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377 CHAPTER 10 GETTING OUT Graduation graduation, after four long years, is the moment students have been working, waiting, and suffering for. To freshmen, graduation seems impossibly far away. Adding to this feeling is the timing of completion after four years, rather than three. The length of time in college is not based on an assessment of how long it takes to be learned. Instead, it is ritually based on a cultural association of four with ampleness. Whereas“three”inAmerican society is a symbol of completion,“four”translates into a specific quantity representing abundance (Brandes 1985; Bronner 2007,6–8; Dundes 1980, 134–59). Three distinct sizes represent a range—small, medium, and large—but the fourth category that comes to mind is extra large, or more than enough. To travel “the four corners of the earth” is to see it all; to “cover all your bases” (four in baseball) is to go all the way from home and back; to win a series in four straight is to make a clean sweep. “Three” suggests magical power, as in the phrase “third time’s a charm,” while“four”stresses rational human control,as in the basic building block of a four-sided square or the adage that wisdom comes with figuring out that“two and two make four.”Maybe that is why there are normally four passing grades: A, B, C, D, and a 4.0 GPA signals thorough mastery. Four is the number of seasons, after which another cycle begins. Related to the idea of completion of college as a coming-of-age transitional period structured into four stages is Arnold Van Gennep’s concept of “rites of passage.” He pointed out that such rites in response to life changes typically have three phases of separation,transition, and incorporation, but with the critical transition stage often divided into two parts, one can usually observe four components to cultural passage. Especially during initiation rites between puberty and adulthood, the transition stage comprises two sections of postseparation and preincorporation, both stressing the initiate’s state of being at a threshold (Van Gennep 1960, 65–115). The initiate-child symbolically dies during this transition stage and is reborn with 378 GETTING OUT: GRADUATION a new status as an empowered member of a special community (Eliade 1958; Turner 1967, 93–111). Death and rebirth is symbolized at “commencement” in word and action. The ceremony literally represents a beginning into a new life after symbolically leaving behind the “senior” status of the student’s collegiate maturation. That senior status culminates an intellectual and social journey from the first to the fourth year of studies, although many students tell the tale that the tough part is in the first three stages. Reflecting the belief that by the fourth year, students have had“enough,” collegians might refer to their culminating senior year as a“waste” or time to“cruise” and prepare for departure. Moving Up Ceremonies of transition do not wait for the end of the fourth year. Befitting the symbolism of three as a natural cycle of completion, the recognition of graduating senior status begins at the end of the junior year.A special occasion on many campuses, particularly smaller communal ones, is Moving-Up Day. At Chatham University, Moving-Up Day coincides with closing convocation, in which classes receive the color of the class to which they are moving up. The dramatic climax is when the senior class bestows its color in the form of flowers to the juniors, who then become seniors. At Wells’s Moving-Up Day, each of the three underclasses compose songs to sing to the departing class. In a sign of farewell, the seniors sing about their dorms and faculty. At Bryn Mawr, the four classes gather on the administration building steps. Seniors claim the central seats with the other classes in a hollow square around them. After a hearty round of songs about college life, the seniors sing the college’s traditional “good-night” song, and then they leave. The juniors move into the revered places held by the seniors (Briscoe 1981a, 239–41).At larger campuses, where moving up is less an honored tradition, students may joke about being on individualized“plans” ranging from five to seven years. At Huntingdon College, a school with around 1,000 students in Montgomery , Alabama, an elaborate “Oracle Hunt” marks the traditional passing of the senior class title. Near the end of the school year, the seniors...

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