Gradumacations

Ken's FFOT from last week (you need to scroll down) involved the behavior of people at graduations.

And I agree with him. And I think some of the "bad behavior" we see at graduations are just symptomatic of things going on in the culture at large: me-first-ism, where I and my feelings matter far more than those of anyone else, and lack of respect for solemn occasions.

I've been through four graduations in my life. My high school graduation was small (class of just under 100), a lot of us got called up more than once because of honors or awards. (I attended a private school - graduation was outdoors when the weather was good, and instead of caps and gowns, the men wore dress slacks, the school tie, and the school jacket, and the women wore a white dress [of their choice] with a pastel sash if desired.) It was an appropriately solemn occasion - parents and siblings applauded quietly when each family member walked across the stage. After the formal ceremony, there was a "blowing-off-steam" time, when we could run around and whoop if we wanted (and I saw more than one kid with an open champagne bottle in hand, and a few of the guys with stogies). (I, being the big geek I was, used the time to tearfully say goodbye to my favorite teachers.)

My college graduation was anticlimactic, and if I had known the way it was going to be, I wouldn't have gone. I was in a graduating class of (IIRC) four thousand. We were in the basketball arena (rain threatened). No one's name got called and no one walked across the stage (which was probably a good thing given the sheer mass of humanity). But it's not very gratifying to sit through a long, self-congratulatory speech by an alumnus (seriously: I thought he was going to break his arm patting himself on the back. And I wasn't alone in that assessment) and then be told, "Class of 1990, you may now rise!" I also couldn't see my family in the audience, so that wasn't too much fun.

My Master's graduation was nicer. By then, I was at a smaller school, and they had a separate graduate-school ceremony and reception. There was enough space that I invited some of my friends as well as family, and people applauded for me. But there wasn't any hollering, and there sure weren't air horns.

When I finally got my Ph.D., that was the last graduation I "walked" in as a student. I got my diploma, got hooded by my advisor...the only aberration (which embarrassed me a little and I tend to think perhaps should not have been done) was that my father (who was on the stage with other faculty; he was a department chair in those days) got up and handed me a bouquet of carnations (red and white, the school colors). I understand the thought behind the gesture but I felt it was perhaps a bit too bringing-attention-to-one-person. But whatever. (It was also hard for me to juggle my diploma, the carnations, and my mortarboard, which wouldn't stay on).

At none of those ceremonies do I remember whooping or air horns. In fact, I remember at my Ph.D. graduation, each person having to unzip their gown as they walked past the security guy - presumably to make sure no one was "packing" an air horn or bottle of champagne.

Now at graduation, it's some different.

There's usually a lot of howling and whooping for certain people, and, what I particularly hate, air horns.

I really wish people decided air horns had no place at graduation. Especially indoor graduations like the ones we have in the winter.

The problem with the howling and the whooping is it puts the "reader" of the names in an awkward position - do they stop and wait for it to subside (thereby, possibly encouraging more and more extended displays in the future?) or do they keep reading, and thus, have someone's name drowned out in the display for the person who went before them.

(And I have to add: our spring graduation is on the football field. And it is high noon well before it's over. I am not in favor of ANYTHING that stretches that time out longer, as I sit there sweating in my heavy robe, and slowly burning in the intense sun).

I also have to observe - it seems to be that certain majors get a greater proportion of "whoopers." It seems that the business-oriented majors (like marketing) and some of the...how do I say it politely?...majors that have the reputation for being less-challenging...get more people hootin' and hollerin' than does, say, chemistry or mathematics.

(In some cases, I think the person invited as many of his frat brothers as he could, and put them in the audience with either implicit or explicit instructions to make a lot of noise for him).

It seems there's more whooping for men than for women.

I don't particularly like the whooping - as I said, it risks running roughshod over the next few people in the queue (can you imagine? You work hard for four, maybe five years. Perhaps you do it buy working to earn your way through as you go to school. Maybe you've even managed to pull very close to a 4.0 through hard work and determination...yet as you walk across, no one knows it's you [maybe even your family, because they're sitting so far away] because the slacker ahead of you has friends who like to scream out things about him. And yes...I've even heard obscenities screamed at graduation.)

