Cornell Commences
Over four hundred students entered Cornell in fall 1868. Some of these students had transferred from other schools and at the end of the first academic year eight of them were eligible to graduate. The exercises of Cornell’s first annual commencement filled a busy summer week in Ithaca 150 years ago with scholarly lectures, addresses by New York State officials and other dignitaries, Trustee meetings, dedications, receptions, celebrations, and ceremonies that culminated with the graduation of Cornell’s first alumni on Thursday, July 1, 1869 at Library Hall, the Cornell Public Library built by Ezra Cornell in downtown Ithaca.
Each of the students who earned degrees that day—“the immortal eight who are the firstborn of Cornell”—as the local newspaper, The Ithacan, called them, delivered orations about their “senior theses” to the large crowd assembled in the library before academic prizewinners were announced.
The students received their diplomas from President Andrew Dickson White in alphabetical order, making George F. Behringer Cornell’s first graduate, and the first to hear President White say:
“Let your course be true. So rule and direct yourself that you may well requite the bounty of the Republic, of the Commonwealth, of our Founder and of all our benefactors.”