Graduation Fashion: American Values under Academic Dress

By Julian Dunraven, J.D., M.P.A.

It is graduation season again. As a professor, I have gotten used to the ritual of trotting out the elaborate doctoral robes, sitting through hours of ceremonial name reading, and politely applauding while students parade slowly across the stage to receive their diplomas. The speeches and faces at any particular ceremony all blend together after a while, but the air of exuberant pride and accomplishment emanating from the graduates never gets old.

For the graduates, however, who are not so familiar with this tradition, there are some decidedly alien aspects to graduation, which nonetheless symbolize fundamental American principles. Inevitably, some question why they have to wear such seemingly ridiculous costumes. Today, I even read of a high school student who refused to wear the traditional cap and gown in favor of his military uniform, and thus, to the outrage of his community and peers, was barred from participating in the graduation ceremony. 

I sympathize with the unfortunate gentleman. After all, it has been a few centuries since late medieval clerical fashions have been in style, and he clearly wanted to wear a costume that symbolized principles important to him. However, had he known what academic regalia actually means, and how deeply emblematic it is of American virtue, I suspect he would have worn it with the same pride as his military dress blues, as well as understood why military dress would be decidedly inappropriate.

When universities were first founded in the medieval period, they were run primarily by men of the Church. Thus, the academic attire of Europe looked much like the robes of clerics. When the English began to colonize North America, they brought with them that clerical academic tradition—specifically the traditions of Oxford and Cambridge. However, while universities in Europe continued to develop a great profusion and variety of academic dress over the centuries, the U.S. attempted to standardize the medieval look. By the 1895, they had successfully crafted the Intercollegiate Code of Academic Costume. This has since been updated into the Academic Costume Code of the American Councilon Education, from which we derive most graduation regalia in the U.S. today.  

At first glance, the standardization of U.S. graduation regalia seems arbitrary, perhaps even boring, when compared to the flashy variety exhibited by Europe.  The reasons behind it, though, are decidedly  noble.  We in the U.S. believe in equality of rights, and judging people on their merits. The graduation robes reflect those principles. The black robes of academia cover everyone equally, from those wealthy enough to wear bespoke tailoring and pay full tuition, to those who can barely afford decent clothing and attend university through scholarships. Regardless of the circumstances one comes from, irrespective of the circumstances one graduates into, in academia, at graduation, all are equal in what they have achieved. Indeed, the only distinctions visible are those of merit, for the different robes reflect only the degree earned—not inherited or granted-- by each individual through their own efforts. 

The academic robes then serve to dedicate people, even if for only a day, to a unifying higher purpose. The Christian clerics who originated the robes used them to indicate that they were dying to the world as individuals and dedicating their lives to the will of God. When judges, who have inherited the same tradition, put on a black robe, it serves as a symbolic reminder that they have died to the world as an individual, subsumed beneath the higher purpose of justice they take on while wearing that robe. They even give up their names in favor of becoming avatars of that concept (e.g., Justice Gorsuch). Academics also share in this tradition, and at graduation abandon their personal backgrounds and circumstances which divide them, and don the robes to dedicate themselves to the purpose of scholarship.  They do not snobbishly proclaim pride in their individual institutions, families, or organizations as Europeans do. Indeed, for most U.S. universities, an institution is marked only subtlety in the colors of the hood lining. Rather, U.S. graduates dedicate themselves to the larger and universal idea of the pursuit of knowledge. 

Finally, this American standardization further promotes egalitarianism as it allows the graduation regalia to be mass produced. Thus, it becomes much more affordable than the expensive academic costumes of European universities, which were once primarily havens to the elites and aristocracy. For U.S. graduates, the academic costume truly is a uniform—not aristocratic finery. And so, it further represents the triumph of the American Free Market.

These are the principles woven into the U.S. academic costume. They represent the very essence of American values, but few today remember such symbolism. This also explains why the young man who wanted to wear his military uniform to graduation instead of the academic costume was so wrong. In doing so, he would not be marking an achievement of scholarship earned equitably and on the same scale with his peers, but rather his own subsequent dedication to new and different principles in his military pursuits. More, his uniform would stand out to honor a chosen identity, rather than the achievements he had earned for graduation. Such distinction is not what graduation exists to honor. In truth, though, the principles behind U.S. graduation robes represent some of the very ideas our military serves to defend, and thus they deserve to be honored appropriately in their own right.