From the Archives: Graduation Tradition

After a two-year hiatus due to the COVID-19 pandemic and limitations on in-person gatherings, the return of graduation at the Race Street Meetinghouse was celebrated with the class of 2022.

Over the course of our history, graduation has been held in various locations, but the ceremony itself is rooted in Quaker customs that connect generations of alumni. From time to time, however, Friends Select has made changes to the format to accommodate new traditions.  

During much of the 19th century, when the Select School for Girls and the Select School for Boys were located in Old City, students walked to Arch Street Meeting House for Meeting for Worship and likely had graduation there. After the school moved to 16th Street, travel through the city became impractical, and the school asked the Quarterly Meeting if Meeting for Worship could be held at Friends Select. Permission was given, and beginning in 1892, meetings and graduations were held in the Collection Room on the second floor of the old building.

As for the ceremony, graduation has long been held as a Quaker Meeting for Worship. Members of the school committee—now known as our board of trustees—and members of the faculty and staff who were Quakers strongly encouraged its “quiet and somber” nature. For many years, there was no music of any kind, but change came gradually. Eventually, students chosen to read the closing verses were asked to present instrumental or vocal music instead, and music as a prelude to the graduation ceremony soon followed.

When class sizes expanded in the late 1980s, so did the crowds of families and friends at graduation. Some clapped and cheered when their student received a diploma, while other students received their diplomas in silence. To try to equalize this situation, it became the custom to request that all applause be held until all diplomas had been handed out, and then it would be appropriate to applaud the entire class.

One other measure of change was that the senior speakers at graduation had to be vigorously trained to almost shout their speeches because sound systems were not permitted in the Meetinghouse. It was probably at the time of the large classes, the largest in 1988, that the school was permitted to carry our portable sound system to the Meetinghouse to be used. More recently, a sound system was installed in the Meetinghouse.

In the past, female students customarily wore white dresses and male students donned dark-colored suits. Over the course of the past decade, however, limits to attire based on gender representation have been lifted, and it has become the tradition for all students to wear either white or dark-colored suits or dresses. The traditional class photo, taken on the courtyard steps to the Meetinghouse after the ceremony, first appeared in 1967; graduation was first held at the Meetinghouse in 1949. Perhaps next year, with the class of 2023, this tradition will take on new meaning as students pose on these same steps—for the first time, only a few feet away from the new upper school STEAM Building.  

Editor’s Note: This discourse is based on memory and some conjecture. Since the archives are not currently accessible, some facts could not be researched and checked.