@ hi mom-
Yeah, well, that is because the private schools are setting the kids up in the world to be the next members of the Junior League, along with the pearls and the house in the Hamptons and such lol. My son’s private school used gowns, but they marched to a beat of their own drum, more Jewish liberal than Junior league lol
At my HS graduation, we all wore black robes and sat in alphabetical order. I think it was the same for college, now that I think about it.
Yes, in college and law school, black robes and alphabetical order for me and our kids. If you were getting beyond a bachelor’s degree, you got a hood. If you were an honors student, you got cords or a stole or something to wear that was distinctive. In addition to the black robes, Greek members were also wearing something around their necks or pinned to the gowns, and I think members of other orgs had something they wore too.
At Wellesley’s upcoming graduation, I guarantee at least one person will object if and when the graduates are referred to as “Wellesley women” or some variation.
In my day, we rented black graduation robes and got to keep the tassel. My kids last year had to buy the red robes (for everyone), cap and gown. I thought it was stupid to keep them and made one daughter give hers to a junior she was friends with (along with the SAT/ACT material) as we were moving and I just didn’t want to pack more stuff. I know the school gets a kickback from the gown company so that’s why it wants everyone to just keep buying new, but really, can’t they just have a box at the school to donate the gowns and then resell them to the next class for $10 or so? It’s such a waste. Had I known that we had to buy the gowns, I would have looked at the thrift stores during the year because I’m sure there were a bunch donated.
I didn’t even know that different colors were a thing, until Happykid got to high school. Where I grew up, we wore the same color and it was just plain alphabetical after the Val and Sal who lead the whole parade in.
Spent what seemed like ages tracking down a cute white summer dress for Happykid to wear under her academic gown. Fortunately, she did get a bit of use out of it.
twoinanddone, at our local high school the kids are required to buy a cap and gown new, every student, every year. So even if you had a child graduate the year before, you are unable to use their cap and gown, even though the style never changes. What a waste of money (and resources).
When I graduated HS the boys wore maroon and the girls wore white robes, the school colors. We did march in every other, boy/girl, and I think this was done not out of any nefarious tradition of keeping the genders separate, but because it looked much nicer when we were all on the football field in rows of maroon and white. If it was a random order it would not look as nice for photos, etc. Nothing more to be read into it. My son’s HS did the same thing 30 years later.
I should add that I think a transgender student should wear the robes he/she identifies with. That is what the trangender student at S’s HS did last year.
At my kids’ public HS, they had an old tradition where female juniors processed in the graduation ceremony as marshals, wearing black (one of the school colors; graduation robes were in the other color) and carried flowers. A marshal sat at the end of each row of graduates. I don’t know how many years ago it was integrated, but by the time my kids graduated any junior could volunteer to be a marshal and carry flowers. We had guys who wore black suits and carried the flowers alongside the girls.
At my HS graduation the girls wore powder blue and the boys wore navy. I believe we marched in separate lines. When D graduated from the same HS (public) everyone wore navy and they were alphabetical. The HS in question is a public HS in a low income area with a large percentage students of color . . . no $200 white dresses.
Neither my own HS graduation or my kids (they did not attend the same HS) had different colors or lines for the boys and girls.
At my graduation, we all wore blue, which I thought was odd because the school colors were red and green (really).
At my high school graduation in 1972, the girls wore white gowns (which were almost see-through, so we were required to wear all white clothing under them), and the guys wore blue ones (and were required to wear shirts and ties under them). And each gender had to line up by height. I’m sure the first (shortest) guy and last (tallest) girl were just thrilled to be singled out that way.
At my kids’ high school graduations, everyone wore black gowns. Some things have improved over the years.
A rainbow of gowns might be fun, but some people wouldn’t like the political implications.
There were thousands of us that graduated in my ceremony. I’d laugh if they thought they could corral us into nice, neat lines. We had pieces of paper with our names (and pronunciation) which we handed to the speaker as we walked up.
Still had the stupid white robe because of my sex >.<
For those of you asking why trans kids can’t just wear the color gown of the gender they identify with, trans also includes people who identify as neither gender, both genders, or genderfluid, etc, so it wouldn’t necessarily solve the problem.
My school had different gown colors by gender, but we walked in and sat alphabetically. I really hated having to wear the ladies’ color (an ugly gold/yellow mess), and would have much preferred to wear the mens’ red gown.
Ooh, I forgot about that part. Some of the people in my high school class had lots of fun making up ridiculous middle names.
Which is why they should just all wear the same color gown.
If they tried to make us wear different gowns for different sexes - why not races and religion? - a lot of us would not have attended.
If a particular school really wants to have its colors represented in the graduation robes (blue and white for example), they could just as easily divide the class into blue (last names begin A-M) and white (last names begin N-Z) without regard to gender.
Not all transgender students “choose” a male or female gender. If asked, some would say “neither” or “both”.
When I was in HS we all wore the same color robe and sat in class rank order. At high schools around here now, robe colors are determined by gpa - white for 4.0+, black for <4.0 (weighted) Kind of like angels and devils I guess? 