When I went to high school, everyone rented the same color gown for graduation.
A lot of the kids in my area have mixed heritages. What do you think? Stripes? Polka dots?
At my high school graduation, 1973, the girls wore a short white summer dress of their choice. The boys wore a suit, or at least a jacket and tie. While this was a well known boarding/day private school, not all the students were flush with cash. The graduates were welcome to wear their choice of appropriate clothing.
When my son graduated from an all boys boarding school, they were required to purchase a specific brand of white pants from a specific vendor, and a specific shirt. They wore their navy blazer (required uniform for classes) and the school provided class ties and boutonnieres.
My other son graduated from an independent day school and the graduates wore cheap maroon (boys) and white (girls) gowns. Cheap being the operative word – and garden party attire would have been much more attractive and (IMHO) appropriate.
I find that more offensive than separating them by gender. How would you like for everyone to know you were ranked last?!
Ye gods, when Hunt suggested marching in GPA order upthread I thought it was amusingly sarcastic. Never occurred to me that anyone would actually DO it! (Isn’t that what cords and NHS hoods and so forth are for? Honoring academic success in a fairly discreet way?)
I have no recollection at all of whether we wore different robe colors at HS graduation. I do remember that I had the largest hat size in the entire class, including the boys. Well, one of them tied me. B-)
At the local HS, girls wear white and boys wear maroon. I’d much rather they all wore maroon. Or black. This business of dressing girls up like little virginal brides-to-be, which IMHO is the cultural baggage of the white gowns, just rubs me the wrong way.
First time I’ve ever heard of different colors at graduation. The high schools around here use either one of their school colors or they use black (which is sometimes one of the school colors anyway). Most families I know buy or borrow used robes.
I think that many of the schools that use different color robes aren’t doing it to separate or differentiate students in any way, they’re just doing it to have the school colors on display and gender seems to be an easy way to get a (relatively) even split at most public schools. Each case varies, but in general I don’t automatically assume there is any kind of oppressive or outdated motive in choosing robe colors. I’d let transgender students choose whichever color robe they prefer.
There is a reason why the girls are always in the white.
I am aware of a private school that actually has separate ceremonies for the boys and the girls, dating back to when they had separate high schools for each sex. I wonder what they would do if they had an openly transgender student … hopefully, they would let him/her go with the group the student chooses.
I thought I was joking, too. But this is too binary–how about different shades of gray in between white and black to denote GPA?
I was also thinking that a transgender kid could buy a robe of each color, cut them in half, and make a composite robe (like the suit Two-Face wears). That would kind of make a point.
Really, this is an example of something that seemed perfectly natural 40 years ago, but that just doesn’t make sense any more. Schools should just go to one color.
Our school had one color, way back when, looked terrible on both genders and I’m sure the same was true for all LGBTQA folks in my school.
I do not see any reason a public HS should have ANY differentiation by gender except bathrooms, and there should be a significant number of individual bathrooms that all students can use, and a few individual changing rooms for gym. Always three bathrooms, men, women, individual. Some people like me don’t identify as LGBTQA but would rather use an individual restroom anyway.
Yikes! I enjoyed Hunt’s comment too, but to discover that some high schools do mandate different graduation robes for different GPAs is a bit too authoritarian for me, as in Orwell’s “some pigs are more equal than others.”
“I thought I was joking, too. But this is too binary–how about different shades of gray in between white and black to denote GPA?”
Oohhh… What a great idea! 50 Shades of GPA? Lol. 
“There is a reason why the girls are always in the white.” I am sure, on the assumption that girls of course are virgins when they graduate high school (if that’s the case, then at my high school white would have been isolated white spots on a sea of color!). I think dressing girls in white cause they are supposed to be virgins is ridiculous on many grounds, it is sexist because we don’t do the same thing for the boys, and worse, what the heck does their sexual status have to do with graduation? I am sure it is traced back to the middle ages, when universities were run by the churches and the whole virgin paradigm was a big deal, but today? Besides, with so many goth girls, black would be a lot more appropriate (and being a NY’er at heart, always the height of fashion lol).
Well they do have honor cords, sashes & the like.
D’s public high school does not weight grades, and she shared her GPA with many, but she also had a stole that I think indicated that she took AP courses?
I don’t really know, she had won several awards, but didn’t tell me as she wanted to skip the separate ceremony.
I didn’t find out until I read the program.
@ jazzcatastrophe-
“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.”
Be careful where you said the last statement, that trans includes those of some other than binary gender, in some to many quarters, them are fighting words lol. Seriously, if you think fighting over religious dogma is something, whose God is better, etc, you should see the fighting in the so called ‘transgender community’ about who should and should not be called transgender, it makes the religious wars of the 16th century look tame in comparison…which like the whole gendering of gowns, is kind of sad, as a friend of mine (who is gay, not transgender, but talking about the negativity towards trans people among some on the gay and lesbian community) said “when you have bunches of people who hate you and would rather you don’t exist, the labels don’t matter much, when we all could end up in the morgue, trans or gay or bi or lesbian won’t matter much at all”
On occasion, I have heard very harsh criticism expressed towards transgender folks by gay folks.
@ lakewashington-
Yep, more than a bit, either that transgender people were embarrassing to the lesbian and gay community fighting for rights (tended to be more among those who were trying to project the image, like the uptight gay guy in the gay couple in the remake of the Stepford Wives), were ‘dragging them down’, other gay men thought M to F transgender folks were trying to hide from being gay , or the lesbians who despise M to F’s because they see them as men hung up on seeing women naked (don’t ask about that one), or ‘want to steal power from women now that they are achieving more power in society’ (really? that one would be a howler, if it didn’t totally obliterate the fact that trans folks often pay horrible prices for what they feel they need to do/be), you name it.
{quote} February 18
We had pieces of paper with our names (and pronunciation) which we handed to the speaker as we walked up.
Ooh, I forgot about that part. Some of the people in my high school class had lots of fun making up ridiculous middle names.
{/quote}
Our high school started verifying middle names from the birth certificate records, as the year before I graduated there were 4 young men, trekkies I presume, who all claimed the middle name “Tiberius”. Out of a class of 120 graduates.
At my all-Catholic girls school the traditional was the class choose a long, white graduation dress that everyone wore. My class was always a rebel group and couldn’t agree on one style. The busty girls shot down ones w spaghetti straps and the short girls didn’t like others, etc. The compromise was we all could wear the white dress of our choosing, but the administration had to approve it ahead of time, including some alterations for modesty. I had a gunny sack type dress w a lace-up front corset. They made me put a fabric panel in front of the laces, to hide cleavage. We started a trend and now everyone wears a different dress.