In April, I officially graduated from the University of Cambridge. High time for a post on where it happened.
The University of Cambridge, like any long-evolving entity, is a labyrinth of vestigial traditions: customs that have shaped the life of the place, but have shrunk over time until only ceremony is left. Perhaps nothing is more emblematic of this than the Senate House. This neoclassical 18th century building at the heart of the city was for 200 years the meeting place for the University Senate, the then-governing body of the University. Alumni became members of the Senate on receiving their Master of Arts (MA). The MA was already vestigial by the 1700s: a status bequeathed 6 years after matriculating as a BA, rather than a degree as you would normally think of one (more on this later). Cambridge MAs in the Senate could vote on anything from whether to continue requiring Greek exams, to whether to grant women degrees and membership in the University. The latter was voted down twice by the all-male Senate, in 1897 and in 1921, and not granted until 1948, after the Senate had been made vestigial. Now, the only thing of consequence the Senate votes on is the appointment of the University Chancellor.
But the Senate House is still the site of the most visible ceremony of them all: graduation, also known as Congregation—because Congregation is the ostensible gathering of the current governing body, the Regent House, to vote on things like granting degrees, though they actually don’t gather. But this is getting in the weeds now.
Graduations happen almost monthly in Cambridge outside of the winter, so processions of robed students with fur-lined BA hoods going down King’s Parade to the Senate House are a pretty common sight. As per tradition, the graduands process from their college gates to the Senate House. The iconic white façade is perpendicular to the street, facing a courtyard made up on the other two sides by King’s College buildings (including King’s Chapel); across King’s Parade is Great St. Mary’s church. On a Congregation weekend, there isn’t just one ceremony but as many as a dozen, grouped by college and cycled through every hour or so. Expect blockages in the street.
After your degree is approved, it’s up to you to sign up for one of the many Congregation dates with your College. The April date I chose happened to be a ceremony mostly reserved for Newnham graduands receiving their MA. Yes, the MA that grants membership in the Senate. Nowadays, this credential is criticized by many as a misleading, “fake” degree because it can easily be misunderstood by non-Oxbridgians reading a resume (though I think it has to be written as “MA Cantab” to distinguish it from “real” MA degrees). The fact is that it’s only meaningful within Cambridge, and even then, really only meaningful as a kind of 6-year class reunion.
As a result, I was the only person in this ceremony graduating with a “real” degree. I was also definitely crashing a class reunion. This was especially apparent when I took my mom as a plus-one to the formal Graduation Dinner the night before. At the pre-drinks, we sat by the window while all the girls in cocktail dresses and their dates (we didn’t see a single other parent) chattered away in a horde. The Newnham principal, Alison Rose, sought us out and was delighted to hear I was the PhD student. In the Hall at dinner, I just so happened to sit right next to her, and heard more about her experiences being the UK ambassador to the EU in Belgium and Paris. She’s very approachable while still being distinguished—perhaps this is her diplomat personality. It was unfortunately too loud (so much wine-lubricated chatter echoing around the hall) for my mom to hear her from my other side, except when the principal leaned over to tell her about the Newnham founders in the portraits on the wall.
Graduation was an all-morning affair. First to Newnham for “robing up” and photos and rehearsal. On my way I picked up my PhD hood rental from Ryder and Amie’s (the more plebeian academic tailor in town, Ede and Ravencroft’s being the posh one). I already had my MA-status (temporarily granted to me as a non-Cambridge BA at age 24) gown with the long curving sleeves, which I wore to Matriculation and Cambridge formals over the years. The PhD hood was a heavy black and scarlet-lined cloth of baffling shape that I struggled mightily to pin to my gown lapels from underneath after looping the front strap over my head and across my collar bones. Without pins it defaulted to choking. That was just the beginning of a day of constantly tugging down on my lapels and adjusting the hood and smoothing my loose hair. I will admit, though, after the principal said several times how striking the scarlet hood was, and as the only one in the procession, I started to feel distinguished by it—though I doubt many people outside of the ceremony knew what it meant. Caps, meanwhile, are optional, and only the senior academics tend to wear them in the ceremony (they need them for doffing).
At the rehearsal we were checked for the strict, plain black-and-white dress code, assisted with hood-pinning, and instructed on the hand-holding and Latin and kneeling that would happen in the ceremony. My parents joined me afterward to take photos of me in the Newnham garden, posing on the gravel walkways in front of the daffodils, magnolias, Queen Anne red brick, and the wrought-iron gates that a mob of self-righteous male undergraduates tried to batter down after the 1897 Senate vote. Finally, after a group photo on risers attended by lots of parental paparazzi, we prepared to process out of Newnham.
Because the procession is ordered by degree, I was in my own row at the front, just behind the Principal and Praelector—a ceremonial dignitary I won’t even try to explain—and a Newnham porter in a bowler hat, there to clear traffic. I got to chat with the Praelector here and there, a fun, straightforward and confident older academic with short straight hair mussed by the constant cap doffing, a rosy lined face, a faded gown, and something of a lack of reverence for it all. “Look at all these cats,” she said fondly, looking back at the rows of women.
