Lee Barker

The start of summer overlaps the end of the academic year at Upper Metolius State College of Engineering and Poetry. Those about to graduate move about with a certain smugness knowing that the Commencement Ceremony is imminent. This reporter asked Dr. Brent Woodley, Acting Dean and Dean of Acting, about the local additions to the usual  academic traditions.

“First of all,” he said, “you’ve probably noticed the smugness of those about to graduate as they move about the campus. It’s not what you think, that they are pleased to be leaving our beloved campus for a new and exciting stage life. No. It’s about the swim suit contest. Started years ago. Commencement is always on the hottest day of the year, outside at the Sim Plee Too Complex, so the seniors have a fashion show—swim suits—just before they robe up. They’re always the coolest people out there in the blazing sun. You would be smug too.”

This reporter noted that this seemed a little sideways from the formality of the event.

“Yes,” Woodley said, “You’re right about that. But our formality went away like free popcorn at a drive-in movie the year the band had a mutiny. Seventy-five, as I recall. The graduating class gets bigger every year and every year the band was playing “Pomp and Circumstance”, the traditional processional and recessional for these gatherings, twenty, thirty times through. They’d had it. So when the conductor, a fella named N. Dante Pomposo, gave the downbeat, half the band played “Who put the Bomp” and the other half sang, ‘Who put the pomp in the pomp and circumstance, who put the ram in the Hostess Ding Dong’ and the seniors, loosened up by the driving beat, boogied their way to the rostrum and coolly took their seats.”

The crowd was on board with all these shenanigans?

“Not at first. Now we have smug seniors, a much shorter time getting them seated, and a full house. Lots of Redmond locals come to our graduations. Some just to see the decorations from Jo-Anns, but they’re closed now. Finally.”

I asked him what time of day the commencement exercises begin.

“Oh, we don’t call them ‘exercises’ anymore,” he responded. “We used to, and then the head of the Department of Exercise and Loud Thumpy Music, Barry “Pi” Lotties, insisted that it was his event to plan and present. That was a grim year, about 1982 I think. Everyone had to wear Lycra.”

I asked if by ‘every’ he meant the senior class.

“No, everybody. You should have seen those crusty old mossback PhDs from the ancient Department of History trying to put on a graduation gown, Lycra. Hilarious. One good thing, though—the mortar boards—they stayed on. Stuck tight. We had to get the shop class to pry them off afterwards, and most of them were good enough to use the next year. Balanced the budget, and that’s a good thing. But after that we never let Pi Lotties out of his basement classroom with the foam baffles all over the walls and ceiling. He’s still there, far as I know.”

A balanced budget. The attentive observer has much to learn from local leadership.

“We’re a regular artisanal fountain of good ideas,” Woodley went. on. “For instance: you know how much a diploma costs, all that gilt printing and velvet cover and padding? We threw that cost out the window.”

But, everyone wants a diploma they can keep, surely?

“They’ll keep their own, for sure,” he said, winking. “You probably wondered why you couldn’t get an appointment at a single Redmond tattoo place the last two weeks.”

— Lee Barker is a longtime Redmond resident, woodworker, musician, instrument inventor and most recently the author of the memoir “Plausible Gumption.”