Publication Date: Wednesday, June 16, 2004
Our Town: Going to 'church'
Our Town: Going to 'church'
(June 16, 2004) by Don Kazak
Sunday morning. Many woman wear dresses, children are dressed neatly and are on their best behavior. Even men usually dress up out of reverence for the occasion.
It's a Sunday-morning church, of the academic kind.
Stanford held its 113th commencement Sunday, an event that keeps drawing me back.
I always sit in the stands at Stanford Stadium among the parents and other family members of the graduates, just to see their reactions and absorb some of the joy they are feeling.
It's a time when the worries of the world drop away for the graduates and their families for awhile, and it's nice to feel that.
Stanford President John Hennessy, like former Stanford President Gerhard Casper before him, always invokes the idealistic origins of Stanford to inspire the graduates. But first, they have fun.
The seniors burst out onto the field. It's called the Wacky Walk. More accurately, it is the Delirious Dash.
While the seniors cavort in the sun for a half-hour before their bemused parents, the graduate students and faculty properly march around the stadium behind school and university flags in a gesture at decorum.
The seniors decorate their caps and gowns with balloons and flowers, and toss Frisbees and footballs. Many hold signs for their parents in the stands. And they wear all manner of costumes.
Maybe this Palo Alto traffic thing is getting serious. For the first time this year, I saw six students dressed as traffic bollards, in huge cardboard tubes. Maybe they live in Downtown North.
Four or five students ran around carrying cut-outs of Pac-Man characters, homage to an earlier day and the first computer game.
One woman came dressed in a large, galvanized steel trash can. Don't want to think what that was about.
But it is church of a sort, complete with a minister. The Rev. Scotty McLennan gave the invocation. The students would hear many messages this morning, and his was the first.
"May we commit ourselves to living our lives as art, rather than as mere occupations," he said.
Hennessy told the students to have respect for the past but to be bold about the future: "Traditions remain vibrant when they are enthusiastically invoked by future generations," he said. He then invoked a Stanford tradition by asking the students to stand up, turn around and applaud their family and friends who supported them during their years of hard work. It's a nice touch. The kids yelled like crazy.
Sandra Day O'Connor, associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, was the keynote speaker -- for the second time. She also spoke in 1982. Hennessy noted that a woman who graduated that year and heard her speech then was also present this year -- to see her daughter graduate.
O'Connor urged the students to think about a life of public service. She noted she was the first woman to serve on the nation's highest court and said she was surprised as anyone when then-President Reagan nominated her in 1981, just seven months after he took office.
She spoke well of Reagan, who was not exactly a favorite on campus except among Hoover Institution scholars.
She was also funny. A commencement speech, she noted, is supposed to inspire graduates while talking about nothing at all. "That's why so many lawyers are asked to speak. Lawyers are experienced in having to talk without having anything to say."
But she had something to say, of course. She noted that this year is the 50th anniversary of the landmark Brown vs. Board of Education court case, which ended school segregation. But there were court cases dating back to 1927 that led up to Brown, she said. The road to change and social justice can be a long one.
"I don't know what the future holds, but I know who holds the future." she said.
The Stanford Jazz Workshop Commencement Ensemble, as usual, played "Elgar's "Pomp and Circumstance" with understated warmth. The music was muted at first, and then carried by the high notes of a lone trumpet.
Weekly Senior Staff Writer Don Kazak can be e-mailed at dkazak@paweekly.com.
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