Drumming the Semester to an End

I was on campus every day last week (finals week) and watched the campus clear out. Students scurried about from library to computer lab to classroom, their heads ducked, brows furrowed, stress showing in their hurried strides. They juggled final projects and papers, finals, and the time-honored labor of packing up - moving out of the dorms.

Students in lounging pajamas and old sweats pushed odd carts piled high with TVs, computer equipment, posters, fluffy quilts, microwave ovens, mini-refrigerators, tennis racquets, basket and soccer balls, scrapbooks, stuffed animals, odd-shaped lamps, suitcases stuffed full - some with plaid shirts hanging out the sides, and boxes straining against the duct tape that reinforced their cardboard walls. Behind these students and their carts full of precariously stacked possessions trailed fathers and mothers, arms full of bags and boxes. A chain of mini-vans and SUVs pulled up in the parking lots, and parents stuffed all these boxes and bundles into their vehicles, leaving scant room for the students who squeezed into rear seats between boxes and the partially opened-car windows.

On Friday, facilities began to set up for Saturday's graduation. Metal barricades were placed along the access roads, signs went up directing folks to various parking lots and to Cox Stadium, where the graduation is always held, rain or shine.

But as I walked out the door on Friday, a bag of papers slung over my shoulder (yes, it ain't over for me ... yet), and headed across campus to 19th Avenue to catch Muni, I paused at Malcolm X Plaza, outside the Cesar Chavez Student Union. Sitting on the plaza's stage, a trio of students drummed the semester to a joyful end.