Monday, May 16, 2011
I also thought about the clever way that Smith works with tradition. There are a lot of Smith traditions: Sophomore Push is a venerable one I didn't know about, for example. Shown here are two newer ones. These are some of the seniors who rowed with CLA. They wore their unitards under their robes, "a Crew thing" as CLA described it. The woman in the white hard hat is a graduate of the engineering program, which admitted its first students in 2000. The engineering graduates enter the ceremony wearing mortarboards like the rest of the students, and carrying these white helmets. When their degrees are conferred, instead of moving the mortarboard tassel from one side to the other they take off the mortarboards and put on the hardhats. The symbolism is terrific-- now they are ready to go to work-- but what I really like is that nobody bothers to mention it during the ceremony.
// posted by Bill @ 3:58 PM 
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