Oxford is a strange place.
It is
not at all out of the ordinary to see monks walking around Oxford. Catholic
monks dressed in long white robes and sandals. First time I saw it I did a
double take, like Did I just get
transported into another century? But after a while I got used to it. A
neighbouring student building, St. Benet’s, has a live-in monastery for
Benedictine monks.
I kid
you not: one of my friends once saw a group of them SPEAKING IN LATIN to each
other in the street. In Latin. In 2017. Need I say more?
If you
ever wished you lived in the medieval times, Oxford is the place for you.
Matriculation
When you first get inducted
into the University of Oxford, you go through this weird ceremony. It involves
you wearing this.
 |
| Little Ruth at matriculation, taken on the terrible camera phone I had at the time |
This is not a normal outfit.
What is this stupid gown that has flaps on the sleeves? If I wanted to look
like an idiot, I would have said so. But at least for matriculation, you all
look like idiots together, so it isn’t so bad.
It’s
quite fun for all the city residents and tourists though, to see a few hundred
young people walking through the street looking like that.
Matriculation
is mandatory and from what I remember it cost about £30 or so for the complete
outfit, known as sub fusc. The commoner’s gown, the mortarboard – which,
incidentally, you are not allowed to wear until you graduate (stupid!), but
need to carry with you at all times – and the velvet ribbon. That’s for the
ladies: the men had to wear dark suits with white bow ties and the gown on top.
There were also scholar’s gowns, which looked much nicer, but cost about
two-thirds more, so even though I could really have gotten one as I was a
choral scholar, upon being told it was more for academic scholarships, I
decided I’d keep my money.
What
happened in the matriculation ceremony, you ask me?
A lot
of bowing, and many words of Latin were released into the air to deaf ears.
(Because again, we’re not fluent in Latin.)
Sub Fusc
We’ll come back to the
university’s obsession with Latin later.
Now,
let’s talk about exams and how strange Oxford makes them.
Forget
about the fact that we call mock exams ‘collections’. I have some even weirder
info for you. You know that weird uniform I was just telling you about which
consists of us looking like bats? Well, we have to wear that for our exams.
At any
other university – for goodness’ sake, even Cambridge has ditched this odd
tradition! – you go to your exams wearing whatever you want. You ought to feel
relaxed in what you wear, seeing as you feel tense and angsty in every other
aspect of your being, right?
Not if
you’re in Oxford. If you’re in Oxford, you have to wear your sub fusc to a tee.
You
have to wear tights with your skirt, or black socks which cover your ankles if
you’re wearing trousers. Yes, even if it’s 28 degrees. And you have to wear
your stupid black gown on top of your white shirt. And you can’t take it off
until you get into the exam hall. So there you stand sweating. I feel
especially sorry for the guys, considering they have to wear their dark suits
as well!
And
thou must not forget the mortarboard, the square hat that you’re not even allowed to WEAR! Because of course, if you don’t
wear it, you are not dressed in full sub fusc, according to university
guidelines. Guess what, heading down to my exams, having managed to get myself
relatively calm, I had to run back to my room to get my mortarboard because I didn’t want to risk not being able to
sit my exam because I didn’t have a stupid hat I couldn’t wear with me. I mean,
it doesn’t get much more ridiculous than that. (But once I realised, and I
really couldn’t be bothered to go back, so I didn’t! Shh, don’t tell – they
never noticed.)
I’ve
heard that people that are not wearing satisfactory socks have been turned back from their exams because they
were deemed to have been dressed inappropriately.
Do you
know, twice in my time at Oxford – in my second year I believe, and again in
fourth year, there was a vote at the OUSU Council on whether or not we should
keep or get rid of sub fusc? And BOTH TIMES the majority voted to keep it. I
just don’t get it. There were so many good reasons to get rid of it: improved
comfort; less stress; money saved; no reinforcement of ancient elitist Oxford
culture which so many people feel left out of… but it still won. I think that
says a lot about who still runs Oxford.
Oh and
of course, there are the carnations.
