So far this week I have attended 9 degree ceremonies, with two more lined up for tomorrow. I have seen students from all faculties cross the stage. I have presided at two ceremonies and read the names out at one more. I go to all the ceremonies where there is a Senate Award winner, and also any others where I nominated or supported the honorary graduate. In total this week I will have attended 11 ceremonies - but when I started as a Pro-Vice-Chancellor there was the expectation that the PVCs would attend all 15.
Sitting on the front row of ceremonies, even more so than sitting in the main seat, one cannot help but notice the deportment, the clothing and the general attitude of the graduates as they come across the stage. What follow are some observations that I hope people will take light-heartedly. A few of them are in the form of hypotheses that someone in the future could test.
1. The proportion of men wearing university ties of some sort (the sports tie, a faculty tie, the University's own tie) varies hugely between faculties. I think it has been highest in the Faculty of Enngineering, and lowest in the Faculty of Arts and Humanities.
2. There is a strong vogue this year for very thin ties. Perhaps this is something that is more general out there in the wider world, although I haven't noticed it.
3. A hypothesis: Male students of German nationality are more likely to wear a bow tie than are students of other nnationalities.
4. We have had two kilts at ceremonies I have been at, but no lederhosen, I remember a couple of years ago when the shortness of a pair of lederhosen outdid the shortness of even the tiniest mini-skirts (which - reformulate as a hypothesis - tend to be worn by some Chinese students).
5. Chinese males display a bimodal sartorial choice - either they wear brand new and very smart suits, or they wear a jumper or tee-shirt with jeans and trainers.
The main issue with women seems to be shoes.
1. The shorter a woman, the more likely she is to be wearing flat shoes or slippers. There's actually a possible overall hypothesis here, because there seems to me to be a relationship between personal height and shoe height. In other words, taller women tend to wear taller heels.(and for the statistically minded I recognise that the correlation coefficient would probably only be about +0.4, although statistically significant across a large sample).
2. Related to this is the hypothesis that the taller the heel the slower the rate of progress across the stage. And from the facial experssions of some women I suspect that at a certain point they regret not having chosen to wear something lower - particularly in the light of the steps they have to climb to get on the stage, and more particularly those they have to descend.
3. This next observation would require longitudinal study - and I don't have hard data from previous years, only impressions. But it seems to me that the curtsey is rapidly dying out. This year my observation is that it has been confined to a very small nnumber of women in the Faculty of Arts and Humanities, and to women from African or Afro-Caribbean origins. There were more curtseys only a year or two ago.
4, The variety of clothing on sale is astonishing. Menn's suits generally come in a limited variety of styles and fabrics. But the dresses and other outfits worn by the women are almost infinitely varied. There is one electric blue lace dress that has been worn across the stage three times to my knowledge (possibly three friends sharing the same dress). And one orange/pink lace dress was worn twice in the same ceremony - by two consecutive women. Perhaps they had arranged that between themselves, but I guess if they hadn't they were both mortified.
5. There have been fewer women wearing trousers this year than I remember befroe - but perhaps that is a function of the hot weather rather than any fashion trend among graduates.
Finally, the two ceremonies I presided at have left me with a question about human anatomy after shaking hands with several hundred new graduates. How is that the moisture level and temperature of hands varies so much among people who have been sitting next to each other in the same conditions? It doesn't seem to relate to gender, or degree school. Are there any general explanations?
2. There is a strong vogue this year for very thin ties. Perhaps this is something that is more general out there in the wider world, although I haven't noticed it.
3. A hypothesis: Male students of German nationality are more likely to wear a bow tie than are students of other nnationalities.
4. We have had two kilts at ceremonies I have been at, but no lederhosen, I remember a couple of years ago when the shortness of a pair of lederhosen outdid the shortness of even the tiniest mini-skirts (which - reformulate as a hypothesis - tend to be worn by some Chinese students).
5. Chinese males display a bimodal sartorial choice - either they wear brand new and very smart suits, or they wear a jumper or tee-shirt with jeans and trainers.
1. The shorter a woman, the more likely she is to be wearing flat shoes or slippers. There's actually a possible overall hypothesis here, because there seems to me to be a relationship between personal height and shoe height. In other words, taller women tend to wear taller heels.(and for the statistically minded I recognise that the correlation coefficient would probably only be about +0.4, although statistically significant across a large sample).
2. Related to this is the hypothesis that the taller the heel the slower the rate of progress across the stage. And from the facial experssions of some women I suspect that at a certain point they regret not having chosen to wear something lower - particularly in the light of the steps they have to climb to get on the stage, and more particularly those they have to descend.
3. This next observation would require longitudinal study - and I don't have hard data from previous years, only impressions. But it seems to me that the curtsey is rapidly dying out. This year my observation is that it has been confined to a very small nnumber of women in the Faculty of Arts and Humanities, and to women from African or Afro-Caribbean origins. There were more curtseys only a year or two ago.
4, The variety of clothing on sale is astonishing. Menn's suits generally come in a limited variety of styles and fabrics. But the dresses and other outfits worn by the women are almost infinitely varied. There is one electric blue lace dress that has been worn across the stage three times to my knowledge (possibly three friends sharing the same dress). And one orange/pink lace dress was worn twice in the same ceremony - by two consecutive women. Perhaps they had arranged that between themselves, but I guess if they hadn't they were both mortified.
5. There have been fewer women wearing trousers this year than I remember befroe - but perhaps that is a function of the hot weather rather than any fashion trend among graduates.
