The vote by the �ֲ���ý faculty, 40 years ago in the Filene Room in Pettigrew Hall, wasn’t even close: 58–27 in favor of making the submission of SAT scores optional for admission.

It was the vote heard ’round the country. Within two weeks, thanks in part around the nation, �ֲ���ý had entered into, and would ultimately become a leader of the national conversation about the value of standardized tests in college admission. Today, around 80 percent of U.S. four-year colleges and universities do not require ACT/SAT for admission.

Six years after the 1984 vote, then-Dean of Admission and Financial Aid Bill Hiss ’66 called the vote “a bold move and one we haven’t regretted.” Entering its fifth decade as a test-optional pioneer, �ֲ���ý still has no regrets, says Leigh Weisenburger, vice president for enrollment and dean of admission and financial aid. 

“Standardized tests and a student’s subsequent scores are rooted in inequity,” she says. “Our test-optional admission policy removes a barrier for many talented and promising students, and we see it as a natural extension of our progressive history and mission dedicated to access and inclusion.”

Followup studies over the years have supported what �ֲ���ý believed to be true in 1984. Standardized tests are no better than a student’s high school grades as a measure of academic potential. At worse, they can filter out and discourage talented students who are already underserved by U.S. higher education.

In retrospect, the 1984 decision to go test-optional seems obvious — a slam dunk. But thanks to a first-year reporter’s account for The �ֲ���ý Student, the only record of the discussion, we know that there was staunch opposition to the proposed legislation on that Monday afternoon in the Filene Room.

Specifically, two titans of the �ֲ���ý faculty were firmly opposed to making SATs optional. One was Dean of Students Jim Carignan ’61, who had joined the history faculty in 1970 and was appointed dean of students about a decade later by �ֲ���ý President Hedley Reynolds. The other was Carl Straub, who had joined the �ֲ���ý religion faculty in 1965 and was named dean of the faculty in 1974. 

Covering the October faculty meeting for the Student was a cub reporter, Howard Fine ’88, included telling quotes from Reynolds, Carignan, and Straub. 

With a formidable disdain for flash over substance, Straub said that a decision to drop the SAT requirement had nothing to do with education. “It is more a marketing issue. I see no evidence that convinces me that the proposed [legislation] will increase the number or quality of applicants.”

In his quoted remarks at the meeting, Reynolds agreed that the legislation had a marketing angle, but one “which will, in the long run, bring more good students” to �ֲ���ý. Indeed, the prospect of good publicity for �ֲ���ý was a selling point, Fine recalls. “There was an awareness among the faculty that if SAT scores were made optional for admission, it would garner national attention since so few schools around the country had taken that path.”

Meanwhile, Carignan argued that “moving away from the SAT signals a retreat” from an important measure of academic strength at a time when “we are making real strides in strengthening our [application] pool and advancing the image of the college as academically strong.”

Professor Emeritus of Psychology John Kelsey was in the room that day, and he recalls agreeing with some of his colleagues that SAT scores were helpful predictive tools. Forty years after the vote, he’s aware of the privilege of that perspective. “As majority white and male academics, we had the bias that SATs measured something quite important: ‘What was your SAT score?'”

Kelsey has long experience as adjunct application reader for �ֲ���ý Admission. While not recalling his own vote that day, he does remember the “highly persuasive argument that SATs were highly correlated with socioeconomic status, and thus biased against a variety of groups we all wished to attract to �ֲ���ý.”

The fall of 1984 at �ֲ���ý was a typically busy time on campus in light of local, national, and global events. There was the visit to �ֲ���ý by Lisa Birnbach, author of The Official Preppy Handbook, to do a TV segment for NBC’s Today show, then hosted by Bryant Gumbel ’70.

There were incoming ripples from the looming Reagan–Mondale presidential election. On campus, a mini-controversy erupted over the two state liquor inspectors who, posing as construction workers, raided a Milliken House party.

But the drama of the SAT vote rose above them all. “It was regarded as a big deal,” recalls Fine, who went into journalism after graduation and is a longtime reporter with the Los Angeles Business Journal. 

Despite the opposition from Carignan and Straub, the legislation passed easily. Kelsey described the faculty sentiment this way: “We agreed to do a kind of experiment. And I judge that experiment to be largely a success.”

