"What's that stick for?"
That's a question I hear often as I, along with 134 other deluded souls, try to marshal the commencement procession. The stick is a wooden dowel tied with a strip of red-and-blue ribbon, a symbolic version of the University mace. (Mark Lloyd, University archivist, claims it belongs to him, but since he's far more adept than I at confiscating bottles of champagne using only willpower, I figure I deserve it more.)
Anyway, the stick is a useful tool in the annual battle between the champions of law and order--the marshals, of course--and the exuberant and joyful chaos of bodies that is everyone else in the commencement march.
Graduates showboat for the camera. When the procession
slows down, marshals speed things up.
Tilted at just the right angle, it reminds the camera-wielding parent in the middle of Locust Walk that she can avoid injury by moving just a few feet to the left. The wooden point looks as if it could easily take care of the very large beach ball about to be inflated by a group of graduates. (The same ball will later enliven the commencement speaker's address until one of my brave, if reckless, colleagues can capture and remove it from the field.) Best of all, the stick serves the same purpose as a traffic officer's baton: It sends a not-so-subtle message about the disadvantages of dawdling as we pass the famous faces at the beginning of the academic procession--unless, of course, the individual likes the look of a slightly dented mortarboard.
By the time we get to Franklin Field and complete the job of pushing and pulling 4,000 graduates--each of whom wants to sit in the next row with a different group of friends--into their seats, I'm hoarse from encouraging students not to stand on the chairs to wave to Mom and Dad but to SIT DOWN, PLEASE, and the bedraggled red-and-blue ribbon smells like beer. The stick, however, is like new. Good thing, too.
The only time I actually used the stick came after everyone was seated and we thought we could relax. On our way to the rear, another marshal and I had to drag an intoxicated and even more affectionate senior away from his very embarrassed girlfriend. One very gentle tap and he saw reason.
I sometimes think this job would be much easier if I had the real mace, but I don't think the macebearer, Vice President and Secretary of the University Barbara Stevens, will give it up. After all, she marshals the faculty procession. As for Mark Lloyd: maybe next year--or when Franklin Field freezes over.
It was my first commencement on the job. My academic costume was neatly ironed. I had packed my trusty map of Franklin Field. I even left my house early to avoid the traffic that would most certainly be heading for Penn. Most importantly, I had committed to memory the three operating principles of the commencement marshal (C.M.):
1) Bottles, cans and pets are not permitted in Franklin Field.
2) Foreign objects, such as balloons and pinwheels, should be removed from graduates' caps.
3) Above all, the procession of graduates must keep moving. Gaps in the procession can cause inordinate delays in the entire ceremony.
I cannot swear to the verity of this, but, according to one veteran marshal, all C.M.s are given special powers for the duration of commencement. These privileges include the right to perform marriages and the ability to deliver babies. (I was not called on to do either during the ceremony.)
I learned the Achilles' Heel of marshaldom: the academic hood. After fumbling with the extraordinary number of buttons and strings on our own academic costumes, my marshal team gave up on accuracy and aimed for consistency.
As the whine of the bagpipes announced the arrival of the graduate procession, I straightened my hood, took my position at the gates of Franklin Field, and reviewed the C.M. operating principles with another novice marshal. But it was all downhill from there.
As thousands of black robes and caps started to stream past me through the gates, I had to make scores of judgment calls. And, I am afraid, most of them went against the three major operating principles of the C.M.
Some drinkware did make it into Franklin Field. There were a few gaps in the procession. And my worst offense: I was so taken with the creativity of the foreign objects the graduates wore on their mortarboards that I did not have the heart to ask them to remove them. I was especially awed by the student who managed to tape a skull (looked real to me) onto his cap. Special awards for creativity go to the College student who wore a Dr. Seuss hat over her mortarboard and chomped on a stubbed-out cigar as she entered Franklin Field and to a band of students who topped their caps with matching stuffed animals.
I must admit that I was ambivalent about serving as a marshal at first. But I encountered many veteran marshals who, despite their war stories, still approached commencement with a sense of excitement and fun. Like them, I plan to be part of Penn's 241st. I, too, very much enjoyed the pomp and, as a marshal, my circumstance.
Return to Compass Features for May 21/28, 1996