As I was rushing to reshelve some things before I left town this week I stopped to pull down a thin volume I’d never noticed before. The title on the spine was “Convocation.” “Huh,” (I thought in my clever way), “never heard of anything like that before.”

It turned out to be one of the more pleasant surprises I’ve had recently–a transcript of an all-school convocation held at the end of the 1968 fall semester:

This was an extremely interesting moment. President Pitzer was gone, Rice was being run by the Executive Committee I talked about here, and the search for the next president was supposed to be ongoing, although the board of trustees remained silent in the face of requests to meet from the faculty advisory committee. The institution was poised on the brink of . . . something.

I didn’t have time to sit down and read any of this but I did notice that Ron Sass ran the meeting and Bill Gordon spoke for the faculty and administration. It was the list of student speakers, though, that made my heart jump. The last one was Warren Skaaren ’69, in my opinion the most interesting participant in the events around the Masterson Crisis and one of the most compelling Rice students I’ve ever come across. Needless to say, I am beside myself with anticipation.

Bonus: