Congratulations to all our new graduates! 🎉
Just wanted to get that out of the way(!), now on with the history of what all our graduates are wearing.
It is a rite of passage for otherwise sensible and intelligent people to throw on an oversized frock with an oversized and strangely coloured hood, don a starched square hat complete with disobedient tassel, and enter into one of those carefully conserved rituals and rites of passage in life to mark three long years of study and achievement at graduation. Clearly, these traditions: the strange clothing, the ceremony, the ambitious attempt to sell you everything from champagne to strawberries and cream that you won't have seen on campus at any other time have come from somewhere, but from where?
Medieval church origins
It turns out graduation ceremonies originated in the Middle Ages and have since developed and acquired traditions since.
The gowns and mortarboards are Medieval. Back in the Middle Ages, local politics divided into 'town and gown' - the secular state and the ecclesiastical universities operated by the Church as educational establishments. In the days when reading, writing and understanding the ancient, dead languages of Antiquity (Latin and Hellenic Greek) in which law, religious texts, and all academic discourse were conducted were taught, and therefore controlled, by the Church, universities were powerful and influential institutions. Students graduated in the robes of clergy in training, which we still wear today. We still talk about professional services and other office jobs as 'clerical' roles - referring to the times when only clerics, i.e. monks and priests, would have been fit to fulfil the role. The clerical skull cap (useful during the ice age before central heating) evolved into a puffy beret - still worn at some institutions for some degrees - before economies were made, resulting in the rigid square-shaped 'mortarboard', designed to save on fabric. The tassels were once colour-coded to designate social status.
I remember a friend who graduated from Cambridge University describing how they had to kneel facing in a particular direction, placing one supporting hand in a particular place, while holding an academic's guiding finger while their degrees are conferred in Latin as they kneel before the Praelector. Ceremonies at younger institutions vary, from students bowing in turn to their academic overseers, doffing their caps at the same time as the Praelector in a simultaneous show of respect, or simply shaking hands with an official as they rush across a stage and try not to trip and fall on camera, ceremonies have diversified as universities spread and developed their own identities.
Turn-of-the-century American influences
The colour-coded hoods linked to different subjects and degrees was an American idea originating in 1895 and adopted/adapted internationally. The most iconic moment that I associated with graduation all my life up until I graduated was tossing my mortarboard up in the air. This turns out to have originated in 1912 in the American navy, where graduates tossed away their old cadet caps after receiving their officer caps. Just a friendly warning that modern gown hire firms tend to take a rather dim view of damaged hat corners and charge anyone whose hat is damaged on landing for a replacement. I'm sure the gown hire firm have already sent all graduands a far less friendly warning, but I like to be thorough!
Whatever next?
Blending fashions from the Medieval origins of the university education system with late 19th century American fashions, modern graduation dress and ceremonies have been hundreds of years in the making, and we're doubtless breaking new ground establishing our own traditions that will seem as integral to graduation as the mortarboard in another hundred years time.