<p>My daughter is graduating from Oberlin next month (May 2014) and I can’t get a sense of what to expect that weekend. I have the list of the activities – so I know what’s going on, but how many of those things do parents actually attend? Especially if they’re not Oberlin Alum? One question I would love to have answered is whether the “optional cap and gown” is really optional? Are the majority of the kids wearing the kits or not? My daughter hasn’t ordered hers yet, thinking most kids/friends won’t be wearing them, but I hope she won’t regret it later on…(or on the day of!). Any helpful tips would be appreciated.</p>
<p>I attended Oberlin graduation as a proud aunt two years ago and it was lovely, though very hot. I can only speak to the actual ceremony as I did not attend anything else except the performance on the quad the night before graduation. My niece (and many of her classmates) seemed to selectively choose graduation garb. My niece wore the gown and her own hat (straw cowboy-style), while some classmates opted for no gown and a classic mortarboard. It is truly a celebration of the individual!</p>
<p>where is Cobrat? he is wanted </p>
<p>It was brutally hot when we went too, and that was more than two years ago.
D1 wore cap and gown, and my recollection is most others did same. Maybe I wasn’t paying attention.
The ceremony took forever, seemingly. Our speaker was very good though.
The performance on the quad the night before was indeed worth going to. There are some talented people at Oberlin.
We spent a lot of time helping D1 vacate her dorm.</p>
<p>Cap and gown varied greatly depending on individual student and there wasn’t pressure either way. </p>
<p>Main issue with graduation in my time was the politically charged decision of whether the graduate chose to walk through the Memorial Arch* or Around it. </p>
<p>Those who felt walking through the Memorial Arch was an effective endorsement of western imperialism in China in the 19th/early 20th century…especially considering high handedness by some western missionaries played a part in sparking the Boxer Rebellion opted to walk around it. Those who disagreed with this perspective or wanted to maintain the traditional manner walked through the arch. </p>
<p>There were also a few students who didn’t bother to come to graduation because they had artistic/musical performance commitments or were past ready to move on with the next phase of their lives. </p>
<ul>
<li>The Memorial Arch was built to commemorate Oberlin alum missionaries who were killed during the Boxer Rebellion. Despite attempts to recognize Chinese victims through adding some plaques in the '90s, the arch still polarized Oberlin students and alums when I attended later in that decade.<br></li>
</ul>
<p><a href=“https://new.oberlin.edu/student-life/facilities/detail.dot?id=318804&buildingId=30214”>https://new.oberlin.edu/student-life/facilities/detail.dot?id=318804&buildingId=30214</a></p>
<p>Thanks, everyone. It’s good to know that the students are adhering to the individualism that Oberlin is noted for! I’ll suggest that my daughter get the cap and gown and can decide the day of whether to wear all or part or none of it. Very interesting about the Memorial Arch – I’ll have to watch for that and see what they do nowadays. And @monydad, it seems like we spend a lot of time every year helping our daughter vacate her dorm room! Ugh.</p>
<p>The worst part to me was:
When we moved her in freshman year. they had these carts to help take stuff into the dorms. Or maybe they had them at another school? It all blurs together. but I thought Oberlin had them too, initially.</p>
<p>But when we moved her out from her residence at graduation, these carts were no place to be seen. We had to carry everything quite a distance, by hand. And by that time she’d accumulated quite a bit of stuff, somehow.
