Each time the College selected a new president during its first 100 years, "the new president forthwith became such, and that was all there was to it. There was nothing but a change of stenographers," wrote Ernest C. Marriner '13 in The History of Colby College.

Simplicity certainly marked the inauguration of President J. Seelye Bixler in 1942. Colby operated year-round as war raged across the world, and on July 18, Bixler formally assumed the executive duties of the College in a special assembly at which he addressed the entire student body on the future of education after the war. The new president, reported the Echo, "was very well received in his initial appearance in an official capacity."

But times were good back on Friday afternoon, June 14, 1929, when the inauguration of Franklin W. Johnson, Class of 1891, set the standard lived up to by the subsequent inaugurations of presidents Strider, Cotter and Adams.

Johnson took his oath of office on a platform in the Waterville Opera House before a large company of graduates, undergraduates and friends of the College. The 125 people on the platform included all of the faculty, members of the board, Governor Gardiner of Maine, the ex-governor and 41 representatives of colleges and American philanthropic and scientific institutions.

The processional, a hymn and an invocation preceded an address that was followed by the presentation to Johnson of a charter and key as the insignia of his high office. A hymn led up to the new president's inaugural address, in which he stipulated–remember, this is only months before the stock market crashed–that his efforts "shall be directed to the building up of the College as an educational institution, rather than to canvassing funds for endowment and equipment." After the conferring of the degree, a hymn and a benediction concluded the smoothly run proceedings.

It is certain, though, that no Colby inauguration ever matched the excitement of President Jeremiah Chaplin's back in 1822, when the event was concurrent with Colby's first commencement. A military company and a band led a procession of professors and students and the governor into the community meeting house–where the local Waterville citizenry crashed the proceedings. Although Chaplin's wife wrote of her initial encounters in Waterville that "They do not seem to be such ignorant, uncultivated beings as some have imagined," the locals grew restless with the lengthy pageantry and overlong speeches and finally bolted back outside. Order was ultimately restored, however, and Colby's first president at last was able to deliver the College's inaugural inaugural address.