Letters from Oxford: Matriculation

Two weeks ago we participated in one of Oxford’s most eccentric traditions (which is saying a lot!), it was Matriculation. The historical origin of Matriculation stems from the fact that Oxford is so old, in the early days there was no standardised school system and so it was somewhat random who was accepted to ‘come up to Oxford to read’. Matriculation was an entrance exam which sought to prove that potential students were of high enough academic standard. When school leaving exams were standardised the need for the test disappeared, but because this is Oxford they decided to continue with the weird tradition.

Gareth and Me

St Anne's students in front of EPH

Bethany and Me

These days Matriculation is a fun and symbolic day. It starts with getting dressed up in sub fusc, which is the Oxford academic dress. As far as I know sub fusc is Latin for dark clothes or something. (They told us at orientation that a lot of what goes on here doesn’t make sense and that if you ever ask yourself why on earth all these strange things happen, the answer is always ‘because it made sense in the 1200’s!’) So after figuring out how to tie our ribbons and other sub fusc excitement everyone went to register with their college and then joined a long procession to the Sheldonian theatre in the centre of Oxford. The Sheldonian was built in the 1600’s for university ceremonies and events. The procession was fun (and luckily we had good weather) everyone looked like weirdos and the tourists took photos! The procession eventually ended up at the Sheldonian and queued outside before being ushered up into the gallery of the theatre. Once everyone was seated some Latin was exchanged and the Chancellor agreed to admit us into the university. The whole ceremony was very quick, but it felt important!

Bethany and Karen the way to the Sheldonian, Natural History Museum in the background

The procession

St Anne's queuing outside the Sheldonian, the bridge of sighs in the background

Liam

Alicia and Rhyannon

The Sheldonian (and Me)

The Chancellor

Inside the Sheldonian

After the ceremony we all headed back to St Anne’s for brunch and the college photo. The photo took ages; it was for all the freshers, including what felt like millions of undergrads. You can only Matriculate once at Oxford, so all the people who do their undergrad here cant Matriculate again as grads. After the photo some of us went punting (similar to the gondolas in Venice and the mokoros in the Okavango), as important a rite of passage as Matriculation! We went in our sub fusc and drank wine from the bottle. Very classy!

Punts

The colleges all throw parties, called bops and several colleges had a Matriculation bop. We went to the one at St Cross college (My friend Gabby goes there), and the theme was ‘sexy sub fusc’. This basically means wearing a shorter skirt and unbuttoning your top a little, or for the guys ditching their shirts but keeping their white bow-ties on! Bops have cheap alcohol and are only for students, I don’t think I really need to explain further… Needless to say, it was a late night and not much work was done the next day!