Brown University's spanned three days and featured readings by literary heavyweights like Toni Morrison. Mississippi Delta Community College's lasted three hours and featured only its new president, shaking hands in a receiving line.
Presidential inaugurations -- the occasion when institutions welcome new leaders to campus -- can be formal or informal, Dom Pérignon or pigs in a blanket. Generally, the more prestigious the institution and the more historic the occasion, the more the inauguration resembles a coronation. And the less competitive the institution and the tighter the budget, the more it resembles a cocktail party.
Both kinds of inaugurations were alive and well this fall.
"I've sat through so many of those things that I didn't want it to be like a graduation ceremony," says Larry G. Bailey, on why he made no formal speeches at his own inauguration in October as president of Mississippi Delta. His meet-and-greet reception was organized to coincide with the college's homecoming, its 75th anniversary celebration, and a roast for its athletic director of 50 years. About 450 people, including the presidents of several Mississippi colleges, attended the $1,500 reception for Mr. Bailey and were treated to the southern delicacy of chicken livers wrapped in bacon, along with cheese dip, fruit, cakes, and punch.
Although the nature of an inauguration and its degree of formality depend on the personality of the president, many observers say these events in general are becoming less important, less extravagant, and less formal than they once were. A case in point: Kermit L. Hall, the president of Utah State University, decided to forgo the usual inaugural festivities when he took office last January and donate the $50,000 they would have cost to student scholarships. He chose to introduce his presidency in his own way: by milking a cow and teaching a high-school class in every county in Utah.
Brown, on the other hand, opted for good old-fashioned pomp and circumstance this fall.
Campus officials began planning the inauguration of Ruth J. Simmons last February, three months after she was named the university's 18th president. During the three-day extravaganza last month, students performed in an inaugural dance concert, the faculty held academic forums, and the former president of the University of Rhode Island led a symposium on higher education.
The university also invited a few of Ms. Simmons's personal friends to perform. You may have heard of some of them: Toni Morrison, a Nobel laureate and a professor in the humanities at Princeton University, gave a reading, as did the Irish poet Paul Muldoon and the poet and activist Sonia Sanchez. James Naughton, a Broadway actor and singer, talked about his student years at Brown and sang. The playwright Tony Kushner introduced the cast of his newest musical, Caroline or Change, and the actors performed two scenes. And Anna Deavere Smith, the playwright, actress, and New York University professor, did a performance piece about Ms. Simmons.
Brown has given star-studded inaugurations before. According to the Encyclopedia Brunoniana, an online archive of the university's history, the inaugural celebration for Vartan Gregorian, who served as president of Brown from 1989 to 1997, spanned three days and featured an inaugural ball. The historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr. delivered the inaugural address, the actress Claire Bloom read from Virginia Woolf and T.S. Eliot, the entertainers Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee did readings, and the violinist Pinchas Zukerman performed with and conducted the Brown University Orchestra.
The historic nature of Ms. Simmons's appointment convinced officials that a major celebration was in order, says Laura Freid, executive vice president for public affairs at Brown. "We were mindful of the fact that she is the first African-American to be named a president in the Ivy League," Ms. Freid says. "And we attempted, through an interactive Web service and an inaugural convocation held on the University Green, to accommodate the thousands of people who wanted to witness the event."
To that end, Brown turned its hockey rink into a theater so 3,400 people could watch the artistic performances, and it rented chairs for more than 6,000 people who attended the inaugural convocation, Ms. Freid says.
Total cost of the convocation, the inaugural procession, the pre-procession luncheon and reception, and the inaugural concert: roughly $200,000.
"Inaugurations," Ms. Freid says, "reflect the institution and the president and serve as a time for reflection and rejuvenation as well as a time of celebration, a time for prayer and vision." But Ms. Simmons also used hers as an opportunity to break a small tradition. Typically, university presidents and inaugural committees pick a political leader to sit on the platform with the new president during the convocation. But Ms. Simmons, whose inaugural speech focused on academe's responsibility to educate America's elementary- and secondary-school teachers, picked Rhode Island's teacher of the year, instead.
"I'd bet that's a first," Ms. Freid says.
Compared with Brown's celebration, the inauguration of Harvard University's new president, Lawrence H. Summers, featured no big names -- unless you count all the notables already at the institution. Harvard and Brown decided to hold their inaugurations back to back last month so that visiting academics from across the country could attend both in one weekend. Harvard's two-day celebration, October 11-12, included faculty symposiums and a luncheon as well as the official inaugural ceremony.
"Our decisions about the inauguration were made not at all based on what other schools were doing, but on what the tradition is here and looking at inaugurations of the past," says Jacqueline O'Neill, staff director for the president and provost at Harvard. University planners also took Mr. Summers's personal style and taste into consideration, she says: "A lot of what we picked came from Larry Summers himself," such as having students perform the night before his inauguration. "He wanted everyone to see the array of talent that exists here," Ms. O'Neill says.
The installation ceremony drew more than 10,000 people, and 1,500 people attended the faculty symposiums, Ms. O'Neill says. Mr. Summers picked some of the faculty members and all of the topics on which they would speak, which ranged from "Brain Science and the Science of Learning" to "Great Art, Mass Culture."
Ms. Collins declined to disclose the inauguration's price tag but says the university did not want "anything too costly," which is why it had a luncheon and not a "full-blown, formal dinner."
Unlike Harvard's inaugural planners, the 13-member committee in charge of Charles J. Dougherty's installation as president of Duquesne University looked at other campuses for ideas on how to celebrate. "We hadn't had an inauguration in 13 years," says Ann Rago, the university's executive director of public affairs, who helped plan the event. "I tried to benchmark."
She also read the bible -- the bible on inaugurations, that is.
Ms. Rago contacted the Council for Advancement and Support of Education to get a copy of its Presidential Inaugurations: Planning for More than Pomp and Circumstance, a 121-page book that includes chapters on appointing inaugural committees, deciding whom to invite, and budgeting for the event.
Ms. Rago also had her staff contact more than 25 colleges and universities across the country that have held inaugurations in recent years. Those colleges, she says, had written "good luck" at the end of all their messages to Duquesne. "For everyone it's a challenge trying to please many people and not offend anyone and work within a budget," Ms. Rago says.
Duquesne spent $40,000 on the celebration. That included a student picnic lunch with the president a few days before the inauguration, an alumni reception the night before the big event, his formal installation, and a reception afterward.
"We really quite purposefully tried to keep it very low key," Ms. Rago says. "It's just the personality of our president."
Now it's the institution's, as well.
