Graduation

We returned to New Roads and the camp on False River for granddaughter Amada Louise's graduation from LSU.  Her ceremonies were held in the PMAC, the Peter Maracvich Atheletic Center, a huge areana for basketball and similar indoor sports like Gymnistastic events.  It is festoon with championship flags from the past.

Amada graduated from what I knew as the College of Arts and Sciences, today it is Arts and Humanities.  There were a little over 900 in her class, many with very high honors.  Most were just graduates.  It took almost two hours just to get her diploma.  It was well organized and every student was properly announced.  Indeed the arena was near full, perhaps about 80%,  Some seats were cut off in each end but that was to be expected.

She was in the second group to get their diplomas in the PMAC,  Two other large divisions also used the same facility.  They were separated by an hour or so.  So basically, every four hours they pumped out hundreds of graduates.  The PMAC was but one such facility in use.  Small colleges were using the Student Union Auditorium as but an example.

As a comparisom, when I graduated almost 50 years ago, there were about 700 graduates total in June of 1963.  In my day LSU had about 8,000 undergraduate students and maybe another 2,500 graduate students.  Graduation was held three times in a year, much the same as today.  But today, LSU has 28,000 undergraduate students, it is a huge institution.  And graduation was held in John M Parker Auditorium in my day which had the world's worst accoustics.   The birds chripping over head in the rafters drowned out the much amplified guest speaker.  So for us it was more of a sight thing, or rite of passage.

Robes for the undergraduates were all purple with LSU festooned across the breast.  Master Degrees were black robes also with LSU across the chest.  Doctorates got all different colors of robes and had three cheverons on the sleeves indicating a Doctorate Degree.   Medical degrees were in green gowns for instance.

In Amanda's class of Arts and Humanities there was one perfect score, all "A"s, a number of Summa Cum Lade, Magna Cum Lade and Cum Lade graduates.  Many had high honors and University award medals.  A lot of very smart young people finished their undergraduate degrees.  Many are off to higher degrees else.

So all over the campus were saw young people in the robes with their Mortor Board hats moving here and there.  It was their last day.   It was a grand day too, bight, sunny and filled with joy.