And had also done very little packing in advance of our arrival. Which negatively impacted our experience of her graduation, hers too. Because we were dealing with that instead of going to all those events.</p>
<p>Aw gee. So glad my D’s college required caps and gowns. One of the few upsides to her very long, hot and boring graduation ceremony was looking out over the colorful sea of students in their regalia. If one feels too much of an “individual” to partake in the traditional pomp and circumstance, why not just skip the graduation altogether? It’s special snowflake syndrome, and it’s tiresome.</p>
<p>Most of our graduation visit was also spent packing up D, who had also done nothing in advance. I think that’s part of college graduation tradition!</p>
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<p>Some people did skip the graduation ceremony for reasons I cited in my previous post. </p>
<p>As for wearing cap and gowns or not, that was regarded as an individual choice and no one held it against the student if he/she opted for the graduation cap & gown or not. </p>
<p>Also, if you’re not the student concerned…it’s not really your call anyways.</p>
<p>As for why some wanted to stay for graduation…to get together with friends and classmates for one last time in a campus culture where cap & gown was optional…not mandated. </p>
<p>Especially considering most of us are unlikely to be going back to campus on a regular basis considering its location is out of the way for most of us. </p>
<p>@cobrat: FWIW, four plus years ago when we took the Oberlin tour with our D, we walked by Memorial Arch and someone asked what it was. Tour guide blithely replied that it commemorated a massacre–during the Crusades. My H an Oberlin alum (and former Shansi rep) who was hiding in the back trying not to embarrass D had to speak up and correct. him. Guess all ancient history starts looking the same at some point.</p>
<p>We are definitely going to hear the Punch Brothers. They are phenomenal.</p>
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<p>Just out of curiosity, did that tour guide seem stoned by any chance? Wouldn’t surprise me considering the prevalence of weed/psychedelic use while I was there. </p>
<p>Then again, we do have our share of mistaken/clueless people. </p>
<p>Also, clueless/mistaken tour guides. On a tour of a Civil War exhibit, one tour guide and military reinactor in a union soldier uniform was way off in expousing the maximum range of the rifled musket during the civil war…saying 5000 yards rather than around 500 yards. </p>
<p>Several fellow HS alums and myself had to restrain a few of our number from making snide remarks about his technical and numerical estimation skills…especially considering 5000 yards is nearly 3 miles. </p>
<p>However, he did have his approximately 1 to 5 ratio correct ratio correct when explaining the improvement in range and accuracy of the minie ball using rifled musket versus the older smoothbore musket. </p>
<p>Many of us just chalked it up as a mistake any of us could make under stress and didn’t feel it would be right to hold it against our tour guide…especially considering how passionate and knowledgeable he was about many other aspects of the Civil War. </p>
<p>“We are definitely going to hear the Punch Brothers. They are phenomenal.”</p>
<p>WOW, D1 completely failed me in picking when to graduate (and, by extrapolation, when to be born).
I do recollect that one of them went to Oberlin.
Chris Thile is the most amazing mandolin player I have ever heard.
I saw him a few times with Nickel Creek, they played often where we used to live.
I guess because they are at Oberlin they will have o do some classical-ish stuff.
But one should definitely not miss that.</p>
<p>My son graduated from Oberlin last year. Sadly, it RAINED. We were cold and miserable, and waited to bail until son’s best high school friend’s name was called (which the entire crowd was doing for their own kids) My brother went to the bookstore and bought umbrellas. Commencement speaker cut her speech short so as not to torture us further. To be honest, I felt cheated. I wish they had a rain contingency of some kind. </p>
<p>Our son wore a suit, no cap and gown, which was fine. His girlfriend had her warm winter coat on, which she regrets now (pictures). </p>
<p>The events are fun–the boxed lunches were good, and the senior “champagne” luncheon was fine - that mostly is a celebration of fund-raising by alumni, but still nice. All of the concerts are well worth attending!</p>
<p>Oberlin alum here, with an alum brother, husband, daughter and daughter-in-law! Many graduations to report later, the cap-and-gown is just a very low-key choice. My D wanted to wear street clothes (nice dress and platform boots), and we were just happy to see her. Her boyfriend’s family sincerely wanted to see him in cap-and-gown, so he did that for them. Informal pics of my DIL show her in a dress surrounded by a half-dozen cap-gown friends. At all times, my recollection of the crowd is about half the graduates chose each way. </p>
<p>They offer a professional photographer who is allowed to stand really close to stage, and snap your graduate as they walk offstage, triumphant with diploma, facing the camera. You can sign up now to purchase that. Honestly, it’s a great picture of her, and better than me crowding under the platform awaiting, which many parents (also) do. They have a platform for the parents allowed up by alphabet, in anticipation of the flow of names, so they’re even managing parent-photographers. But when you choose that, you actually miss seeing and experiencing the moment they stride across and shake hands. I recommend signing up for their photographer, very much, so you can sit, enjoy and feel the moment. Or maybe that’s me.</p>
<p>If you love a front-row seat, arrive around 2 hours early and sit in the chairs, saving a few for your family with a scarf. (My mom made me do this five years ago, honest.) Have other family bring you breakfast from Main Street while they eat their own. If you sit “stage right” (so when you face the stage you are below the left-end of it), you see your grad walk off after diploma. If you sit “stage left” (looking at right side from below), you see grads line up a few at a time, waiting to go up onto stage by name. Also, from there you have a better view of them all arriving and marching in (or avoiding) the Memorial Arch. But at stage left the front many rows are saved for faculty, so I prefer the stage right area.</p>
