On a sunny day jam-packed with events and emotional moments, incoming members of the Class of 2002 received a rousing welcome to Stanford on Sept. 18 as they moved into their dorms and bade farewell to their parents.

Despite the fact that some eager students arrived as early as 6:30 a.m, the official welcome mat wasn't set out until 8 a.m., when orientation volunteers, resident assistants and others began shaking to R&B music and shouting out greetings to arriving students. Resident assistants had studied the photographs of freshmen in an effort to uphold a time-honored tradition of addressing them by name, just as they pull up to the dorms with parents and boxes in tow.

"The music and the fact everybody knew your name, that was really unexpected," Tai-Li Chiang, a freshman from Lake Charles, Texas, said as he moved his belongings into Mirlo House.

Outside, the fathers of two freshman roommates were getting acquainted. "This is very emotional. I feel I'm on the verge of tears," said Ted Ball, father of Brian Ball of San Diego. Dan Doty said of his son, Nathan, "He's our oldest kid, and it's a long way from Pensacola."

With its pageantry, including a brass quintet and a processional led by bearers of the flags of the university and its various schools, Convocation was the centerpiece of activities and the most formal event of a day that included a parent luncheon with Provost Condoleezza Rice, a freshman dinner with academic advisers and a parent dinner with President Gerhard Casper.

At the 108th Convocation ceremony Casper urged the incoming 1,700 freshmen and their parents to reject the notion that education is a pro-curable commodity.

"Contrary to appearances and superficial media commentary, you are about to begin one of the most elevated, noble, honorable forms of public service that I know. That is, you will promote the public welfare through the increase of knowledge: your own knowledge, your fellow students' knowledge, your faculty's knowledge and society's knowledge," Casper said.

He also encouraged freshmen to become involved in public service in the narrower sense of the term during their years on campus: "Members of a university community . . . must not shy away from the social and political issues of their time, from shaping the social and political values of society, from engaging in service to the public. Stanford's culture is very supportive of these individual and group endeavors, though the university itself, which has no political mandate, must mostly restrict itself to the pursuit of knowledge."

Few incoming students have graduated from a high school or lived in a community with "Stanford's diversity of interests, talents and backgrounds," Casper said. "Not many will have had much personal experience of interacting with people of different ethnic, racial and cultural backgrounds. As you cross bridges to meet strangers at Stanford, the going will be sometimes tough."

Casper's remarks, delivered on a breezy, warm afternoon in the Quad, were preceded by the student address of junior Melora Krebs-Carter, head orientation coordinator. She, too, advised freshmen to get involved with public service activities as well as campus organizations, and sought to reassure the assembled new students ­ and their parents ­ that they had made the right choice in coming to Stanford. Declaring simply that "Stanford is hands down the best school in the world," she drew whoops and hollers from the audience.

Krebs-Carter also spoke of the evolution in parent-child relations that occurs as freshmen reach adulthood.

"They don't play a very active role in my day-to-day choices," she said of her parents, "but I find myself consulting them frequently when I am in the midst of a major decision."

At a luncheon with the provost and later in question-and-answer sessions with a variety of administrators and faculty, parents were encouraged to help their children, as Rice put it, find the passion of their life through their academic pursuits.

During the brief time they had the attention of parents, administrators and faculty wanted to emphasize that big changes are likely in the offing for their children ­ perhaps in their physical appearance but more importantly in their future career outlooks. A panel discussion featured several student skits, including one in which a student calls home to announce he's getting a variety of body piercings and tattoos. It's a joke, actually; all he's doing is changing his major.

After their parents left Stanford, freshmen had many other orientation activities: a dinner with advisers, a workshop on academic planning, a first dorm meeting, a theater and video performance on health and safety issues, and a wide variety of open houses at which students were able to learn more about special interest activity groups.

  Profile of the Class of 2002

  Freshman applicants: 18,885
Freshman admits: 2,505
Freshmen entering: 1,606
 

Entering Freshmen

Male: 52 percent
Female: 48 percent

High schools represented: 1,021
Public: 70 percent; Private: 30 percent

Geographic Diversity

States represented: 49 (all but Delaware)

Largest state representation: California (37 percent), followed by Texas, New York, Illinois, Oregon, Washington and New Jersey

97 freshmen from 33 foreign countries

Ethnic Diversity

African American: 8 percent
Mexican American: 9 percent
Other Hispanic: 1 percent
Native American: 1 percent
Asian American: 23 percent
White: 53 percent
International: 4 percent

Academic Achievement

High school rank in class (19 percent do not report class rank)

Top decile: 87 percent Top quintile: 95 percent  

High School GPA

3.8-4.0: 80 percent