214 THE BOOK OF THE CLASS OF NINETEEN-ELEVEN
The Last Lap of the Course: or Che Exit of 1911
HIS article is not a report of the functions of Commencement Week. That honour
has been divided up among other pens. My aim is to strike deeper and to disclose
the really fundamental activities of the last fortnight the Senior class spends in the
bosom of its Alma Mater. Did it ever occur to you that Commencement is a convention?
That Garden Party is a side show to amuse Alumnae and guests? That Olympic Games and
Bonfire and even Class Supper are but golden apples thrown in the path of the modern
Atlanta? There are far more important things than these for the maiden who wishes to
reach the goal-post by eleven o’clock of the fatal Thursday morning. It is possible to receive
one’s degree in absentia, but never has the A. B. been conferred with the proviso “to go into
effect on the completion of one’s Pol. Econ. report.”” Bonfires may burn and Steps may pass
away, but the Senior cannot make her exit through Pembroke Arch into the Alumnae
Association of Bryn Mawr College until every examination has been passed and the English
Department has been appeased.
Nevertheless Commencement Week functions cannot be ignored. If the class, as is
usually the case, is bound by the icy chains of custom, it undertakes sideshows and hurls
apples in its own path. The sideshows need rehearsal and the apples turn to mountains
which require the force of the whole class to remove from the way. Therefore the funda-
mental activities of which I propose to write must be treated under two heads, faculty-
imposed and student-imposed, to which might be added a third, namely, warden-imposed,
inasmuch as when the panting and exhausted novissimae alumne return to their halls,
grasping with unbelieving fingers their precious sheepskins, they are immediately barricaded
in their rooms by boxes and packing-cases and forced to doff their pussy hoods and
long-sleeved gowns and use the ingenuity acquired by cramming facts into empty heads, in
cramming books and lanterns, tea-kettles and Garden Party hats, into full trunks.
