Standing on Ceremony

Life seems full of the ritualized events we call “ceremonies.” Some people like them, others try to be elsewhere. I myself generally avoid weddings and funerals. They are so much alike – flowers, prayers, processions – sometimes it’s hard to tell the difference. This can be embarrassing if you forget which one you’re at and, by a slip of the tongue, offer “congratulations” instead of “condolences.”

But people in general seem to like solemn frivolity – special costumes and décor, special music. Food, however, is another matter. You sometimes get better refreshments at a funeral than at a wedding – even if the Guest of Honor is not able to partake.

Every stage of life has its formal observances, often with religious overtones. Christians are likely to start life getting dunked or at least sprinkled with water. If you’re Jewish, and male, you quite involuntarily have a piece of your penis cut off.

When infants in our culture all wore the same kind of little dresses, regardless of gender, there used to be a special ceremony when boys were put into leggings or “breeches” for the first time. This occasion was actually called “breeching.” I knew nothing about it until I inherited my English grandfather’s diary, and came upon a two-word entry for one day: “Breeched Victor.” Victor was my father, then a young child – but I had no idea what had been done to him – until I looked it up.

Then there are the “coming of age” ceremonies in which different cultures declare that you have become a man or woman. The specified age can vary from 12 to 21. But the system sometimes seems rather illogical – e.g., in places where you can be considered old enough to fight and die for your country, but too young to vote or drink in it.

My favorite military ceremonies are those that involve official disgrace – standing at attention while your medals and insignia are stripped away, and maybe having your coat turned wrong-side out, watching your sword formally broken in front of you. Then being ceremonially “drummed out” of the corps, which meant being marched around the parade ground in full view of your former comrades, to the slow beat of drums, which finally drummed you off the base and out of the army.

In many cultures, educational achievement is thought worthy of elaborate ceremonies of “graduation.” We in ours still cling to a medieval system of degrees symbolized by the awarding of certificates supposedly documenting our progress and declaring the benefits we’ve earned. I have graduated from a number of institutions, but, apart from the first one (Whittier Elementary School, Washington D.C. – of which all I remember was the Hawaiian Farewell song about “our golden days coming to an end”), I have never attended any of the ceremonies. But there was always a document of some kind, a certificate or “diploma,” which was mailed to me.

The most important of these was the final one, awarded at Berkeley in 1964. It conferred on me “THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY, WITH ALL THE RIGHTS AND PRIVILEGES THERETO PERTAINING.” I always wondered just what “rights and privileges” this promised. Did I get a free parking place on campus, or a discount in the College Store – or, at least, extended borrowing privileges in the University Library? I also wondered if these benefits applied only to the Berkeley campus, or were they valid throughout the UC system?

But nobody I asked about all this ever had a clue. Finally, nearly 40 years after the degree had been “conferred,” I decided I didn’t want to end my days still in the dark, so I wrote to the body whose name was at the top of the diploma: The regents of the University of California, asking politely about the exact nature of my “rights and privileges.”

Four months passed before I received a reply from their secretary. “That language,” I was told, “appears to be ceremonial in nature, and there have been no specific benefits attached to it.” In other words, the phrase is utterly meaningless. Forgive my outrage, but no other State document would dare perpetrate a similar fraud. A marriage license gives you the right to marry. A driver’s license allows you the privilege of driving. 

A Ph.D. gives you no rights or privileges whatsoever, even though it claims to do so. I thought you should know, though you probably won’t have much pity for us poor Ph.Ds.