We present new multiwavelength submillimeter continuum measurements of the circumstellar dust around 48 young stars in the \rho Ophiuchus dark clouds .
Supplemented with previous 1.3 mm observations of an additional 99 objects from the literature , the statistical distributions of disk masses and submillimeter colors are calculated and compared to those in the Taurus-Auriga region .
These basic submillimeter properties of young stellar objects in both environments are shown to be essentially identical .
As with their Taurus counterparts , the \rho Oph circumstellar dust properties are shown to evolve along an empirical evolution sequence based on the infrared spectral energy distribution .
The combined \rho Oph and Taurus Class II samples ( 173 sources ) are used to set benchmark values for basic outer disk characteristics : M _ { d } \sim 0.005 M _ { \odot } , M _ { d } / M _ { \ast } \sim 1 % , and \alpha \sim 2 ( where F _ { \nu } \propto \nu ^ { \alpha } between 350 \mu m and 1.3 mm ) .
The precision of these numbers are addressed in the context of substantial solid particle growth in the earliest stages of the planet formation process .
There is some circumstantial evidence that disk masses inferred from submillimeter emission may be under-estimated by up to an order of magnitude .