A Seattle high school has granted a request by LGBT students to end the practice of separate marching lines for male and female diploma candidates. Moreover, the students will no longer be compelled to wear the traditional gender-specific graduation robe color, which many high schools use to separate the boys from the girls. Was the soon-to-be dismissed protocol and tradition a significant problem and unfair to transgendered kids?
Why wouldn’t the students simply wear the gown color of the gender that they choose? Seems like a simple solution to me. Requiring everyone else to change seems inconsiderate to me.
Interesting. I didn’t realize there were that many gay students at Franklin, let alone transgender students.
Good for Jenny for changing with the times.
Ds public high school had students sit by gender and wear different colors.
Ds private high school did away with gowns.
I think it’s a stupid tradition too. My D hated that the girls had to wear white when the boys got to wear blue (her favorite color). I think the school could have just had an option on the graduation form of: circle color option blue or white (or whatever their choices are). They might find everyone would love to just wear the same color. Or the color they like best. Mix and match the caps or something. It sounds like the kids at this school are all on board, so good for them!
At many of the private HSs in our state, the females wear lovely long white gowns (costing about $200) while the males wear navy suits or navy blazers and dark grey slacks (which they can wear for interviews & other occasions later). S did use his outfit, I believe, though it ony fit him briefly after extensive altering. It cost about as much as the gowns the females bought.
Yep, and they change the gown style (every year there was a vote on which style of white gown), so it was hard to buy from someone a class or more above you. This tradition exists for the school our kids attended as well as at least one other major private school. One girls only private school has all the girls buy a whilte gown–don’t know whether they change styles annually or not. S actually didn’t like the outfit because it had to be tailored so much to fit that the lines were all off. They ordered him the smallest possible size but it was still WAY too big for him. Fortunately he has purchased clothing that fits him much better and he looks great in.
Since D left HS before SR year, she never had to purchase the white gown. She bought a grad gown to participate in a GED grad ceremony. I think it was under $20 and she got to keep it for halloween or whatever else she wanted to do with it.
I don’t necessarily agree that separate colors for the genders was “silly;” an unessential and outdated tradition perhaps, but not senseless and not something meant to be oppressive.
The white gown & style was VERY unflattering on many women. I doubt many got much use from these expensive dresses. It did look lovely in the ceremony and photos, but still! Our D looked great in her under $20 cap & gown too. We knew she was our D and didn’t need her wearing a $200 white dress she’d NEVER wear again.
Wow… I had no idea some high schools had different genders wear different colors and had them sit separately - why on earth would they do that? While I don’t even remember how our kids processed in and sat, I do know that boys and girls were all wearing the same thing and processed in mixed genders, and I assumed it was like this at all other public high schools. The robes used by our high school are of one of the school colors. (In trying to remember, I’m guessing ours was done alphabetically by student’s last name)
Are we forgetting that in many high school districts a big part of the commencement ceremony is that it is essentially “a show,” for the parents and family? Therefore, having the genders wear different colors was/is part of the aesthetics of the ceremony. I can’t remember how many times the Assistant Principal who ran our commencement reminded us that he would yank any non-conformists (white shirt, necktie, non-ostentatious girls’ jewelry) out of the marching line if our attire “embarrassed” our parents. Of course, some degree recipients decline to attend their graduation ceremonies for this very reason; they don’t want to be part of the show. They just want their degree.
I think that the argument goes beyond folks who are transgender or gender non conforming or whatever, I think a ‘show’ based on separating the girls and boys, where they wear different color robes, sit separately, goes back to a different time when among other things, it was assumed that boys mixing with girls was going to cause ‘trouble’. More importantly, what value does having different color robes show? If they want to have multi colors, then randomly assign colors to the students, but not based on gender, there is nothing inherently ‘female’ or ‘male’ about white or blue or red,and if the colors don’t denote gender, I suspect the gender non conforming kids would be fine. Or do it all in black, since black is always fashionable:).
I think it is kind of cool that kids are willing to speak up, very few kids were willing back when I was in high school when they insisted of having prayers are the graduation and forcing kids to stand for them and whatnot,even though a fair number of the kids made clear they weren’t happy about it (this was a public school, not private), especially since the prayers always seemed to be some local Christian church pastor and we had a sizable amount of kids who were non Christian, either antagonist (moi), didn’t know, didn’t care, Jewish, Buddhist, Hindu and so forth…and those who did speak up were not treated well by the school officials or board…I think kids should have a say in what goes on, after all, it is their graduation, they earned the diploma, and what grandpa fred did in 1936 or Grandma Sally did in 1941 don’t really have much meaning today.
Yes Teriwtt, at my nephew’s suburban alma mater last spring the genders wore separate colors at the commencement ceremony, though the boys and girls did all sit side by side, alphabetically.
I checked the online video of the most recent commencement at Lake Jr.'s university. All the degree candidates wear the same color but the men and women march onto the stage in separate lines.
The tradition of different colored gowns based on gender seems like an anachronism to me. Somehow harkens back to seeing very old school buildings that had “boys” and “girls” written over two different entrances, or days when curriculum offered may have varied by gender. Just seems like an irrelevant variable to me.
My high school and our kids’ high school had everyone in the same color gowns, as did all of our colleges and grad schools. While traditions can die hard in some cases, this one seems to serve little purpose, while changing it can make for a better day. Perhaps this year, students will get around the previously ordered dual color gowns by just choosing what appeals, as movemetoo suggests.
When we graduated from HS in the 70s, we all rented or bought the same colored gown as our predominant school color, RED for our HS and other colors for other HSs. Many of the private schools even back then had the males wear blazers and slacks while the females wore white full-length gowns.