The Oberlin Review
<< Front page News May 6, 2005

Commencement: behind the scenes
Planning behind graduation event no easy feat
 
From the Archives
The Big Day: Nancy Dye addresses graduates from the podium at Commencement of 2003.
 

As students scramble to finish final exams, attempting to stay afloat in a sea of stress, commencement planners are grappling with stress of their own as they try to pull together the biggest event of the year.

“Commencement is absolutely the most complicated thing we do at Oberlin College,” said Secretary of the College and Chairman of the Commencement Planning Committee Bob Haslun.

“There’s the commencement itself,” he continued. “There’s the alumni weekend at the same time. You have to house everybody. You have to feed everybody. You have to make the campus look pretty. You have to keep people entertained. It’s an enormous undertaking.”

The commencement planning committee is in charge of all of this. It consists of the secretary, the head of the physical plant, the alumni director, a representative from ResLife, the head of campus dining, grounds department, audiovisual, concert sound, catering and security.

“We have our first meeting [for the coming year] the week after commencement,” said Haslun. “It’s to go over everything that went wrong and everything that went right. We do it then because it’s still fresh in our minds.

“In October, we start again and there are two things that happen then. The honorary degrees committee, including three senior class officers, makes recommendations for degrees and the speaker. Most of these people have pretty full schedules and you have to ask early. Then, we start dealing with the reunions. The class presidents come back and we have a tasting dinner with them. It’s more of a fun thing than a serious thing, but we do come up with menus for the reunion dinners.”

While the menus haven’t been made public, the degree recipients are known along with the official commencement speaker.

“This year the speaker is alum William Schulz, the head of Amnesty International, and the other recipient will be Adam Moss (OC ’79), the editor of New York Magazine,” said Haslun. “We usually have three. Sir Harrison Birtwistle, the composer, can’t attend Commencement and will be receiving his on Friday, May 7 at a special concert in Finney Chapel.”

Laura Gobbi, executive director of the alumni association shared her experience as well. “We’ve always had Alumni Weekend at the same time as commencement,” she said.

“It’s part of the great tradition of Oberlin: combining all generations of the Oberlin family. It’s not just about commencement proper. It really is the weekend for seniors to celebrate what they’ve accomplished and also what they will become.”

This year, seven reunions consisting of 15 classes are being celebrated. The classes are arranged in clusters of three except for those celebrating 25th and 50th reunions.

“It’s been done every year this way except for two and it wasn’t a very popular choice,” continued Gobbi. “We’re frantically entering registration forms right now but we’ll probably get over 1800 alum.”

Although much of the symposium-like Alumni Weekend programming is open to current students, the specific cross-over events include the Thursday night Senior Picnic where seniors receive their alumni ID numbers, the Champagne Luncheon and the traditional Illumination Concert featuring Oberlin Steel on Sunday.

After the October meeting, there isn’t another one until the first week of the second semester. This is where the major planning starts and where issues specific to the year are discussed.

“This year, for example, the Shansi organization is celebrating its centennial,” said Haslun. “There’s a bunch of Shansi-related events that we had to include that wouldn’t normally be there.”

These events include a “Shansi Celebration,” an open house and a breakfast in its honor.

“Otherwise, it’s a pretty traditional year,” added Haslun.

And the traditional tool of the Planning Committee is a 40-plus page bound manuscript known by the key players as the “Commencement Bible.”

“It has a complete day-by-day breakdown,” said Haslun. “It has very specific directions for rooms, dining diagrams showing how many people can fit in a room, etc. There’s a responsibility list citing who’s in charge of every possible detail. There are phone numbers because we’re all on call 24 hours a day, either through cell phones or walkie-talkies. There are all these things that normal people don’t even think about, like providing guards for parking lots. We update the bible every two weeks throughout the spring.”

A lot of these little details get taken care of by more than 200 students hired for commencement week.

“Dorm cleaners go in at 10 a.m. Monday morning,” said Haslun. “They work 10 hour days and they barely get it done by Thursday night. It’s that hard. Guests can start arriving by Friday morning. After that, the workers mostly become food service employees although Security has about 16-20 students working as cadets for the weekend. If you do both it’s a lot of money but a whole lot of hours.”

Actual commencement happens on the morning of Monday, May 30. It happens outside, weather permitting.

“I’ve been running commencement for 28 years and last year was the first time we had to move it inside,” said Haslun. “It was hell.”

“Each student has to go to the registrar to get their March Ticket,” continued Haslun. “We have a system in place for the very hungover people who couldn’t pick theirs up. We have faculty members working as Commencement Marshals, and they insert late people into the diploma line.”
 
 

   


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