One reason the legislation sailed through, perhaps, is that the faculty Committee on Admissions and Financial Aid, chaired by Anne Thompson of the English department, had done its work. 

Supported by Hiss, whom Reynolds had plucked from the faculty of nearby Hebron Academy in 1978 to lead the �ֲ���ý Admission team, the committee presented a compelling 20-page report to the faculty, the result of five years of research. (Drake Bradley, Dana Professor Emeritus of Psychology, made major contributions to the college’s statistical research before the vote and in follow-up studies.)

The report presented what is now a consensus in the college admission world: that SATs are “not critical to making good admission decisions” and that the use of standardized tests like the SAT presents a series of ethical issues. Those include troubling correlation of test scores to family income; the rise of SAT coaching, again benefiting wealthier students; and how high school teachers were beginning to alter their curricula to, in the words of one high school teacher, “to teach kids how to take the [SATs].”

After the vote, a �ֲ���ý Magazine story noted that �ֲ���ý students with weaker test scores, including minority students, rural students, and poor students, “have made great contributions once enrolled at �ֲ���ý.” That fact, according to Thompson, “cast a great deal of doubt on the fairness of using the tests for admission purposes.”

The report included results from a questionnaire sent to guidance counselors at 95 high schools, which indicated that SATs were hurting the college’s efforts to build a larger and stronger applicant pool. Increasingly, students were using a college’s mean SAT scores, as published in guidebooks, to opt out from applying. If a student’s score was below the mean, they didn’t apply (too hard to get in); if their score was above the mean, they didn’t apply (too easy to get in).

“By not requiring SATs,” the report concluded, “�ֲ���ý could encourage a greater diversity of students to apply [and] who are capable of succeeding at �ֲ���ý, but who, for cultural or financial reasons, have not scored well and are currently being discouraged from applying.”

In 1990, �ֲ���ý dropped all standardized test requirement, including achievement tests. In a followup article in �ֲ���ý Magazine that year, Hiss noted that the academic strength of a study body isn’t a measure of who is admitted, but who applies. And when �ֲ���ý dropped the SAT requirement, applications jumped by a third, and the quality of the application pool remained high.

(Growing the applicant pool also had the additional benefit of improving �ֲ���ý’ selectivity, as published in college guidebooks, a hoped-for result of an optional-SAT policy that Kelsey recalls being in the air and was also noted in Fine’s reporting in fall 1984.)

Sharing his thoughts recently, Hiss said that the growth of the pool meant success at meeting a charge from his boss. “When I was hired, Hedley, in our first conversation, gave me a one-sentence charge, which I remember verbatim and have many times quoted to our staff and others over the years: ‘Take the applicant pools up and down the social and economic ladders, and spread out geographically.’

“He thought we were too narrowly middle class and too narrowly New England. He was right on both counts. So the optional-testing decision, six years later, was one step among many in having �ֲ���ý become a national college and then an international one, with a much more complex array of student backgrounds.”

The charge also reflected what Reynolds and others saw coming, a decline in New England’s share of the U.S. population. Expansion was a business decision in addition to an educational and mission-driven one.

By any measure, �ֲ���ý in the 1980s was indeed growing stronger and expanding its reputation under Reynolds, whose focus was on enrollment, facilities, and, especially, support for the faculty, which took the shape of a near doubling of its size, strengthening academic credentials, and lowering the student-faculty ratio, from 15-to-1 to 13-to-1 (today it is 10–1). 

And this might be a second reason that the �ֲ���ý faculty responded positively to the SAT legislation: respect for Reynolds’ forward-looking leadership of the college.

A former history professor and dean at Middlebury, Reynolds “understood faculty governance, he understood the intellectual life, he understood the importance of faculty scholarship, and faculty support — everything,” recalled Hiss in a 2005 oral history for the Muskie Archives and Special Collection Library. Compared to prior �ֲ���ý leaders, he was “far more of a visionary about �ֲ���ý, far more willing to change �ֲ���ý in profound, systemic ways.” 

“This is not the time for rigidity,” Reynolds said. “It is not a time for the college to stand proudly looking backward.”

A day after the faculty vote, Hiss was in Boston with Admission colleague Wylie Mitchell (later to become �ֲ���ý’ admission dean), attending the annual conference of the National Association for College Admission Counseling (NACAC). 

