In a span of about two hours on May 25, more than 400 Colby seniors will pick up their diplomas, and they and their families will leave Mayflower Hill euphoric about the Colby Commencement experience. That's how the script has gone for many years, at any rate. Commencement is not so much a two-hour ceremony as a 48-hour marathon of luncheons, dinners, receptions and events, and it doesn't happen spontaneously. Intensive planning begins in March, and behind-the-scenes maneuvering often averts what might otherwise become last-minute catastrophes. Karen Bourassa, manager of scheduling and facilities, compiled a 19-page, single-spaced work order for last year's Commencement. She keeps track of the formidable details with the help of a voice-activated recorder next to her bed. "I'm not a person who needs a lot of sleep anyway, and it's a good thing during the weeks before Commencement," she said. "If I wake up, I'm thinking about something and I start working." Keith Stockford, in charge of grounds and moving crews, worries about the big picture--90 acres of fine lawns, and more than 5,000 chairs to herd around campus--as well as details like the clean, white rope he'll need to designate special seating areas if the ceremony gets moved indoors. (On a pre-Commencement Saturday a few years ago, he appropriated his wife's new clothesline at 1 a.m. just to be prepared.) His office walls hold snapshots of empty chairs set up for graduation--evidence of his crew's past efforts to create a near-perfect setting. They use string to meticulously arrange the chairs in symmetrical rows and columns, and each seat is wiped and dried Commencement morning. If you count the sheer number of events during the weekend and consider that alternate sites must be ready in case of bad weather, you'll begin to understand why Associate Dining Services Director Bill Bayle says his three years of Army experience are as valuable as his culinary arts degree and two decades in food service. Bayle's closest brush with disaster came one year when a truck loaded with 300 hot meals arrived for the dinner in honor of retiring faculty and trustees but couldn't get past cars blocking the road to the Student Union. He recruited every available body and formed a food brigade, passing trays hand-to-hand. Every time a visiting dignitary approached, Bayle shut down the line and closed the truck door to maintain professional appearances. Student Activities Director Ben Jorgensen '92, who co-chairs the Commencement Planning Committee with Bourassa, likens the experience to choreography. Jorgensen commands 15 people and a half-dozen two-way radios to organize seniors in the "street" beneath Miller Library on Commencement morning. "Try lining up 450 high-spirited seniors in alphabetical order and getting them to march out on time," he said. "I was congratulating seniors as they left the library two years ago, and this guy got ten feet past me before I realized he was a junior," Jorgensen said. Knowing the seating arrangements for everyone would be thrown off, Jorgensen used the radio to save the day. (The international student explained that since he wouldn't be able to attend his own Commencement, he decided to march a year early.) Carol Welch, assistant to the president, begins working on Commencement in the fall. She knows how many things can go wrong--from baccalaureate programs locked in the mailroom moments before the service to an honorary degree recipient who had a heart attack during the procession. "I don't know any time when problems didn't get straightened out, though sometimes it is at the last minute," she said. Occasionally, Commencement workers try too hard to please. Prior to the post-graduation luncheon at the Millett Alum-ni House in 1995, attended by Commencement speaker George Bush, Bayle instructed his wait staff to stop serving when Colby President Bill Cotter got up to introduce the former chief executive. When the luncheon was underway and Cotter stood, one waitress was on her way to deliver a cup of tea to a diner at the opposite end of the building. Acknowledging the prohibition on walking through the dining room but eager to deliver the tea, she improvised. Bayle, standing in the wings with a Secret Service agent, saw her through a window as she sneaked past the shrubbery outdoors, teacup in hand. A moment later, Secret Service radios began crackling alerts about a person in the bushes. Bayle vouched for the waitress's intentions, the tea got delivered and another Commencement Weekend ended without a crisis.