New Alums Hit the Streets

Fittingly enough, much of the class of 2009 started and ended their College careers at the same building: Robinson Hall. Degrees were not presented during the rainy June 14 Commencement ceremony so as “to preserve the calligraphy,” according to Provost Barry Scherr. Instead graduates later returned to the scene where their first-year trips got under way to pick up the paper proof of their four years here. That was after the pomp and circumstance concluded on the Green, where speaker Louise Erdrich ’76 said, “We have to act together to heal and love this world.” The number of honorary degree recipients dropped from eight to seven when New Yorker cartoonist Roz Chast couldn’t attend. President James Wright, presiding over his final commencement, hesitated only briefly when he realized a page was missing from what he was reading; staffers quickly rectified the problem with barely a notice from the audience of 11,000.