Chimesmaster adviser Robert Feldman plays 12 bells of the Cornell Chimes on a temporary stand next to Sage Chapel during a midday concert May 14. The chimes will be played for Commencement and Reunions, and all 21 bells will be returned to McGraw Tower in August. Robert Barker/University Photography
An echo of Cornell's first commencement ceremony in 1869 will ring out over campus during celebration events for the 131st commencement this weekend.
Twelve bells of Cornell's famed chimes are hung on a temporary stand on the west side of Sage Chapel, while McGraw Tower is being renovated and the nine remaining bells are being retuned in Ohio. Ten bells on a similar stand were played on the ground for the first time at Cornell's formal opening ceremony on Oct. 7, 1868, and at the first graduation the following year.
The chimes have played at every one of Cornell's 130 Commencements and are one of the oldest continuously played set of bells on an American college campus.
To celebrate the return of the chimes (they were removed from McGraw Tower in June 1998), Cornell Dairy on Saturday will distribute 7,000 cups of ChimesCream, a vanilla-based ice cream with a raspberry swirl and tiny chocolate morsels developed in the Department of Food Science.
The weekend celebration will include the Commencement address Sunday by President Hunter Rawlings and speeches by two distinguished alumni: National Security Adviser Samuel R. Berger at Senior Convocation Saturday and literary scholar Harold Bloom during the Baccalaureate Service Sunday morning.
On Commencement day, the chimesmasters will perform at 8:15, 9:25 and 9:40 a.m. to mark the beginning of the procession. On Saturday, they will perform at roughly 2 and 4:30 p.m., before and after the President's Reception on the Arts Quad.
President Rawlings will preside over the university's 131st Commencement Sunday at 11 a.m. on Schoellkopf Field. He will confer degrees on more than 6,100 eligible candidates. Approximately 3,679 students are eligible for undergraduate degrees, including 950 in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, 131 in the College of Architecture, Art and Planning, 1,108 in the College of Arts and Sciences, 698 in the College of Engineering, 228 in the School of Hotel Administration, 371 in the College of Human Ecology and 193 in the School of Industrial and Labor Relations.
Receiving master's and doctoral degrees will be approximately 1,771 candidates from the Graduate School, 250 from the Law School, 323 from the Johnson Graduate School of Management and 76 from the College of Veterinary Medicine.
"Sandy" Berger will speak at Senior Convocation Saturday at noon in Bailey Hall. Since being appointed national security adviser by President Bill Clinton in 1996, he has been engaged in advancing American interests in resolving such conflicts as those in Kosovo and the Middle East. A friend of Clinton's for more than 20 years, Berger served as the president's senior foreign policy adviser during the 1992 presidential campaign and as deputy national security adviser through Clinton's first term. In the Carter administration, Berger served as deputy director of policy planning for the State Department.
After graduating from Cornell in 1967, where he served as president of the Interfraternity Council and was a member of two honor societies, Berger received his law degree from Harvard University. In 1973 he went to Washington, D.C., where he was an international trade attorney before his government service.
Distinguished humanities scholar Harold Bloom, a 1951 graduate of Cornell, will present the Baccalaureate Service address Sunday at 8:30 a.m. in Bailey Hall. This interfaith service honors all graduating students and retiring faculty members. His topic will be "Completing the Work."
Bloom, the Sterling Professor of Humanities at Yale University, is a prominent scholar and defender of the Western literary canon. His most recent book, Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human, has received wide acclaim.
The Commencement ceremony will be broadcast live on Time-Warner Cable Channel 16 in Tompkins County beginning at 10 a.m. and on Ithaca radio station WHCU (870 AM) at 11 a.m. Other events Saturday include:
In the event of severe weather, commencement will be celebrated in two ceremonies in Barton Hall: at 10:30 a.m. for students from Agriculture and Life Sciences, Arts and Sciences, the Johnson Graduate School of Management, the Law School and Veterinary Medicine, and at 1 p.m. for students from Architecture, Art and Planning, Engineering, Graduate School, Hotel Administration, Human Ecology and Industrial and Labor Relations.
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