There, the pair met with Ted Fiske, education reporter for The New York Times, who had just begun what would become the highly influential Fiske Guide to Colleges. “We had lunch with Ted, and he broke the story,” recalls Hiss. On Oct. 9, with �ֲ���ý prominent in the lead paragraphs and throughout, Fiske’s story ran in the Times under the headline, “Some colleges question usefulness of SATs.” 

Meanwhile, The �ֲ���ý Student had broken the news four days earlier, in its Oct. 5 edition. Fine’s story offered perhaps the most telling quotes about how �ֲ���ý rolled under Reynolds. “This is not the time for rigidity,” Reynolds said. “It is not a time for the college to stand proudly looking backward.”

Today, around 80 percent of all four-year colleges and universities . Many have been influenced by various follow-up studies conducted by �ֲ���ý, often supported by members of the �ֲ���ý staff and faculty, capped off by a 30-year study co-authored by Hiss and Valerie Wilson Franks ’98 in 2014. 

“It’s been a 40-year commitment for me,” said Hiss, who retired from �ֲ���ý in 2012. “But maybe the larger story is 40 years of �ֲ���ý and �ֲ���ý people doing the work to make the college a major force in changing American definitions of promise and intelligence.”

​�ċ

The first �ֲ���ý Commencement was in 1867, which makes the 2016 edition the 150th in college history. Or have there been more?

In the spirit of trying to make things count, here are 15-plus facts and stories from �ֲ���ý Commencements.

The first Commencement was on July 31, 1867

A detail of the cover of first �ֲ���ý Commencement program, in 1867. The words “Tenth Anniversary” at upper right allude to the September 1857 opening of the Maine State Seminary, which became �ֲ���ý. (Muskie Archives and Special Collections Library)

Eight students received bachelor’s degrees at the first �ֲ���ý Commencement, which was held at a Baptist church on Main Street in Lewiston.

Frank Sleeper, a senior from Lewiston, was the first speaker, delivering the Latin Salutatory, a graduation tradition of the day that �ֲ���ý adopted for its ceremony.

The program titles his address Disquisitio Salutatoria, which “we could translate very loosely as ‘Opening Remarks,'” rather than ‘Address of Greeting,'” says Tom Hayward, lecturer emeritus in classical and medieval studies.

“You have labored to found a college which shall be an ornament to our state.”

Delivering his salutatory in the required Latin, Sleeper praised �ֲ���ý president and founder Oren Cheney.

“Joyful indeed to you must be the day which brings to you the fruits of years of patient toil and sacrifice,” Sleeper said. “The faithfulness with which you have labored to found a college which shall be an ornament to our state is known to all, and as long as this institution shall exist so long will your name be remembered with blessings and honor.”

A featured Commencement speaker is a post-World War II phenomenon

Before World War II, the featured speakers at Commencement were students. The 1936 slate features talks on “The Juvenile Court,” “The Novelist Sits in Judgment,” “Creative Thought,” and “Stability in China.”

During the war, �ֲ���ý was on an accelerated academic calendar so would confer some degrees at special convocations in fall and winter. Featured guests spoke at those gatherings, including Joseph Drew, the diplomat who had been interned by the Japanese at the start of the war, in January 1943.

The custom of having a featured speaker then took hold and has been a staple of Commencements in 1944.

The first African American speaker at Commencement was Coretta Scott King

In her 1971 address, Coretta Scott King, the widow of Martin Luther King Jr., assassinated three years before, delivered a blistering attack on violence, racism, and more in America.

She took on one of the most controversial issues of that year, the arrest and pending trial of activist Angela Davis on weapons charges.

Coretta Scott King marches in the 1971 academic procession at Commencement. (Muskie Archives and Special Collections Library)

“While I sharply disagree with the politics of Miss Davis, I must say that if her blackness, her politics, and her womanhood are being judged, and not the crime, then all Americans will lose some of their liberties along with her.”

She also paid tribute to Benjamin Mays, Class of 1920.

“From the earliest days of the Struggle, until my husband’s last rites on the campus of Martin’s beloved Morehouse, Dr. Mays was at our side. The friendship, which he and my husband formed when Martin was a Morehouse student, grew, deepened, and ripened with the years….

