Since finding that spectacular picture of the trustees at the 1946 baccalaureate service last week I’ve been looking closely at images of other such events. There’s a lot to be said about these and I may well go back and say it later but for right now I just wonder this: what is the job of the person sitting with pen and ink at the desk in front of the dais?
I picked out three years but there are more. Here’s 1918:
1919:
1925:
Bonus:
Probably a stenographer recording every word spoken. He/she had to be close by because there was no sound amplification system. Note he is writing (in the first photo) while everyone else is bowed in prayer.
There should be transcripts of these events somewhere.
The odd thing is that no one ever spoke at these things without written scripts. There are multiple drafts of Lovett’s remarks, for example. So why have someone else copy them down?
Maybe they were noting any as-spoken variations from the written-ahead text.
My experience has been that actual spoken remarks can vary substantially from the prepared texts.
Indeed. The Rice Institute Pamphlet published the texts of the Baccalaureate sermons and Commencement addresses. Here are links to them in the July 1925 edition (Vol XXI, No. 3):
1) Contents: https://scholarship.rice.edu/bitstream/handle/1911/8882/article_RI123183.pdf
2) Baccalaureate sermon of the tenth annual commencement of the Rice Institute, preached by Samuel Ross Hay, Bishop of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, in the academic court, at nine o’clock Sunday morning, June 7, 1925. (https://scholarship.rice.edu/bitstream/handle/1911/8883/article_RI123183.pdf)
3) Address delivered by Stockton Axson, Professor of English Literature at the Rice Institute, at the tenth commencement convocation of the Rice Institute, held Monday morning, June 8, 1925, at nine o’clock. (https://scholarship.rice.edu/bitstream/handle/1911/8884/article_RI123183.pdf)
Other speakers may not have had copies of prepared remarks; hence, a stenographer would be used to record the other speakers. And also to have a record if a speaker with prepared remarks departed from them.
What’s wrapped in canvas, in front of the speaker, in the top photo?
Probably some kind of then-new Rice seal? Or a sample diploma?
If that is the window in the southernmost stairwell in Lovett Hall, I confess to breaking it in the late 90’s when I dropped a rubber band ball down the stairs from the GC’s office.