University of Evansville - LinC Yearbook (Evansville, IN)

Page 11 text:

URING Commencement Exercises, then, today ' s student becomes a real part of the academic tra- dition by joining the faculty in the wearing of caps and gowns. Although the medieval student was the first to wear the academic gown, credit has been given to Oxford and Cambridge Uni- versities for being the apparent originators of the academic costume, because there had been no previous attempt to de- mand uniformity of style. A definite association of color with specific degrees and schools came much later, and it was not until 1895 in the United States that the symbols of the various colors were standardized. S academic interest grew in the United States, a movement began on the part of the students to create some kind of a badge of distinction. Credit for stabilizing this symbolism is largely due to Gardner Cotrell Leonard of Albany, New York. In 1883 the students at Williams College used academic costum e for the first time; and in 1887, Leonard designed gowns for his class at that college and had them executed by Cotrell and Leonard, a firm established by the family in Albany, New York. Under a charter granted in 1895, Cotrell and Leon- ard acts as sole Depositary for the Intercollegiate Bureau of Academic Costume, and maintains a register of colors and other pertinent data regarding correct academic regalia. 7

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OLLEGE students are introduced during the first weeks of the freshman year to the heritage which has been handed down from the Middle Ages. On the Evansville College campus, freshmen meet the entire faculty as they appear in Fresh- man Convocation dressed in the prescribed aca- demic regalia. Although the student is unaware of the significance of the varied colors, decorating the black gowns, he knows that each of the masters has worked diligently to become qualified to wear the gown. Vaguely the student realizes that he, too, must work diligently for a length of time which, at present, seems near eternity. HEN compared to the cold, dark life of the medie- val scholar, however, the life of today ' s student has every convenience to make his educational journey pleasant. He does not rise at 5 a.m. to sit on straw-covered floors in dark, unheated build- ings to listen to the master lecture, his lips blue with cold. In spite of the extreme differences, however, the freshman student of 1963 has a common interest with the beginning student of 1163. As freshmen today are hazed by the Greek letter fraternity, so the Bejaunus, or yellow-bill, was hazed. He wore a crude gown of rough material as his prescribed everyday dress. Today ' s student, however, looks forward to the day when he can wear the cap and gown as a symbol of the completion of his formal education and the commencement of a new career.

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Y examining the crudeness and simphcity of the medieval organ in comparison to the elaborate and ornate instrument of today, one can have a general image of the development of education within the humanities. The term humanities generally includes language, literature — espe- cially the classics — philosophy, and the fine arts. There was, during the Middle Ages, an absence of vernacular litera- ture and literary expression simply because few persons could write and still fewer could compose a letter. Within the continental schools of Paris and Bologna, grammar and rhetoric were in a subordinate posi- tion. Oxford, however, was revolutionary in adopting the teaching of classical Greek and Hebrew and in establishing the importance of the arts in general, an act viewed with contempt in Paris. MAGINE, then, the Parisian scholar ' s idea of the present curriculum. In his school the Latin gram- mars of Conatus and Priscian were used along with some elementary reading books. There was a manual of rhetoric, and Boethius ' manuals of logic and music. The medieval scholar never heard of penmanship, vernacular literature, or art appreciation. Texts, lectures, and conversations were in Latin. With such facilities, imagine the medieval student ' s awe of the Bodleian Li- brary at Oxford, or of the art center at Columbia with architecture, art, and drama affiliated into one institution. 8