I don't hate it as much, though, as I hate the airhorns. I feel for the folks in the audience next to the airhorn-blowers - at the indoor, winter graduations, even I find them painful - and I'm down on the gymnasium floor, away from the bleachers. I've seen small children led crying from the gymnasium after several air horn bursts - probably hurt the poor kids' ears, and scared them to boot.

I think air horns have no place at graduation.

My main objection to the things - and also to the whooping, and screaming "You did it, you old b*stard!" and all of that - is that people are, once again, behaving as if they are at home, alone, in their living rooms.

(The reason why I don't go to the movies any more? If I want to enjoy a film without people talking, cell phones, snogging couples, or children asking "why? Why did he say that? Why are that man and that woman doing that?" I have to rent the movie when it comes out on disc.)

Look. People. You can see that there are hundreds of people sitting around you. Some of those people very likely have hearing aids. Some of those people may be musicians or in some other profession where their hearing is very important to them. All of them are here to celebrate different people who are graduating. They are not all here to celebrate YOUR son or YOUR daughter. I'm sorry, but your child really only gets a tiny pie-slice of the glory today - it must be shared between all the graduations. Do not try to take more than your pie-slice just because you think your kid deserves it more, or because they had to "work really hard" to graduate, or whatever. Save it for the party you throw them later.

And that also goes for standing on chairs, blocking other people's views. It's NOT just YOUR child. Please respect the other people who are not blowing air horns or heaving their bodies right in front of everyone else just so they can get a better photo (and, incidentally? We have three professional photographers taking pictures. Surely you can afford one picture by a pro? It will be better than whatever you could take any way).

My other concern and objection is that graduation, although a joyful time, should also have a certain decorum to it. Air horns interfere with decorum. Screaming interferes with decorum.

I realize that this probably marks me as a stick-in-the-mud fuddy-duddy, but: I think there are some times we should be serious. Graduation is one of them. Young people (and some not so young, these days) are embarking upon the next phase of their lives. They have completed something that was, at least at times, difficult, and although that should be celebrated, I think it's not the time for a whole-hog, all-out festival.

I mean, for goodness sake: we have an Invocation at graduation.

One of my concerns is that we're losing the ability, as a culture, to be serious yet joyful about things. Serious yet joyful should be the tone of, for example, a wedding: joyful because you're celebrating the love of two people, but serious, because they are making a solemn commitment to each other (and to their God, if they are religious people). I personally dislike weddings where the couple have written their own vows, or where there's some kind of "irregularity" - where there's an attempt to chuck out the time-honored and "make it our own."

And I guess that's it, for me - I have a dislike of people getting rid of tradition simply in the service of "newness." If there's something that doesn't work, if, for example, the tradition assumes all graduates are male, and they are no longer exclusively male, then change things. But don't get rid of everything, don't throw hundreds of years of history in the dumpster, just because you can.

And that's kind of how I feel about the people who use graduation as a time to draw attention to themselves, to behave like a seven year old at Chuck E. Cheese.

(And I wonder - could it be all the growing-up-at-fast-food-restaurants, and never eating anywhere "serious" - or all the kid-themed, kid-centric stuff in our culture, that contributes to a generation of Peter Pan adults who want to keep acting like they're seven and at Chuck E. Cheeses? When I was a kid, sure, we went to the Pizza Bazaar and places like that [we did not have a McDonald's in my town until I was in high school], but my parents also took us to "grown-up" restaurants, and expected us to behave accordingly. [And I secretly - and not-so-secretly - LOVED going to the "grown-up" restaurants because they were special.)

I don't know. I suppose someone who is a better social commentator than I could connect all the points - also throwing in the rise of the "casual" Sunday-morning "praise service" where there's no bulletin, and no hymnals, and in many cases the Lord's Prayer isn't even said. And the way people behave at and dress for work now. And the rise of take-out, of simplified food. And all that.

But, for the sake of all that's good and holy: can we please get people to stop bringing air horns to graduations? That might be one little start of a fight back against the people who would encourage our descent into boorishness, slobbishness, and disregard for the other people sitting around us.