“So I am happy this morning to be present at the alma mater of my friend and colleague. My happiness is doubled when I realize that in 1917, a period rife with the inherent inferiority of the black man and the inherent superiority of the white man, �ֲ���ý College accepted a young black man from South Carolina and allowed that young man to emancipate himself and accept with dignity his own worth as a free man.

“I make bold to state that Dr. Mays is without a contemporary peer in the inspiration and motivation that he has given to thousands of young blacks, men in particular, in their quest for emancipation from the myths of racism.”

The first female graduate was Mary Wheelwright Mitchell, in 1869

�ֲ���ý graduated its first woman, Mary Wheelwright Mitchell, at its third Commencement, in 1869. She was a determined student. Offered a scholarship, Mitchell turned it down: “I can take care of myself.”

While six women started as members of �ֲ���ý’ first college class, none graduated until Mitchell, a fact that reflects how difficult it was for �ֲ���ý founder Oren Cheney to turn radical theory into sustainable practice, as Tim Larson ’05 wrote in his honors thesis, “Faith by Their Works.”

Larson notes that Cheney “obviously saw �ֲ���ý as a pioneer in breaking gender barriers in the field of higher education.”

Cheney also “accurately foresaw the future of American higher education in predicting that ‘all the colleges of our country will welcome women.’ This was a bold assertion to make when Harvard, Yale, Columbia, Dartmouth, Williams, Tufts, and all the other New England colleges were still closed to women.”

Nevertheless, Larson writes, the first female students “obviously faced prejudices, from their male counterparts and society in general,” that may have contributed to their leaving the college before graduation.

In the end, “despite hostility and some well-meaning paternalism by certain individuals, �ֲ���ý was among the more progressive institutions in admitting women alongside men, when many other colleges refused to do so for another century.”

Years later, �ֲ���ý granted degrees to two of the women, Francena Stanton Morrell and Sybil Chase Ballard: Morrell in 1931 and Ballard in 1932. Here’s a clip of Ballard, age 87, at Commencement 1934:

The first African American graduate was Henry Wilkins Chandler, in 1874

Henry Chandler, Class of 1874, was the college’s first African American graduate. (Muskie Archives and Special Collections Library)

“The abolitionist ideals of �ֲ���ý’ founder, Oren Cheney…were largely acted out as he recruited the earliest African American students for the school,” writes Larson in his honors thesis noted above.

Cheney’s recruitment included Henry Chandler, the first African American graduate of �ֲ���ý, in 1874.

While six of the first nine African American students to attend �ֲ���ý were former slaves, most recruited by founder Oren Cheney during and after the Civil War, Chandler was born free.

Ten years before Chandler’s graduation, Cheney had written in his diary about stopping in Bath, Maine, to see an African American acquaintance. Cheney recorded that the man’s “son and daughter will ‘go through’ the college.” That son was most likely Chandler.

After graduating from �ֲ���ý in 1874, he studied law at Howard University, then practiced law in Florida; he also edited The Ocala Republican and The Plain Dealer newspapers.

In 1880, Chandler was elected to the Florida state senate and held office for two terms. He was also a state delegate to the Republican National Conventions.

Commencement and Reunion used to take place on the same weekend

The tradition of welcoming alumni back for Commencement had been formalized by the late 1890s, and by the 1930s, these class gatherings were their own thing.

And a big thing, as alumni built out the event known today as Reunion with dinners, class outings, presentations, and, of course, the popular Alumni Parade.

Long held during the same weekend, Commencement and Reunion were split around 1980.

Here’s the Class of 1914’s “Round Up” at the 1934 Alumni Parade at Commencement.

The U.S. Navy was part of the awarding of degrees during World War II

During World War II, �ֲ���ý was on a 12-month schedule, and undergraduates could choose an accelerated program, so diplomas were awarded a few times a year (three times in 1943).

Also during the war, the Navy had 120,000 student sailors stationed at 131 U.S. colleges, including �ֲ���ý, for officer training and accelerated college instruction.

In this clip, the sailors of the �ֲ���ý V-12 program lead the way to the Oct. 24, 1943, convocation, where 13 students received bachelor’s degrees.

