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The Spike: or, Victoria College Review, September 1923

College Notes

page 49

College Notes

Dear "Spike,"

—I should like to make public to the students of this College through the medium of your pages an agreement that has been arrived at between the Professorial Board .and the Executive of the Students' Association. This agreement was the outcome of a meeting between the Executive and the Deans of the Faculties held some little time ago.

The agreement is that the Capping Ceremony shall in future last one hour, after which the students will be free to take charge of the hall and carry on with a mock capping or any other form of entertainment they choose. The students' part of the agreement is that there shall be complete silence and solemnity given to the ceremony.

This to many students will seem perhaps to be a sudden break with the local traditions of Capping Ceremonies. I feel sure, however, that every student who has been connected in any way with the ceremonies of the last few years already feels that such fiascos cannot go on, and that it is indeed an insult to our graduates to have to put up with such futile exhibitions.

As far as I can gather the tradition of a witty (alas! how have we fallen!) ceremony is a purely local one. Capping time certainly is the time for student revelry and jollification the world over, but the actual Capping Ceremony is treated as a most solemn and sacred proceeding. And indeed such it is. It marks the crowding achievement of years of study, years that in many cases have been full of self-sacrifice and self-denial. To many it means the severance of their connection with the University and all that the University means to them—the spirit of reverent seeking after Truth, and the friendships that are welded thereby. Surely this is a sacred and solemn moment in one's life! Surely it is worthy of a little reverence for a moment amid all the jollifications.

It is for these reasons that I appeal for the help of the students as a whole to change the senseless tradition of row that we now have in connection with our Capping Ceremonies and lay the foundations of a new tradition—a tradition that will be far more in keeping with the spirit of Capping than the present unworthy proceeding.

The Executive has pledged itself to this plan and now seeks the co-operation of the students to carry it out—a plan that I feel sure will commend itself to all serious minded students.

P. Martin-Smith, President V.U.C.S.A.