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An estimated 2,265 cap-and-gown clad students will receive their degrees the morning of Thursday, June 10, when the University conducts its 297th Commencement.
All day Yard ceremonies, climaxing a week of Commencement pageantry, get underway at 9 o'clock with the Solomn Ritual. Under their respective marshals, all candidates will assemble in front of Thayer Hall at 9:30 o'clock to start the traditional march to Tercentenary Theater, on the steps of Memorial Church, where the Class will hold its exercises.
Lining the pathway from Widener Library to the Yard, the students will make way for the official procession, headed by Reginald Fitz '06, University Marshal, and Louis E. Boutwell, Sheriff of Middlesex County.
Conant Deals Diplomas
Actual ceremonies open with addresses by men graduating with special honors, after which President Conant will award degrees to the 2,265 graduates and to recipients of honorary degrees.
As always, winners of the honorary degrees will remain top secret until the last moment. At last year's program Secretary of State George C. Marshall and now Army Chief of Staff Omar M. Bradley received honorary Doctors of Laws, while J. Robert Oppenheimer '26, who helped develop the atomic bomb, won Doctor of Science designation.
In case of rain, exercises will be held in Sanders Theater.
Following the Commencement at 12:15 o'clock, the new and old graduates will gather, for the ceremonious Alumni Spreads, the Class of 1923 dining in the Straus Hall quadrangle. Under Robert F. Bradford '23, Governor of Massachusetts and Chief Marshal of the Alumni, the entire Alumni body will pass in review before President Conant and other dignitaries on the steps of Widener Library.
At the Alumni Exercises at 2 o'clock, George Rublee '90, President of the Alumni Association, will preside, and President Conant, Governor Bradford, and the honorary degree winners will give addresses. Last year's Exercises heard Secretary Marshall first expound his world-famous Plan for European recovery.
Big Week Starts June 6
The full Commencement week festivities open Sunday, June 6 with President Conant's Baccalaureate Sermon to the Senior Class in Memorial Church, followed the next day by the Senior Spread at Lowell House and the literary exercises of the Phi Beta Kappa Chapter at Sanders Theater.
Busiest day of the week is June 9, Class Day, when an unbroken string of events runs from 11 o'clock in the morning until after midnight. Exercises include the Class Oration, Poem, Ode, and Ivy Oration at the Tercentenary Theater.
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