A Senior Speaker returned to Commencement in 2013

While student speakers were long the norm at Baccalaureate, the day before Commencement, students had not had a featured speaking role at graduation since the mid-1900s.

That changed in 2013 when Tommy Holmberg ’13 became the first Senior Speaker in the modern era.

The Commencement Concert was the “big event of the season” in the 1870s

Opera singer Madame Nordica, seen here in an undated photo, sang at the 1877 Commencement Concert. (George Grantham Bain Collection / Library of Congress Prints and Photographs)

In its early years, �ֲ���ý “concentrated its musical efforts on the commencement concerts,” said the Lewiston Evening Journal in 1939, and the concerts became “the big musical and social event of the season for the Twin Cities.”

Some of the concerts were held at the new Music Hall on upper Lisbon Street, “the best opera house east of Boston,” according to one account. It’s now home to the district court.

By the mid 1870s, a �ֲ���ý Commencement Concert could cost upwards of $1,200, the equivalent of about $21,000 today.

The 1877 concert brought “two of the most famous singers that New England has ever given the world,” according to the Journal.

One was opera singer Annie Louise Cary, a native of Wayne, Maine.

George Loring White, an 1876 graduate, recalled that “when Miss Cary sang ‘Coming thru the rye,’ smiles became distinctly audible all over the house. I felt like coming thru the rye myself.”

The second singer at that 1877 concert was the even more famous Lillian Norton, a native of Farmington, Maine, who would gain worldwide recognition as “Madame Nordica.”

The Commencement Dinner was once catered by a well-known local name

In the early 1900s, the Commencement “Dinner” was not in the evening but right after graduation, at noon. This is the older use of the word, in the sense of the main meal of the day.

The 1916 Commencement Dinner was catered by a name familiar to �ֲ���ý students and alumni.

Note that the 1916 menu was catered by “Alton L. Grant.” His business became Grant & Grant Caterers, which became Grant’s Bakery on Sabattus Street, the go-to spot for parents sending sweets to their students.

Here’s a peek at this year’s spread, now known as the Commencement Luncheon:

• Summer slaw salad with lemon vinaigrette
• Cavatappi salad with sundried tomato basil and fresh spinach
• Edamame hummus with tortilla chips
• Lobster salad rolls
• Chicken salad rolls
• Olive oil and garlic roasted vegetable medley with portobello mushrooms, summer squash, and zucchini
• Sliced watermelon
• Cookies and brownies
• Italian ice
• Assorted beverages, including Summit Springs Water

The 2016 edition is actually the college’s 153rd Commencement

Strange, but true. In the mid-1960s, President Charles Phillips implemented an aggressive three-year graduation option. To make it work, he created a third academic term, which became Short Term.

By spring 1968, the first cohort of three-year grads was ready to graduate. On April 22, the college held a Commencement for its traditional four-year cohort. Then the three-year group graduated on June 28, after they had finished their final Short Term.

The same was true in 1969 (April 28 and July 4) and 1970 (April 20 and June 12).

The academic procession in April 1969 for the first of two Commencements that year. This one was for four-year graduates; the second, for three-year grads, was on July 4. (Muskie Archives and Special Collections Library)

So unusual was the setup that when �ֲ���ý, under President Hedley Reynolds, returned to a single-Commencement format in 1971, it was hailed by the Lewiston Sun Journal in its lead editorial. “The change is preferable to the confusing, double Commencements” of the past several years.

There have been seven locations for �ֲ���ý Commencements

Until the Chapel was built in 1914, �ֲ���ý held Commencements downtown at a Baptist church at the corner of �ֲ���ý Street and Main Street, near where the venerable Sam’s Italian Restaurant is.

Here are all the venues:

• 1867 to 1913: Baptist church on Main Street (except in 1876)
• 1876: Lewiston City Hall
• 1914 to 1948: Gomes Chapel
• 1949 to 1966: Lewiston Armory on Central Street
• 1967: Alumni Gym
• 1968: Alumni Gym and Chapel
• 1969: Alumni Gym and Chapel
• 1970: Alumni Gym
• 1971 onward: Historic Quad in front of Coram Library (rain site: Merrill Gymnasium)

The first outdoor Commencement was in 1971

Alumni Gym was to be the site of the 1971 event, but lore tells us that students asked President Reynolds if it could be moved outdoors.

