Since the first Commencement in 1771, the ceremony has brought its fair share of drunks, charlatans and American presidents to campus.
Only four students graduated at the College's first Commencement ceremony, which was held outdoors where Reed Hall now stands, according to a history of Dartmouth Commencement written by College English Professor Francis Lane Childs '06.
The earliest Commencement weekends were social events attended by locals from miles around. The event included horse races, booths and tents with medicines, food and beverages as well as side-shows sponsored by the College.
"The inhabitants for 20 miles around celebrated Commencement in much the same manner as fall muster or the agricultural fair," according to Child's history.
John Wentworth, then-governor of New Hampshire, came all the way from Portsmouth to attend the first ceremony with 60 guests. He provided rum to be served on the Green, along with a banquet of roasted ox. But the cooks drank too much rum, and never got around to cooking the ox.
The event was so unusual that a Native American student is reputed to have delivered a graduation address from the overhanging branch of a pine tree.
Although the four graduates received their diplomas, the documents were not official because there were not enough Trustees present for a quorum.
Until 1827, Commencement ceremonies were conducted in Latin, and graduates gave speeches in other foreign languages. In 1807, seniors gave orations in Latin, Greek, Hebrew, Chaldaic and French, in addition to English.
One year the band failed to respond when College President John Wheelock announced "Musica expectatur!" three times, each with increasing emphasis. But when he finally shouted, "Play it up!" the band kicked in immediately.
Transcendentalist Ralph Waldo Emerson delivered a speech titled "Literary Ethics" at the 1838 Commencement.
One of the most unusual Commencement traditions began and ended during the tenure of College President Nathan Lord in the 1830s.
Because he believed that "ambition and emulation are selfish principles," he abolished class ranks and honors designations, preventing students from competing for the privilege to speak.
Instead, he required all graduates from the Class of 1835 to give a 10-minute speech on an assigned topic. What resulted was an all-day ceremony with 48 speeches and an audience bored to tears.
In an effort to shorten the ceremony four years later, Lord required only half of the graduates to deliver speeches. After Lord's resignation in 1863, this practice was laid to rest.
But even before Lord's presidency, many graduates were forced to perform at the ceremony. One such performance focused on current events.
In 1793, 10 graduates were assigned a dialogue on "The Trial of Louis XVI," which they were required to perform at the ceremony.
The date of Commencement has evolved with the College and its academic calendar.
In 1835, Commencement was held on the last Wednesday in July, one month earlier than the date on which the first ceremony took place.
The ceremony was moved to the last Thursday in June in 1872 and finally reached its current date, the second Sunday in June, in 1939.
In 1872, an unconventionally-dressed Walt Whitman spoke.
One observer described the poet's outfit as a "flannel shirt with a square cut neck, disclosing a hirsute covering that would have done credit to a grizzly bear."
Commencement has been held at many different locations since its beginnings beside Reed Hall.
From its first location the ceremony was moved to the newly-erected College Church on the north side of the Green in 1795.
The 1907 ceremony was held in Webster Hall, a newer building with greater capacity.
But soon the graduating classes were too big to fit inside Webster, and the ceremony was forced outside to the Bema, where an amphitheater was constructed for the occasion.
But even the Bema was too small to hold the 10,000 guests attracted by President Dwight Eisenhower's Commencement address in 1953. The ceremony was moved to the lawn in front of Baker Library.
Eisenhower delivered an impromptu denunciation of McCarthyism and book burning after listening to the other Commencement speakers.
"We have got to fight [communism] with something better, not try to conceal the thinking of our own people," he said.
"They are part of America, and even if they think ideas that are contrary to ours, their right to say them and their right to have them in places where they are accessible to others is unquestioned or it's not America," he said.
"Don't join the book burners," he said.
"Don't think that you're going to conceal faults by concealing evidence that they ever existed. Don't be afraid to go in your library and read every book, as long as any document does not offend your ideas of decency," he said. "That should be the only censorship."
Tight security measures accompanied Eisenhower's visit to the College.
In a previous interview with The Dartmouth, Donald Goss '53 said there were "secret servicemen in the windows of Baker and machine guns on the roof."
Several bodyguards were also hidden under caps and gowns.
History Professor Jere Daniell described the cool competence of the secret service at the ceremony in a previous interview with The Dartmouth.
Daniell said a secret service man stationed by the front door of Baker stopped a dog en route to Eisenhower.
"A German shepherd dog came running out off the library and headed for the platform. Without flinching a muscle -- I mean these guys must have had eyes in the back of their head -- one of them lifted the dog right off the ground," he said.
"That was one surprised dog," he added.
Commencement was moved again last year to accommodate a presidential visit. President Bill Clinton was expected to attract such a large crowd the ceremony was moved to Memorial Field.
Clinton told the graduating class that education is especially important in the economy of the 1990s.
"In the last 10 years, earnings of men between the ages of 45 and 55 have gone down 14 percent because in the global economy, if you live in a wealthy country and you don't have an education you are in trouble," he said.
"We cannot walk away from our obligation to invest in the education of every American at every age," he said.
Like many of the ceremony's traditions, even the practice of having a Commencement speaker was disbanded in 1971 to shorten the length of the ceremony.
But the tradition was resumed in 1983 when Paul Volcker, then-chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, was invited to speak.
The College has awarded honorary degrees to many famous people.
Robert Frost, Class of 1896, President Franklin D. Roosevelt, Leonard Bernstein and Walter Cronkite have all visited Dartmouth to take part in the Commencement ceremony.
Commencement, like other Dartmouth events, has its own special traditions.
In 1929, at its 50th reunion, the Class of 1879 established a fund for music at the Commencement ceremony.
The class gave the College a bond worth approximately $10,000. The income from this bond was to be used to provide a musical program at Commencement.
The 1879s placed one restriction on the music; it had to be played by student or faculty trumpeters located in the Baker Library Tower.
The music of the Class of 1879 Trumpeters has sounded at every Commencement since 1929.