<p>If concerned about heat, some families go further back to be under shady trees. But… they’re further back. Meh.</p>
<p>On rain: as of 5 year ago, they still had the system of outdoor graduation if sunshine, with many tickets per grad. But if called for rain (that morning) they move graduation to indoors, with only only 2 (or 3?) tix per graduate. And maybe stream it elsewhere. If that was changed, it’d be the Oberlin hardiness, saying they’d rather all sit outside wearing ponchos than leave out anybody who travelled to central Ohio. </p>
<p>The Illumninati of lantern-lit Tappan Square the night before graduation, with outdoor concert at the gazebo and steel-drum band on the steps of Finney Chapel is memorable. We didn’t stay with our grad, just enjoyed that whole evening separately.</p>
<p>Every Oberlin commencement speaker I’ve ever heard has been excellent, original and without platitudes.</p>
<p>If O-Circus is performing anywhere, that’s a joy. You might see the town turned out for that, along with the students and parents.</p>
<p>My only complaint, aside from the Airhorn family behind us: the college’s box picnic lunches were inedible – and we’re not at all fussy eaters. We’ve never tried the indoor luncheon, but you might consider bringing your own picnic alternatives in small brown bags that fit under a chair. The chairs are small, wooden things so if you have bad backs, bring a pillow. We did love sitting outdoors on Tappan Square after the ceremony. Everyone was so hungry. Restaurants/cafes are so crowded right then, it’d be tough to send someone to line up for carryout. I guess preparing your own picnic brown bag would be wise, unless you want to eat indoors at the banquet of course. We had cost dilemmas so picnicked.</p>
<p>If you have anyone very elderly attending, consider free-renting their wheelchair or scooter for the weekend. The Hospital partners with the College to make wheelchairs and power scooters available for pickup the night before. No you don’t need to prove anything about the elder, just reserve one and go get it at Hospital (far walking distance). You leave a Visa # and drivers license as security deposit, but there’s no charge to use the chairs all weekend. I scootered my Mom around that weekend, because it was just too hard for her to walk a half-mile from dorm overnights to the campus that morning, and reparking a car was a nuisance that day. The scooter was leaned up under a nearby tree outside the graduation chairs, but where I could still see it, for the time during the ceremony so she sat with us in the regular wooden lawn chairs. </p>
<p>Students who had to make flights out were packed and ready, leaving messy rooms behind. Students who had parents driving in, not so packed. Following grad, we couldn’t really get her complete attention to finish pack-out until every other last friend had gone and been well-hugged. Not surprisingly, all the town’s cardboard boxes were long taken by other more organized students. You might want to bring flattened boxes and garbage sacks to town in your trunk. Ugh.</p>
<p>I thank the campus security guards everywhere. They work very hard all week, managing crowds with a smile. </p>
<p>The campus will look absolutely beautiful with perennials in bloom. You might also notice some class reunions at the College Inn. To save costs and be on campus without cars to move, we all stayed in the college dorm that the college pre-cleans well and rents out to graduating families that weekend. You sleep on dorm beds – no pillowtop mattresses! and use the group bathroom down the hall, but it’s clean. There are hotels in neighboring towns, which many also use. </p>
<p>Sorry to miss it this year. </p>
<p>@monydad: There is a new musician in residence thing at Oberlin so Chris Thile has been at Oberlin a number of times the past semester. Your D should share her latest Oberlin alumni magazine. Big article there. </p>
<p>Local paper had an article that Nickel Creek was reuniting. I think there’s a new CD coming out.</p>
<p>Thanks I’ll look. It’s right on our staircase.</p>
<p>@paying3tuitions: I think you may have given me some of those tips via PM when my D1 was graduating, isn’t that right??
It was a long time ago, and I didn’t recall it till I read your post just now.</p>
<p>Yes! Hi @monydad. I do get carried away. Oberlin is a passion topic!</p>
<p>I’m so glad to hear things are well for the monyoffspring! </p>
<p>I just reread the OP. To answer your other question, the parents attend everything they want. They’re all over it. </p>
<p>Alumni have their own special reunion activities tucked off to the side to find each other. As well, they roam around and attend activities that intrigue them. But there aren’t so many alumni that their presence is obvious. The grad-parental presence is far more apparent than alumni groups. Alumni reunion numbers are smallish due to the college’s location, which is why they bunch several years together.</p>
<p>As proud parent of a grad, just join in for everything that sounds fun or interesting to you. Really. </p>
<p>Also, we realized our D had plenty of emotional business to tend to, saying so many goodbyes all weekend. We didn’t eat or hang that much with her on graduation day except for lunch afterwards. Having all these activities occupy parents so students can bid farewell to their friends and professors. It’s huge for them. By the time we left, car full, the sun was setting.</p>
<p>@paying3tuitions – Gee, everything you said was so helpful! Thanks so much! I hadn’t thought about the camera angles yet or checking out signing up for the professional photographer so I’ll look into that. I appreciate everyone’s comments very much. This will be the only Oberlin graduation we’ll probably attend since our son just decided to go to Delaware – four years from now I’ll be posting questions about their graduation practices! </p>