Graduation Ceremony
rzwitserloot posted in education on May 13th, 2006

Congratulations to Robbert Jan, Judith and Thijs for picking up their degrees yesterday.

The ceremony was… interesting. By which I mean boring.

They did fortunately realize that trying to speechify for all 45 applicants is a bit over the top so they split it up into 2 batches, each with their own room. Of course, such splitting further cuts down on the already mediocre opportunities to let some interesting people give a commencement speech of sorts.

I was decidely unimpressed. Not good because the Delft University of Technology (DUT) clearly wants it to be a big deal.

Read on for a play-by-play on why it sucked, and a simple plan at the end to fix it.

---

I’ll try to walk in the shoes of a family member visiting the DUT for the graduation ceremony.

Location

The entire event takes place in a standard stuffy lecture hall. There is no coffee or drinks provided, so students will have to think ahead and take their party up to the lunch hall to stand in a line to grab coffee out of a machine. Almost no one did, yet the ordeal takes over 3 hours, so doubtless a lot of discomfort and thirst all around. There’s also no pre-ceremony waiting area, so everyone is just sort of waiting and fidgeting for a half hour if they arrived a bit early.

Contrast this for a moment to Maastricht University. They have a separate pre-ceremony arrangement. You have to agree that this looks quite cozy. For the ceremony itself, they limit themselves to fewer students, and use a magnificent hall built into an old church. Still has the old bricks and Stained Glass windows. It exudes class. The chairs have the basic luxury of being upholstered and being somewhat spacy, instead of wood seats in cramped rows. I’m not saying DUT should build a church for ceremonies, but surely a better alternative exists compared to a common lecture hall!

Ceremony

Once the ceremony starts, the head of the faculty gives a short speech which simply lays down the logistics. After that, a 5 minute (on average, though it was supposed to be at most 2 minutes per student) speech is given by a professor involved with the thesis work, for each student. There were 23 in this batch, which translates to almost 2 hours of sitting and listening. Every second of those 2 hours is sheer agony. It’s boring, it’s completely unrelated to why you are there, and due to the very technical nature of most of these, just not understandable for anyone but students and with some luck the family of the particular graduate in the spotlight.

These speeches are fairly unimpressive, which I guess can’t be helped (I’ve complained about the thorough lack of speech skills at the faculty and at the DUT at large in general before, and it is no different here). In short, you sit there for 2 hours, 5 minutes of which are barely adequate, 115 minutes of which are dreadful.

The Caps

DUT then tries to enforce some modicum of tradition and whim into the ordeal by making the graduates wear a cap which vaguely resembles the actual blue numbers famous from american-based university movies. Unfortunately this is an officiality - you put it on your head and get your picture taken by one of your friends/family on the side whilst the next professor is already talking about the next graduate… the parents can’t even snap a proper picture or congratulate their son/daughter/whatnot! Students shuffle silently back to their seat in the front right after signing their diploma and putting on the cap. The cap is actually put on after the next professor is already talking: I can’t stress enough how much of a non-event it really is, which makes the entire ordeal utterly surreal in silliness.

I think everyone would be just as happy if there was no speech (or they -really- lasted 2 minutes apiece), and the student gets to actually accept that oh so hyped piece of paper in the centre of the stage, with every face and camera turned to them. And, while you’re in the spotlight anyway, put on that hat, then at least the symbolism might be worth something to someone.

If you’ve seen some movies, you might have been expecting some jovial cap throwing scene but it doesn’t happen.

I must honestly submit I haven’t the faintest of clues why the cap is there at all. All it did was make students feel uncomfortable as sweat built up under there. It was made out of felt so thick it would probably function as proper attire when visiting the south pole. Did I mention it was hot that day?

Commencement speech

At the end of the endless parade of little speeches, when everyone is noticably tired of it all, an undergradute has to give the commencement speech. All due respect to the president of the student organization of the local faculty, who usually does the honours, but someone in the middle of their university schedule giving the commencement speech? That’s completely ridiculous!

Worse, the speeches are always the same. A tired old overblown metaphoric connection between the path of graduation and some sort of device, like, say, a car (gears = years). At least some sort of funny story littered with anecdotes about student life should be both much more entertaining and well within the speechifying powers of the local faculty’s student assocation president.

After-party

Obviously, trucking your parents from all over the country to Delft to listen to all that for 3 hours isn’t particularly satisfying, so there is usually some form or other of after-party. Unfortunately, the party is held in the /pub, the local bar in the basement. It’s a brilliant bar for students to just hang out and do everything from discussing projects to holding meetings to just talking about life and chewing the fat, but it’s less successfull as a venue for graduation. It’s in a basement for starters. There was free beer and nothing else. No condiments, no dressed up bar, nothing of the sort. Works in many circumstances, students tend to forgive the rest when you hand them free beers. But it doesn’t work one iota with so many outsiders. They don’t want to be holed up in the basement drinking lavishly whilst combatting a growing feeling of hunger!

As a result, just about every graduate tore out of there within 30 minutes, probably because of separately made plans to i.e. enjoy a nice dinner with your party somewhere in one of the many excellent restaurants that Delft enjoys. Maastricht’s ceremony is decidedly better arranged (remember the cozy picture?) but when my sister graduated there, we didn’t even get to the after-ceremony drink - we moved straight to an arranged dinner party with family and some of her closest friends, and that worked decidedly better.

Still, not everyone wants to or can afford something like that. It was -real- nice weather that day. Some sort of arrangement outside on the large plaza in front of the entrance, or in the very spacious entrance lobby with a portable bar and some condiments would have fared much better.

The Fix

A fix is easy to construct, however. Here’s the plan:
Pool the ceremonies. Make 2 DUT-wide ceremonies a year, where all faculties’ graduates go. This should make for some 400-odd graduaters every semester. Use the Aula. That’s what its for.
Hold a real commencement speech, from a real speaker. I understand that Steve Jobs is out of reach, and that Kurt Vonnegut or Baz Luhrmann are probably busy (NB: Everybody’s free (to wear sunscreen) wasn’t actually a commencement speech, but one can dream, it would have been brilliant). Still, DUT has plenty of connections and it should be possible to come up with 2 half-decent speakers every year.
Then, move students into small groups of about 40 students each, and hold a proper diploma receiving ceremony with plenty of foto-opportunities. Ditch the personal speeches, or reduce them to an absolute iron limit of 2 minutes (and split down further. Depends on the amount of rooms the aula has, I guess), and let students receive their cap and diploma centre-stage with a couple of deserved handshakes and such. Cheesy, but that’s what people want, I bet.
Finally, file everyone back out to the library steps for a professional group photo and an opportunity to throw that cap with wild abandon. That’s what those things are really for, after all!
Then, use the Aula’s expertise at running countless Symposia to cater a proper and dignified after-ceremony drink, including some hors d’ouvres, or at least some plates with cheese on them.

That’s all there is to it, DUT.