Adapted from Robert Whitcomb’s “Digital Diary,’’ in GoLocal24.com
We attended part of Yale University’s commencement on May 22, at the School of Music, where a young friend of ours was getting a doctorate. We were struck again by how these ceremonies are some of the few remaining events connecting us to Medieval and Renaissance times – the robes draped with various university’s colors, the floppy velvet caps, the smattering of Latin, not to mention Yale’s famous Gothic Collegiate architecture, constructed with early 20th Century industrial/robber baron money and made to look very old – recalling Oxford and Cambridge and befitting an institution aimed at nurturing America’s Anglophilic ruling class.
But some of the degree recipients’ sandals and tattoos were reminders of where we are now.
Commencement speakers, both officials from the university or college itself as well as speakers from outside, affect an old-fashioned earnestness, if seasoned with successful or failed stabs at mild humor. Irony is heavily rationed at these things. It conveys a kind of theatrical innocence.
All students admitted to the Yale Music School go tuition-free, with the exception of those who have earned equivalent funding from other sources, thanks to a gift from an alumnus mogul called Stephen Adams. The marriage of big money and art. The Medicis, the leading bankers and art patrons of Renaissance Florence, would have approved.
