By Cassie Ferguson

Gazette Staff

Hundreds of new students and their families and friends gathered in Tercentenary Theatre on Sunday to take in the speeches and songs of Opening Exercises.

The event marked the official opening of the school year and the welcoming of the first class of the new millennium to Harvard and Radcliffe colleges.

Speakers urged the undergraduates to participate in their communities, to find their own voices, and to explore new ideas.

In his introduction, Dean of Harvard College Harry R. Lewis related a tale of Harvard's disastrous first class, which had to suffer beatings, bad food, and inadequate quantities of beer back in the 1600s.

"Things have improved since then," Lewis quipped.

Harvard University President Neil L. Rudenstine recalled his first days of college: "I was certain that I was the least talented person in my class, the slowest reader, the least quantitatively apt person, and the only person who could not speak two or more foreign languages simultaneously while also whistling an aria from Verdi and playing halfback at the same time."

He also warned new students that they might find themselves taking some unexpected turns in their paths through college.

"You many find yourself studying subjects that you did not expect to study," Rudenstine said. Rather than becoming doctors or lawyers, students might wind up studying, "traces of the pre-Columbian Olmecs or the architecture of the English Palladians."

He assured students that although relatives may be surprised by the changes in academic choices, "they will do their best to recover."

Radcliffe President Linda S. Wilson encouraged students to take advantage of the diversity at Harvard by participating in their own communities and seeking out new ones as well.

During their college years, she added, students should find their own voices and use those voices to take risks, to broaden their achieving styles, and to help others to succeed, too.

"The challenge for you is to build the competency, the capacity, and the commitment to do not just what is interesting and possible, but also what is important, wise, and ethical," she advised.

Jeremy R. Knowles, Dean of the Faculty Arts and Sciences, drew from Gertrude Stein's pithy summary of her time at Harvard. In her Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, she simply said of her experience in the College, "There, she had a very good time."

"However uncertain you are today, however ungenerous your professors or your peers may first seem to be, I don't doubt that like Gertrude Stein, you will have a very good time," Knowles told the Class of 2001.

He also urged students to take part in their new surroundings. "Harvard will change you, but let me assure you that you will change Harvard. Each of you brings your experiences, your talents, and your imagination to Harvard, and you will share those passions and skills with each other."

The audience was also treated to performances by the Harvard-Radcliffe Collegium Musicum, the Radcliffe Choral Society, and the Harvard Glee club, singing everything from Brahms to Hildegard von Bingen to traditional Harvard cheers.

Although Rudenstine had jokingly said the events of the day were designed to be nothing but a blur, Elizabeth and Sergio Soriano, wearing "Harvard Mom" and "Harvard Dad" T-shirts and exhausted from their cross-country drive from Los Angeles, thought the speeches and the music were memorable.

Their daughter, Jeannette, was already inspired to join a new community by auditioning for one of the singing groups. And she appreciated the stories of the deans' and presidents' uneasy feelings during their first days at college.

"It's good to know," she said, "that they'd gone through the same thing."