First Class Marshal Aims To Befriend Class of '05

Never content to chat too long with just one clique of soon-to-be Harvard graduates, Caleb I. Franklin ’05 spent the senior wine tasting trip confidently bouncing in and out of conversations, his braids spinning as he turned to talk to someone new.

The Class of 2005’s first class marshal was on a first-name basis with most of the seniors; by the end of that Sunday, two weeks ago, he was conversing with the winemakers by name, too.

A joint concentrator in social studies and African and African-American studies, Franklin’s extracurricular profile rivals that of even the most overactive Harvard students: actor, Kuumba singer, a leading member of the Black Men’s Forum, founder of the California Club, and first class marshal. He has also spent time abroad studying in South Africa—where he hopes eventually to live—and has earned a language citation in Urdu-Hindi.

His effort to make friends with everyone at Harvard, armed with his infectious grin, makes him an ubiquitous campus semi-celebrity, tailor-made for the Senior Class Committee. He boasts 594 Harvard friends on thefacebook.com, and his profile lists “Talking to People, Interacting with People and Monkeys” as interests.

Franklin speaks quickly, punctuating his sentences with a hearty and unthreatening laugh in between his ironic or hyperbolic one-liners. For example, he says, “you have to be, like, Phi Beta Kappa and God” to get a Harvard-Cambridge scholarship, explaining why one of his friends didn’t receive the fellowship.

Franklin is a Los Angeles native, hailing from the part of the city most people know as South Central. When he was in sixth grade, he became a “better chance” scholar, participating in a national program that prepares minority students for admissions to elite schools. He attended the Brentwood School, a private school on Sunset Boulevard, where he was elected head prefect—student body president. He was also a Ron Brown scholar, a Riordan scholar, and first violin in the Pasadena Youth Orchestra.

But Franklin doesn’t call his youth in Los Angeles an inner-city success story.

“I grew up in inner-city L.A., you know.” But, he says, “My life was great…I had a great family. [The neighborhood] was pretty ghetto, I’ll be honest, but we lived well.”

“I don’t want to paint it like I came from the Bronx,” he adds.

Optimistic and extroverted, Franklin came to Harvard in fall 2001, landing in Straus A. A neighbor dared him to attend the first meeting of introductory Urdu-Hindi—the language most commonly spoken on the Indian subcontinent. He ended up taking three years of the language to get a citation, which led him to accept a post-graduation gig in Bombay, India. He will study film and assist in tsunami relief there.

Even though he might regret it, Franklin admits, “if you dare me I’ll still do it.” The dare he regrets the most?

“[W]hen my friends dared me to Spiderman climb out of a window into another window in Straus. It was all right except that...there are police in Harvard Yard,” Franklin says. “I got caught.”

Franklin says his job as first class marshal, to which he was elected in November, involves serving as a “link between the Harvard Alumni Association and the senior class” for planning Class of 2005 activities.

He admits that he has to deal with a lot of complaints.

“The most annoying question I get is, ‘what is the dress to graduation?’ And I’m like, ‘a gown,’” Franklin says.

But despite the occasional complaints, Franklin maintains his hyperactive optimism.

“I have so much Harvard love. This school has opened so many doors for me, that to be able to represent it for the rest of my life is an honor,” he told The Crimson in October, after being named first class marshal. “Am I shirking down from duty? No! It’s a lifetime thing, baby.”

—Staff writer Stephen W. Stromberg can be reached at stromber@fas.harvard.edu.