Decorating mortarboards, or graduation caps, has become an increasingly common practice among graduating students. In what follows, folklorist Sheila Bock offers a brief overview of this tradition, featuring photographs of decorated mortarboards worn by graduates who participated in the commencement ceremony at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas on December 17, 2016.
Within the context of commencement ceremonies, participating in this practice can serve multiple functions for graduates. At the practical level, decorated grad caps can help family members spot them in the crowd. Glitter, flowers, and bright colors are often used for this purpose, and in December ceremonies, some graduates use seasonal decorations like garlands and Christmas lights to help them stand out.
The flat surface of the mortarboard also provides an ideal blank canvas for acts of personal expression. In other words, decorating the mortarboards allows graduates to highlight aspects of the self that are often rendered invisible by the ceremonial dress of the occasion.
Designs range from the simple…
…to the elaborate.
Graduates use their decorated caps to align themselves with particular group identities, ranging from their university community…
…to their college major or future occupational group…
…to their family.
In some cases, individual graduates will design their caps similarly to mark themselves as part of the same folk group.
Graduates use their decorated caps to express religion beliefs.
Mortarboards also serve as sites of expressing emotions ranging from appreciation and gratitude…
…to pride…
…to relief…
…to frustration.
Popular culture references are very common, and graduates often use humor to playfully disrupt the formality of the occasion.
Some graduates use the mortarboard to reflect on their past experiences and the obstacles they have had to overcome.
Others use the mortarboard to look toward the future…
…sometimes with optimism and sometimes with anxiety.
In addition, decorated graduation caps can serve as personalized sites of political expression. Beyond the ceremony itself, posting images on social media platforms like Instagram provides opportunities for new contexts of display for personal expression and enacting community. See, for example, the online assemblage of decorated mortarboards marked by the #LatinxGradCap hashtag.
Whether playful or profound (or both), decorated mortarboards are sites of creative and poignant expression that make visible the folk perspectives of graduating students, both within the formal space of the commencement ceremony and beyond.
