The outdoor setting of UNE’s graduation has several advantages and some natural disadvantages. Of the former, the autumn ceremonies are by far the best in showing off New England’s glorious colours of golds, browns, reds and russets. Unlike other universities with heavily controlled attendance because of limited space in the ‘great hall’, UNE’s outdoor ceremony can and has accommodated entire coaches of 50 family and friends who came to applaud a family member’s graduation. Of the latter, is the natural risk of weather and while we have had the occasional short squall, I cannot remember, in almost 30 years, a ceremony being called off once it has started.  As I always tell the graduands the day before the Chancellor’s arrival, UNE never moves graduation indoors until the graduands have started to swim the breast-stroke. 

Another feature of UNE’s ceremony is each graduate receives his/her own testamur from the Chancellor on the stage rather than a ‘dummy’.  Getting the sequence right so each graduate receives his/her testamur in the order he/she is presented takes a lot of work and woe betide if you got it wrong.  On many occasions I broke into cold sweat preparing testamurs to hand to the Chancellor and hearing the Dean call out an obviously female name only to observe a very burly and obviously male graduate waiting on the ramp to be presented. Only then, with huge relief, do I realised the female graduate was the one being presented and the burly male graduate, whose testamur I held, was immediately next and the order of the testamurs was in fact correct. I still wake up in the small hours with the horror of those memories.

What may not be appreciated by regular audience members is the work that goes on to have the announcer get the graduate’s name correct.  In our multicultural society it can be a real challenge to ensure the graduate is respectfully announced by the correct pronunciation. Phonetically annotated graduation lists are often prepared for Deans. East European-origin names with their concentration of consonants can be a particular challenge and South Indian and Sri Lankan names with their long sequence of syllables can appear in the Order of Proceedings like the Rock of Gibraltar. On several occasions, the Dean has so well-rehearsed the pronunciation, and the name was rolled out with such awe-inspiring ease and accuracy, that the audience broke into spontaneous applause.

Dress has been a regular concern among the graduands with balancing of the needs of the weather (black robes soak up the heat, which is good during cool days and not so good when the sun is high and bright) and the dignity of the occasion.  Female graduands have to be reminded about the weight of hoods attached to dresses that tend to lift hemlines, plus the issues of high-heeled shoes getting stuck in ground that may be soft from overnight rain. Male graduands have been known to err on the side of too casual but not as much as the tall, bleach-haired, PhD graduand (announced thesis title: The sub-culture of surfing on the North Coast of NSW) who presented himself to the Chancellor in festal robes, thongs, board shorts and t-shirt to the accompanying wolf-whistles and cheers of the audience.  Dignified? Perhaps, doubtful, but he certainly looked the part. 

When I arrived at UNE in 1991 the graduation list was sacrosanct and no graduand could be admitted to the ceremony once the list had been approved by Council nor could a graduand attend any ceremony but his or her own.  These days we are more flexible in recognising that celebration of achievement should not be marred by over-officiousness. I recall one graduand who was to receive a University Medal and whose flight from Switzerland had been delayed and he missed the morning ceremony.  With some quick work during lunchtime with the appropriate Dean and the Chancellor, I was able to insert this medallist into the end of the afternoon proceedings with a special announcement by the Chancellor that the graduand had flown from Europe that very morning just to be at the ceremony.  The memory of the resulting roar of applause from the audience and the beams of pleasure from the medallist and his family abides with me still and demonstrates why the effort that goes in to UNE’s graduation to make them special is so worthwhile and why UNE is truly a great university.  I shall miss my opportunity to dress up in full sub-fusc (Oxbridge dress of dark suit, white tie and Geneva bands) but I will always have the memory of the thrill of contributing to a very special occasion in people’s lives and, I hope, the receding memory of getting the order of testamurs wrong.