THE CEREMONY: UNC-Chapel Hill commencement at Kenan Stadium

BY THE NUMBERS: 5,509 graduates in all; 3,492 bachelor's degrees, 1,214 master's degrees, 204 doctoral and 599 professional degrees and certificates.

RAIN-DRIVEN DIPLOMAS: Retiring university Chancellor James Moeser, presiding over his eighth and final commencement, elicited throaty cheers of joy and weighty sighs of relief with two simple sentences.

"We're going to go straight to the conferral of degrees," he announced at the outset of what turned out to be just a 20-minute ceremony. "This may be the shortest commencement exercise in the history of the university."

It was a soaked, bedraggled group that filed into the stadium. Several forward-thinking grads wore garbage bags over their gowns. A few young ladies, perhaps unprepared for the unexpectedly cool, damp weather, wore flip-flops on their feet and gloves on their hands.

One graduate resolutely tucked a forlorn-looking balloon declaring "Congratulations!" under her umbrella as she headed for her seat.

Said graduating senior David Cheshire of Greensboro: "I guess ... [the rain] makes it more memorable. But I do wish it was sunny."

TRADITIONS: The rain-shortened ceremony still included a couple of longtime Carolina standards. The Bell Tower outside Kenan Stadium chimed "Hark the Sound," as graduates approached. Once degrees were conferred, the exercise ended, as it always does, with the Clef Hangers, a student singing group, belting out James Taylor's "Carolina In My Mind."

Eyes misted.

WHO SPOKE: The abbreviated ceremony featured just two speakers, Moeser and Ashley Shores -- the senior class president.

"I share your sense of nostalgia and reluctance to let go," said Moeser, who will take a one-year sabbatical and return to teach. "I, too, am graduating."

The shadow of Eve Carson, the popular student body president whose killing earlier this year shook the campus, hung a bit over the ceremony. A university spokesman said Carson was awarded a bachelor's degree with highest distinction in her double majors, biology and political science. Many students wore buttons of remembrance bearing her name.

Shores, the senior class president, remembered her fondly and read from a statement Carson's father, Bob, had written to the UNC student body.

" 'Go! Be excited about the endless possibilities your diploma grants,' " Shores read. " 'Set forth today and go.' "

WHO DIDN'T SPEAK: Along with the usual avalanche of generic well wishes from dignitaries, graduates Sunday did not hear from opera singer Jessye Norman, who was scheduled to deliver the commencement address before the rain truncated the ceremony.

--Eric Ferreri

Duke University

THE CEREMONY: Duke University commencement, Wallace Wade Stadium

NUMBER OF DEGREES AWARDED: More than 4,000

COMMENCEMENT SPEAKER: Barbara Kingsolver, bestselling author of "The Poisonwood Bible."

WHAT SHE SAID: Kingsolver first gave permission for graduates to make an exit as the raindrops quickened. Then she gave a sobering 24-minute speech that focused on a degraded environment where people are becoming increasingly isolated and economic progress threatens the earth.

"And so we find ourselves in the chapter of history I would entitle: 'Isolation and Efficiency, and How They Came Around to Bite Us in the Backside.' Because it's looking that way. We're a world at war, ravaged by disagreements, a bizarrely globalized people in which the extravagant excesses of one culture wash up as famine or flood on the shores of another. Even the architecture of our planet is collapsing under the weight of our efficient productivity. ... Previous generations rarely asked about the hidden costs. We put them on layaway. You don't get to do that. The bill has come due. ...

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