News
Throughout the years, Dartmouth's Commencement has been graced by the likes of United States Presidents Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Dwight Eisenhower and literary legends Ralph Waldo Emerson and Walt Whitman.
It has also been attended by drunkards, auctioneers, gamblers and a Native American standing on the branch of a pine tree.
Somewhere in there, the College managed to fit in a few graduates, an occasional faculty member or two and a couple of College Presidents.
Like every other Dartmouth tradition, Commencement has evolved throughout its 223-year existence and certainly had more than its fair share of strange occurrences.
The beginning
There were only four graduates at the College's first Commencement in 1771, and these students only spent one year at Dartmouth having received the first three years of their undergraduate education at Yale.
The ceremony, which included orations in Latin and English and began and ended with a prayer, occurred on Wednesday, August 28, 1771 in the location where Reed Hall now stands, according to a Commencement history written by the late College Professor Francis Lane Childs '06.
These four young men were honored by College founder Eleazar Wheelock and New Hampshire Governor John Wentworth, who made the journey from Portsmouth to Hanover accompanied by 60 guests.
To celebrate the first graduating class, Wheelock planned a large banquet and provided rum for his guests.