There weren’t four weddings, but there were two funerals, a bat mitzvah and a royal procession at last night’s information meeting for prospective Tree applicants.

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Jon Casto

Sophomore Brad Burton is carried in a coffin to the Band Shak on the first day of Tree Week, the audition period for Stanford?s mascot.

The secretive meeting — open only to applicants, former trees and the recently selected Dollies — kicked off the 10-day-long selection period known as Tree Week. Before a winner is declared next Wednesday, the half-dozen applicants must impress their judges with the most outlandish stunts their imaginations can concoct.

The meeting last night was the first opportunity for the aspirants to prove their worth. With the current Tree, three former Trees and a smattering of Dollies and band members watching, the Tree-hopefuls made their way to the band Shak just east of Burnham Pavilion.

Freshman Adam Monroe was the first to arrive, draped in cloth and lying on a funeral bier carried by an entourage dressed in black.

Sophomore Brad Burton followed with a more extravagant funeral procession. He arrived in a wooden casket carried by his Kappa Sigma brothers, also dressed in black. When the casket was set down, Burton emerged and bloodily sacrificed a member from the procession. After Burton entered the Shak, the others silently placed the mauled sacrifice into the casket and departed.

“A good exit is important too,” said senior Andrew Parker, a former Tree.

Senior Erin Lashnits, who will be co-terming next year, arrived at the center of a bat mitzvah celebration, carried along in a chair while dozens of supporters wearing pink “Erin for Tree” shirts encircled her and sang Hava Nagila.

The last entrance stunt was performed by sophomore Christina Zempel, who arrived on a wooden sedan carried by four men in Speedos. After a rhyming proclamation was read, Zempel descended from her throne, bedecked with peacock feathers, and walked over the bodies of several prostrate peons to enter the Shak.

The current and former Trees remained stoic throughout, offering short judgments on the entry processions. Trees are notorious for lying to the media, and information about the selection process is hard to uncover. An inquiry into the rules governing stunts, for instance, elicited this response from 2001-2002 Tree and co-term student Chuck Armstrong:

“Everything has to be somehow related to non-linear algebra or non-Euclidean geometry.”

In the coming week, expect “some pretty outrageous things around campus,” said senior Isaac Salier-Hellendag III, the current Tree. “I have high expectations.”

Salier-Hellendag claims to have had his appendix removed during his quest to become Tree.

“And I was lowered into diluted acid and the outer layer of my skin was removed in a big ritual,” he continued. “The whole theme of the campaign was the elimination of the superfluous, so I tried to eliminate a bunch of things in my life that I considered superfluous.”

Will Rothacker Jr., last year’s tree, used a cinematic reference to describe the upcoming stunts.

“Basically this week you’re going to see a lot of stuff from the third hour of ‘Gettysburg,’ “ he said. “Not the first hour, not the second hour, and definitely not the fourth hour.”