June 5, 1937

Some 1,000 students, alumnae, parents and guests enjoyed perfect June weather, and the Class of 1887 led the parade as commencement ceremonies began. One of two surviving members of the college’s first graduating class, Harriet Warner Bishop ’67, joined the procession. In their meeting, the Associate Alumnae elected Margaret C. Banning ’12 as an alumnae member of the board of trustees.

In his welcoming remarks, President MacCracken spoke of the practical tempering of college life. “College,” he said, “is a laboratory in which students are trained and receive the perspective that they may go forward and participate the better in the hurly-burly democracy which is working forward by democratic means and methods to new standards and government…. It is necessary that there shall be such havens of the mind as this, in order, in quiet and in peace, where the free mind can contemplate and a free society come to understand one another, where the art of living well will come to be practiced, and the reverence for history and the knowledge of its lessons will come to be applied….”

The class play, “Tonight We Interrogate,” by Felecia Lamport ’37, Henrietta Callaway ’37 and Annabelle Burkhardt ’37 reflected both the Experimental Theatre’s American première in December of Luigi Pirandello’s Tonight We Improvise and the recent addition to the curriculum of a senior comprehensive examination. The third hall play, “The World We Live In,” was presented in the evening at the Outdoor Theater, after which the crowd assembled on Sunset Hill to observe the senior-sophomore bonfire.

The New York Times