THE CAPPING CEREMONY.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 15050, 25 January 1911, Page 5

THE CAPPING CEREMONY.

A PROFESSOR'S BENISON,

(From Orm Oars Correspondent^

OHRISTCHUBCH, January 24. Professor Haslam, of Canterbury College, in a letter to the Press regarding the attitude of the Senate towards Degree Day ceremonies, writes:—"lf senators arrange to come down and 'improve tho occasion' with speeches delivered by themselves, or those whom they invite to do so, i:o authority in the world can ensure that an audience of undergraduates will remain silent, or even patient, if the speeches aro long and dull. I don't think one can blamr the undergraduates. Nobody knows better than I that sometimes they aie long and dull, because I've had to make speeches myself on these occasions, and have always sympathised with those who had to listen to me. Of course, there have been good speeches occasionally, and I think such speeches have Almost always bean, listened to attentively. 13ut if some worthy senator were-to read off a typewritten screed, half sermon, halflecture, in dogmatic style, full of extracts from French and German authors, whose names he could not pronounce, could you blame an audience of highly-educated young people for resenting such an infliction? Tho fact k that the Senate and the undergraduates take entirely opposite views.of the ceremony of conferring degrees. The Senate looks upon it as an occasion for speechifying about education ; tho undergraduates regard it as an opportunity for the reunion of old comrades, for tho public and friendly utterance of good wishes and congratulations to those of their number who have happily steered themselves into the untroubled waters of unexamined life, and for the general expression of collegiate 'esprit do corps.' If this expression takes a somewhat boisterous and disorderly form sometimes, I believe it is due to an excessive and natural reaction from the dullness of the ceremonial ae it appears to them. Ido not mean lo say that this difference of opinion justified the undergraduates in the introduction of more- or less musical instruments or crackers or pea-eliooting (though, this latter is, or was, common at Scotch rapping ceremonies) or in seriously ■disturbing the ceremony; but I do think that their point of view is worth considering, and that it is borne out by the ceremony of conferring degrees at Cninondge, and I believe at Oxford ako. At tho regular 'congregations' of the year at Cambridge when degrees are conferred on those who have paesed their examinations there is uo speechifying. Rich man is brought up to the vice-chancellor along tho marble lloor between the avenue <n statues and columns, and presented by the " father of his college.' Ifo kn«ek, and puts his hands k-tween.the kinds of the vice-chancellor, who then admits him to his degree in a set form of Latin words, 'In N'omiiiD Patris et Fili et Spiritus Sancti.' (This formula may be varied at tho option of the vice, chancellor, I believe). Crowded in the two long galleries above him are the undergraduate Meads of himself and those who are also being admitted. His friends abovo keep up an intermittent fire af jokes, more .<r less bad, but there is no interruption, because there's nothing that can bo interrupted, and no loss of dignity, because there is no real collision between the authorities and the undergraduates. All the fun is impromptu. There are i:o carefully prepared songs, and sometimes one hears a gcodi joke. Once when tho Senior Wrangler was a Jew, as he walked up the marble floor there was a- dead silence for somo seconds. . Nobody could think how to allude to his nationality without perhaps hurting his feelings, when clear upon the silence from a far off corner of the gallery came a voice, " Abraham and his seed for ever." Only at the "congregations" when illustrious people are admitted to honorary degrees is there speechifying, and then'in Latin, by the public orator, but unless the candidates are very famous there is no great attendance of undergraduates. lam glad that the ceremony of publicly confemno- degrees h not to be suspended. I think the professors and. the undergraduates are really very good friends, and might agree mi a " modus operandi " for the future Let the Senate drop the speechifying. Uoodiiess knows wo get chances of lecturing the youngsters and airing our ideas about their education. Let -us simply call them up before their old comrades and their old teachers to give them publicly the reward of their hard work amid the cheers or. harmless jokes of their friends, and wish them God speed ourselves at parting.