Spirits were high and futures bright while all else was soaked in a summer storm that made Tuesday morning’s Scholars Bridge Crossing, UC Merced’s traditional greeting to new students, a welcome unlike any before.
Call them Thunder ‘Cats.
The ceremony embraced about 2,000 first-year and transfer students to a campus that this fall semester marks 20 years since the first undergraduate class began at the newly built institution, bringing the power of a University of California education to the Central Valley.
Low, gray clouds and occasional distant thunder framed the scene as the new Bobcats gathered at about 8:30 a.m., dressed in dark-blue Boomer Bobcat T-shirts. Many had moved into residence halls a few days earlier in cloudless, 100-degree heat.
“We’re all excited to have you here, and we’re going to get this thing moving,” Chancellor Juan Sánchez Muñoz told the incoming students, glancing at the sky. “You are the realization of a future launched 20 years ago. You will find countless ways to discover who you are and who you want to become.”
Just as Muñoz wrapped up his remarks, the sky opened — big, warm drops, growing in intensity. The chancellor, joined by his wife, Professor Zenaida Aguirre-Muñoz, and the university’s three school deans, led a brisk procession up to Scholars Lane and across the bridge.
The students were cheered by hundreds of faculty and staff, several of whom put welcome signs above their heads to ward off the downpour. Lightning flashed and rumbles of distant thunder were felt as the students marched to the Beginnings sculpture.
In years past they would walk ceremoniously through the twin spires then pause for a greeting from campus leaders. But Tuesday'st stormy conditions — no previous Bridge Crossing had experienced this — called for a swift, non-stop passage, followed by a retreat to dry shelter under the eaves of the nearby library and classroom buildings.
As staff and faculty worked to accommodate an event schedule now contracted and largely moved indoors, students enjoyed boxed lunches, maintained a celebratory atmosphere and showed the resilience that has set Bobcats apart through the years.
