Why is there a mace at my graduation? Your guide to college commencement symbolism
After they paid or borrowed tens of thousands of dollars for their college education , all that stands between university graduates at this time of year and their new life is commencement.
So it’s only fitting there’s one last bill to pay — for the rental or purchase of their graduation regalia.
Consider yourself lucky if you’re an undergraduate. The cost for an undergraduate gown at Montclair State University is $60. Doctoral degree candidates spend $872.
But for all that money spent on graduation gowns, ever wonder why graduates wear them in the first place? Or why we call those square-shaped caps “mortarboards”?
Or how certain traditions become uniquely memorable on certain campuses?
Those distinctive caps and gowns are rooted in history. The origins date to the 12th and 13th centuries, when universities first took shape in Europe. Scholars, both students and teachers, dressed like priests. Back then, some medieval scholars took vows like priests and shaved their heads. They’d wear hoods to keep warm. Those hoods still hang on the back of the commencement costume today.
Instead of wearing the hoods, though, graduates today wear square-topped caps, known as mortarboards. The name comes from the resemblance the caps have to the tool masons use to hold mortar. At first, only master’s degree candidates wore the caps.
All these symbols have become codified over time. There's even a Committee on Academic Costumes and Ceremonies, which prepared the most recent academic ceremony guide in 1959, and which academic institutions across the country still follow. The guide established a standard code so that every institution uses colors associated with specific disciplines, and gowns that symbolize the candidate’s level of study.
For instance, all bachelor’s degree candidates wear gowns with pointed sleeves, while master’s degree candidates have oblong sleeves open at the wrist. Doctoral degree graduates have bell-shaped, puffy sleeves. The governing board and president of the universities also wear doctoral degree gowns.
But every school can make their graduation costumes special with other details.
At Rutgers, the Schools of Arts and Sciences undergraduate gowns are scarlet red, the university’s color, with black panels. The School of Environmental and Biological Sciences graduates, meanwhile, wear black gowns with green panels.
“Every school here can choose how they want their gown to look, but they always have the 1766, the Rutgers ‘R,’ and the crown on the tabs,” said Kimberlee Pastva, Rutgers' university secretary. The 1766 refers to the school's founding year, and the crown symbolizes the founding name of Queen's College.
What the colors mean
While the university's board members wear a doctoral gown with three chevrons, or angled stripes, on each sleeve, the president is the only one who wears four stripes, said Pastva.
Whether at Rutgers or any other school, if you’re graduating with a liberal arts degree, the trimming on your gown or the edging of your hood is white. Golden yellow trimming symbolize science degrees, salmon pink means a public health degree, law degree candidates wear purple and engineering grads don orange.
“Most of the code we use is based on what was worn in the Middle Ages," said Karen Pennington, Montclair State University’s vice president for student development and campus life. "These traditions have been carried through for centuries.”
The golden yellow for science degrees stood for “the wealth which scientific research has produced,” according to the American Council on Education.
A university's mace — an ornamental club with distinctive symbols — is used almost only at graduation and carried by the president, chancellor or other high official.
At Rutgers, Pastva holds the mace.
At Montclair, the longest serving faculty member holds the mace.
Since at least the 17th century, the mace has been part of commencement. Each school’s mace features inscriptions and the school’s shield if it has one, as well as other features special to the university.
Rutgers has maple leaves and violets decorating its mace, representing the state tree and flower.
Montclair’s is silver and was designed by Cartier.
Universities have another way of making their commencements especially unique — traditions.
A capella groups sing at university commencements across the country, from Rutgers to Cornell — which Andy from “The Office” would not let you forget.
But in 1996 at Drew University in Madison, New Jersey, soon-to-be heartthrob celebrity James Van Der Beek sang with the a cappella group at the commencement ceremony and made it unforgettable.
Van Der Beek wasn’t yet a household name, but went on to star in the hit teen TV show "Dawson’s Creek" in 1998.
“That became a big deal for us,” said Drew archivist Matthew Beland.
A black and white photograph provided by Beland shows Van Der Beek, who didn’t ultimately graduate from the university, singing on stage at the graduation.
Future celebrities aren’t the only thing that make a commencement memorable.
Colton Johnson, the historian for Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, New York, read aloud the names of students at commencement from 1975 to 2007 — and he had countless memories of “bizarre activities” to share from those ceremonies in a recent interview.
“There was a guy who came out with nothing but his rain coat on and let us know that — but that’s not the sort of thing I like to think of as a highlight,” Johnson said, laughing.
“There was another guy who graduated in the early 1980s known for his absolute obsession over a particular pizza from one of the pizza parlors in town,” said Johnson, who’s also professor and dean emeritus at the school. “As his name was being called and he crossed the stage to get his diploma, his buddies arranged for the delivery guy from the pizza parlor to go on stage with a pizza.”
Often at graduation, students fumble with their tassels, wondering which side of the mortarboard it should hang from. It can vary by school, since there is no general rule, according to the American Council on Education.
Most institutions have graduates wear the tassels on the right front side of the mortarboard before degrees are conferred, then switch them to the left when they get their degrees awarded, the council states.“As a dean to the students, I knew them quite well,” Colton said. “But to see 500 or 600 people who I knew to be quite eccentric in many ways, be part of this coordinated gesture, it was always really quite nice.”