By RUSTY PAYNE and JENNIFER ABSHE
The 121 annual commencement exercises this week will be illuminated by the inauguration of Elder Merrill J. Bateman as the eleventh president of BYU.
President Gordon B. Hinckley will conduct, President Thomas S. Monson will give the charge to the new president, and President Bateman will be the primary speaker. There will also be a student speaker, Jennifer Smith from Laie, Hawaii.
President Bateman was unavailable to comment on the topic of his speech but Brent Harker, director of Public Communications, said that President Monson will speak as he gives the charge to the president and he also expects President Hinckley to give some remarks while conducting.
Smith, a 1996 graduate in Humanities, will be the student representative to speak at commencement exercises Thursday.
“I feel very honored to have been chosen,” Smith said. “I am quite intimidated at the prospect of speaking.”
Smith was chosen by the Honors department to speak, based on her academic and overall excellence and contribution to her field, and to BYU. Smith said her topic at graduation will be confidence as a student and as a graduate through focusing on the life of Christ and the Gospel.
After serving in the Portugal Lisbon North mission, Smith returned to BYU and will graduate with honors. She plans to go to graduate school and study comparative literature, in the hopes of becoming a college professor. She is engaged to be married June 25.
“It’s exciting, but with the stress of finals, I haven’t been able to worry about (speaking),” Smith said. “I’ve read previous speeches from other graduates” to prepare, Smith said.
Smith has also received help from Dean Cox in the Honors department, as well as from talking to her fiancee and friends.
“I respect (the members of the First Presidency and President Bateman) a lot,” Smith said. “I was very surprised when chosen.”
There will be a private reception for the speakers before commencement to honor Smith and most of the campus will be closing at 2 p.m. to accomodate those involved in graduation.
3,806 degrees will be awarded to graduate and undergraduate students at the commencement exercises on April 25 in the Marriott Center. Of those, 54 percent are men and 46 percent are women.
Other interesting statistics about the April 1996 graduating class include that 54.6 percent of them are married. 61 percent of the men and 47.7 percent of the men.
Also, the cumulative grade-point average for the graduates recieving Baccalaureate degrees is 3.36. Other statistics show that 96.7 percent of the graduates are members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and 47.3 percent of them have attended other institutions of higher learning