His assent is about the best “yes” a president has ever made.

A scene from the first outdoor �ֲ���ý Commencement, in 1971. (Muskie Archives and Special Collections Library)

In 1989, the late Peter Gomes ’65 praised the �ֲ���ý Commencement tradition that had evolved under Reynolds. “When I took my degree, in 1965, [Commencement] was in the overheated and underventilated Lewiston Armory, a day or two after the circus had come and gone,” wrote Gomes.

Then came 1971, the start of the modern Commencement tradition, with the “bucolic setting of the Coram Quadrangle, the Portland Brass, the piper and the procession, and most of all the elegant austerity of the ceremony itself,” Gomes wrote.

“There is neither a wasted word nor gesture on Commencement Day. It is rich in its austerity….”

The Coram “stage” also used to host a Commencement play

In chronicling its design by New York City architects who had shaped the Broadway theater district, Phillips Professor of Art and Visual Culture Rebecca Corrie noted, “Is it any wonder that the facade of Coram has become such a perfect stage for the College’s most public and important ceremonies?”

For many years, the student theater group put on a Greek play as part of Commencement Weekend.

This clip shows the 1934 performance of Aristophanes’ The Birds, staged by the 4-A Players (now The Robinson Players). The play was chosen as part of that year’s celebration of the centennial of Jonathan Stanton, famed professor and ornithologist.

The first female Commencement speaker was U.S. Sen. Margaret Chase Smith

In this clipping from the Lewiston Daily Sun, U.S. Sen. Margaret Chase Smith is flanked by new �ֲ���ý president Hedley Reynolds (left) and President Emeritus Charles Phillips at Commencement 1967.

U.S. Sen. Margaret Chase Smith of Maine talked about pragmatism in her 1967 address, the first by a woman.

She defined pragmatism as exercising personal freedom without being responsible to society.

“There are two sides to this glorified modern pragmatism,” Smith said. One is the attitude that “I’ll get mine in whatever way I can,” while the other is “the creed of ‘not getting involved.'”

She concluded, “If our nation is to maintain the moral fibre that is necessary to the survival of our way of life, then we must reject the glorified pragmatists who advocate cutting corners, who preach the propaganda of expecting ‘something for nothing,’ who espouse the doctrine that the ‘end justifies the means,’ and who caution against ‘getting involved on matters of principle.'”

The mace joined the academic procession in 1949

As the senior member of the faculty, Phillips Professor of Economics Michael Murray will lead the 2016 Commencement academic procession.

At Commencement 1949, Professor of Biology William Sawyer, Class of 1913, holds newly given mace as its creator, Leverett Cutten, Class of 1904, and President Charles Phillips look on. (Muskie Archives and Special Collections Library)

The mace symbolizes academic authority — an understandable connection, since ancient warriors used maces to bash their foes. The �ֲ���ý mace was fashioned by Leverett Cutten of the Class of 1904 and given to the college in 1949.

While many maces are topped with a crown, Cutten wanted his design to leave “no doubt about �ֲ���ý College’s being in the state of Maine,” as he said in 1949, so he fabricated pine cones and tassels to form an arch to support the garnet that sits at the top.

Thomas Hedley Reynold served as president of �ֲ���ý College from 1967 through 1989. (David Wilkinson for �ֲ���ý College)

�ֲ���ý College President Thomas Hedley Reynolds, 1984.Reynolds was president from 1967 to 1989.Photograph by Frank Siteman.

President Reynolds and Robert D. Moss, vice president and director of the Olin Foundation Inc., review plans for the Olin Arts Center at �ֲ���ý College, 1984, shortly after �ֲ���ý received a $4.1 million grant from the foundation to construct and equip a new arts center. Photograph by David Wilkinson.

President Reynolds stands on a backhoe as Julie Macdonald '81 sits at the controls during the groundbreaking for Merrill Gymnasium in 1979. Photography courtesy of Muskie Archives and Special Collections Library.

President Reynolds, circa 1975. Photograph by Bachrach.

Thomas Hedley Reynolds, known for nearly three decades of transformational leadership at two Maine educational institutions, died Tuesday, Sept. 22, at his home in Newcastle, Maine, after a long illness. He was 88 years old.