There
is a long-standing tradition in Oxford that on your first day of a set of
exams, you wear a white carnation, pinned to the lapel of your gown. Then for
all consecutive exams, excluding the last one, you wear a pink carnation. And
then, for glory day – the final day of exams, when your freedom arrives – you
wear a red carnation. This tradition is so commonplace in Oxford that the
florists sell carnations in a special pack of three with a dressmaker’s pin
especially for Oxford students.
 |
| A very happy Ruth on the last day of her Prelims (first year exams) |
They
say it’s not compulsory but I’ve heard that the only reason some invigilators
will allow for why you don’t have your carnation on is it that you have hay
fever. Seriously?? As if actually sitting your exams and knowing your stuff
wasn’t stressful enough, you have to worry about whether or not you have a
carnation, whether it’s the right colour, and whether or not it is alive or
dead when you pin it on. And then you have to worry about keeping it on.
Worries I could do without on exam day, I reckon!!
I
really didn’t care much for the carnation thing. Once I’d got my carnations, I
made them last even if the petals were curling up and turning brown and the
stem was starting to go mouldy. (I’d just trim off the over-moist bit.) I’d
much rather spend my time revising my quotes than walking 15 minutes to the
florist for something as superfluous as a carnation! Also, my carnations often
fell off on the way anyway, or during the course of the day. So it really
wasn’t that deep for me. It was a frequent favour people asked on the college-wide
Facebook group though: Does anyone have a
spare pink carnation? I have an exam in an hour and mine has died!
#Oxfordproblems.
Graduation
The
most ridiculous ceremony I have ever been part of. It was streamed online so
some of my friends got to watch, and they were completely confounded.
The
introduction was in English. It was the only part spoken in a language I
understood. The rest was in Latin.
The proctor
defended this for most of his speech, saying that “some people” might find it
strange that the ceremony is conducted in Latin, but this is how it was done in
the 1000s and so this is how we continue to do it. Alright then mate, if we had
that approach to all of life we would still be doing a lot of terrible things
because “that was how it was done back in the day”… Oh wait, Oxford already has
that approach to everything.
I have
friends that studied Classics (Ancient Latin and Greek) that didn’t even understand all of the ceremony. So
what hope did I have?
Luckily, our families in the audience had translations in
the programmes they were carrying. We didn’t. So we sat through our own
graduation ceremonies barely comprehending a word.
Though
there were some things we understood. When the proctor read out Engineeringaria
and Computeria or some such invented word to denote subjects that obviously
didn’t exist in the time of the Roman Empire, my friends and I couldn’t help
ourselves. We burst out laughing. The absurdity was just hilarious.
At
several points in the ceremony, two proctors walked the length of the hall, to
the door and back, holding their sceptres. Just because. Apparently
it represents soliciting the votes of the Deans, allowing students to be
admitted to their degrees. If you’ve ever seen two grown adults walking back
and forth silently up and down a hall you’ll know it’s pretty hilarious. You
could see a mix of embarrassment and amusement on their own faces.
There
was also a frightening recurrence of people taking off their soft caps or
mortarboards (only certain people are even allowed to wear their mortarboards
inside – not the common graduates of course!) before anything could happen. The
three Proctors, sitting on their thrones like royalty, would do this about
three times. It was ridiculous.
You
know how at a normal university, your name is called out and you go up and get
your certificate from someone and shake their hand? We don’t do that. We
actually get our certificates sent to us in the post a month later, and instead
of going up separately, we go up in a massive group. One of the people in this
group has to hold hands with the Dean. (Yes, really. Thank God it wasn’t me.)
And then comes the bowing.
The bowing. I’ve watched the video my Uncle made of me
walking up and it turns out we bowed EIGHT TIMES. The Proctors watch you all
bow to them, three consecutively, and then stand, and bow again, and again, and
again… I felt like I was part of a pantomime. I was on the front row and I
really couldn’t stop myself from smirking.
And of course after you hear a
long paragraph of Latin you don’t understand, you have to respond with ‘Do
fidem’ (apparently it means I swear) – yet you don’t even understand what
you’re swearing to.
After
that you leave as everyone claps for you, and you come back with your fur hood
attached to your graduation gown. This means you have officially been conferred
with your degree from the university.
Once
the ceremony’s over, you stand outside and have to keep donning your
mortarboard to all the university officials as they leave the premises.
The
whole thing was just a complete joke. But the graduation gown did look nice.
 |
| With the living legend that is my mum. |
No comments:
Post a Comment