Before the procession, I had trouble seeing the whole graduation thing as more than a box-check of a Cambridge experience. The ceremony of it was a novelty, but an impersonal one. But when the gates finally opened and we set out across Sidgwick Avenue, I started to feel the momentousness of my place in this chain of women, having accomplished what I set out to do, and in such a storied place. We cut through the Sidgwick Site and over to the Backs, where we would be given the honor of treading the sacred ground of King’s College with our non-Kingly feet to get to the Senate House. By the time we were on the King’s path, banks bursting with tulips and wildflowers, I was practically transcendent with the specialness of it. I had left my phone with my parents, out of reverence, I guess, so couldn’t take any photos of the flowers, and vowed to remember them instead. The MA graduands behind me were chatty and threatened to spoil the mood, but in my lone row I managed to stay floating, thinking about the profound privilege of being here—how few barriers I had faced—when so recently women were barred from Cambridge degrees, MA or otherwise.
We crossed the Cam, went around King’s College Chapel, and down the narrow, cobbled, medieval-walled Senate House Passage, and lined up outside the Senate House gates (blocking bike and tourist foot traffic as per tradition), which were guarded by top-hatted officials. I started to get a little nervous about being the first one into the ceremony and the possibility of flubbing, but the Praelector reassured me she would be right alongside me the whole time.
Before my own graduation, I had never been inside the Senate House, and the building had an air of arcane mystery, which I believe is the goal of most Cambridge traditions. When we were finally admitted, I took in the 18th-century grandeur of ceilings decked with elaborate plaster molding, olive walls lined with galleries of dark coffered wood, floors tiled in black and white marble, and the audience sitting in the stacked benches like a court. (There are not very many seats, hence the plethora of ceremonies and strict limit on guests.) Standing before them were Proctors in academic dress with caps to doff to the Praelector and to each other, the official start to endless cap-doffing.
The ceremony quickly took on the feel of a religious service—or royal ceremony?—as we halted in our rows and waited for the Principal (standing in as Deputy for the Vice-chancellor) and her procession to make their way solemnly through the front entrance, the Esquire Bedells (don’t ask) and the University Marshall carrying silver-plated scepters (maces, they’re officially called). Already on a side-table were the Proctors’ leather-bound Statute books with delicate chains for carrying like ladies’ purses. In the midst of the officials, the principal was draped in a fur-trimmed crimson cape like royalty, and indeed, after she stood at the top of the dais at the end of the room and had caps doffed to her, she sat on a throne-like chair flanked by gilded winged lions, ready to receive the graduands. A Proctor opened the ceremony in Latin (doffing his cap) and it was soon time for me to walk forward with the Praelector. She took my hand and, with several cap doffs, rattled off the Latin, which translated to:
“Most worthy Vice-Chancellor, and the whole University, I present to you this woman, whom I know to be suitable both by character and learning to proceed to the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, for which I pledge my faith to you and to the whole University.”
Then I knelt on the low stool in front of the Principal and held my hands in prayer position for her to clasp and, in Latin, to smilingly bestow upon me my degree.
“By the authority committed to me, I admit you upon your degree of Doctor of Philosophy.”
(Omitted was the traditional religious refrain, in nomine Patris et Filii et Spiritus Sancti.)
My last task was to stand without stepping on my robe and bow. And then I was ushered to the little side door—the “Doctor’s door”—leading out onto the Senate House Passage, was handed my degree certificate and a complimentary tote bag, and that was that. I didn’t see any more of the ceremony. From the rehearsal and watching a live stream of a ceremony later, I know that after I left, the rest of the graduands came forward in fours, each holding a finger of the Praelector’s right hand, and after the first declaration, got only short Latin phrases essentially meaning “ditto to you.” With no training in the sacred academic language of status, I don’t know how good the officials’ pronunciation was, but in this new Latin-less era I have a feeling it was lackluster despite all the repetition.
My parents had to sit through it all, so I waited in the cool gray April air under the courtyard pavilion where they were selling exorbitantly priced degree frames and photos. I looked at my certificate and discovered that it looks like someone made it on Microsoft Word and printed it on A4 paper vaguely embossed with the University crest. Photography wasn’t allowed inside the Senate House so my mom drew a sketch of a kneeling graduand like a court reporter instead. They do, however, take an official snapshot of the moment of degree conferral and sell it to you for whatever price they desire. In the preview I could see that my hair was doing unforeseen loopy things despite all my efforts, which put me off, but my dad insisted on buying it for me as a matter of course.
We took photos in front of the Senate House, and then all that was left was to make our way back to Newnham for the graduation lunch. This was a festive affair in the Hall, a hearty spread of salmon, potatoes, salads galore, fruit, cheese, pudding. I was glad both my parents got to come inside the Hall and bask in the light Victorian glory of the plasterwork.
With that, my tie to Cambridge was looped in a nice ceremonial bow, and I had the certificate to prove to the French government that I had the credentials required by my visa. Offically on to my next chapter.
But of course, a place like Cambridge lasts in you like a long friendship.
Bonus: my other favorite, utterly delightful encounter with the Senate House: the artwork of children illustrating Saint-Saëns’s Carnival of the Animals, projected and choreographed on this venerable canvas. Enjoy!
😳