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Week of 10 September 1999 Vol. III, No. 5 Feature Article Devote yourself to your dreams, Westling tells freshmen By Hope Green For just a moment, the dons in flowing robes and the brass quartet's portentous-sounding processionals might have intimidated the thousands of 18-year-olds assembled for their Matriculation Ceremony on September 1. Yet President Jon Westling and his platform party had words to counsel and reassure the Class of 2003, assembled in the Armory building 24 hours before the start of classes. "I hope and expect that you will find fulfillment at Boston University," Westling told the freshmen. "If that happens, it will be because you will have learned to judge which of your dreams are most worthy and will have devoted yourself patiently and tirelessly to those dreams." Praising the newcomers as being "part of a splendidly qualified class," Westling noted that 55 percent of the freshmen graduated in the top 10 percent of their high school class, and 90 percent graduated in the top 25 percent. Their SAT score average is 259 points above the national average, and their high school grade point average is nearly 3.5. President Jon Westling welcomes the Class of 2003 at their Matriculation Ceremony on September 1. Photo by Kalman Zabarsky "There are 4,200 new Boston University freshmen and 200 new transfer students this year," Westling said. "You have arrived here from all 50 states and 67 foreign countries. I am confident that eventually -- and in not too many years -- your influence will be felt around the world. "Ultimately, of course, statistics tell us very little," Westling added. "College, as you know deep down, is about transformation: a chance to become someone who is not only more knowledgeable, but more capable, and more mature." In a theatrical alumni allocution, Melanie Muradian (SFA'99) presented a one-woman skit in trilogy form, quoting the wisdom of UNI Professor and Nobel Laureate Elie Wiesel as well as the rhymes of Dr. Seuss. In one segment, assuming the hipsterish persona of a beat poet, she described the undergraduate experience as a journey with "some part tribulation but most part triumph. . . . The years ahead of you are about sucking all the marrow out of a $30,000 bone, baby." Melanie Muradian (SFA'99) delivers her welcome to the freshmen in the form of a one-woman sketch. Photo by Kalman Zabarsky Kevin Smith, CAS professor of physics and recipient of the 1999 Metcalf Cup and Prize for Excellence in Teaching, welcomed the students on behalf of the faculty. "People have chosen to come here to teach in addition to doing research, and you are the focal point of our work," he said. "Never again in your life will you have so many people and so many resources devoted just to you." The regalia swathing the speakers contrasted with the shorts, T-shirts, and belly-baring bandeau tops of their youthful listeners -- a crowd more appropriately dressed for the Nickerson Field barbecue and Splash! fair that would follow the formalities. Westling explained the tradition of the caps and gowns, dating back nearly a millennium, as "symbols of the special status of university life." "From this moment until the day you graduate, you, too, will enjoy a version of that special status," he said. "We don't require you to wear academic garb modeled on medieval coats and hats, although I think it would add a certain charm to Newbury Street and the Green Line if the fashion caught on. Perhaps if the Gap replaced its 'Everybody in Vests' campaign with 'Everybody in Robes,' we would see a return to cap and gown as everyday college attire. Until then, you will have to learn to recognize your fellow college students by more subtle clues to their special status in society. Consider it a test." Westling drew smiles as he made light of a few timeworn University icons, including 1880s temperance leader Frances Willard, whose image is immortalized in the stained glass of Marsh Chapel. He joked that Willard's stern demeanor, as well as the irascible Rhett, the University's Boston terrier mascot, symbolize the grimness to follow as the freshmen start their academic careers. With more gravity, he told them: "We would like you to become not just splendid repositories of up-to-date knowledge, but people alive to the world and its myriad possibilities. I look to Boston University graduates for a certain cleverness about things, a commitment to excelling, but also a sense of humor and an un-Willardesque resistance to being turned into stained glass." The ceremony, the second year of a revised and more formalized convocation tradition, concluded with Provost and Dean of Arts and Sciences Dennis Berkey presenting the students to Westling for their official moment of matriculation. As each group was asked to stand in turn, representing their respective college, the students responded with choruses of self-congratulatory cheers. Perhaps the freshmen were practicing for the next time they would gather en masse -- at their Commencement in 2003.