
Tsai and Melissa Kho '99 worked to bring Asian-American films to the Loew Theater at Dartmouth from the spring of 1999 until the spring of the following year.
At the time, Tsai explained, despite Dartmouth's sizeable Asian population, there was really no forum at the College for issues relating to Asian Americans. Tsai thought the film series would be a good way to draw attention to such issues.
It definitely drew the attention of Tsai herself.
"It taught me a lot about Asian American issues because I didn't know that much [earlier]," she said.
The project also provided Tsai with the opportunity to act in a leadership capacity, a welcome experience for someone who had "never had that kind of responsibility before," she said.
"Learning how to deal with [the project] was a big learning experience in itself," she added.
In choosing films for the series -- later named "Generations: An Asian American film series" -- Tsai and Kho looked to other, more established Asian-American film series, including ones held in New York and San Francisco and "picked and chose from those," Tsai explained. They also sought to explore films outside the mainstream, where, according to Tsai, many Asian-Americans filmmakers now choose to practice their craft.
During her sophomore spring, Tsai's intense commitment to the film series project, along with her participation in the College's water polo team, made her academic workload harder to manage, she admitted.
After that hectic term, Tsai said, it was time to, "cut down and decide what I wanted to focus on." The following winter, Tsai quit the water polo team but remained committed to Asian American issues.
In addition to the film series (which concluded its run at the end of spring 2000), Tsai organized a newsletter for the Dartmouth Asian Organization and also aided the organization in bringing Asian-American performance groups -- such as 2G, an acting troop comprised entirely of Asian-Americans -- to campus.
Her senior fall, as the chair of the College's Asian American task force, Tsai wrote an article for Main Street, an Asian-American quarterly, in which she publicized the results of 1998 study done on students' perceptions of race on campus.
Tsai has also been an active volunteer with the Tucker foundation, participating in several different programs sponsored by the foundation. The summer following her freshman year, Tsai volunteered through Tucker's Dartmouth Partners in Community Service program at the community outreach program at Boston's New England Baptist Hospital.
Tsai's experiences with the Tucker foundation, including the work she has done with members of the Upper Valley community, have had a profound effect on the physical chemistry major
"Coming from San Diego, I never met people of a rural area. Working with people like that was very eye-opening," she explained. "It also showed me what kind of impact Dartmouth students can have on the surrounding community."
After graduation, Tsai intends to spend two years teaching and then to plans to attend medical school.
