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<span id="openzim-page-title" class="mw-page-title-main"><span class="mw-page-title-main">Academic procession</span></span>
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<p>An <b>academic procession</b> is a traditional ceremony in which university dignitaries march together wearing traditional <a href="Academic_dress" title="Academic dress">academic dress</a>. An academic procession forms a usual part of college and university graduation exercises. At many U.S. universities, the colors and styles of regalia are determined by a uniform dress code established in 1895<sup class=" nourlexpansion citation" id="ref_dress"><a class="external autonumber external" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Academic_procession#endnote_dress">[1]</a></sup>.
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<p>The installation of a university president is usually accompanied by a much more elaborate academic procession, involving visiting celebrants from other universities. In such processions, the order of appearance is governed by the institution's date of founding, oldest first. For example, when <a href="Dwight_D._Eisenhower" title="Dwight D. Eisenhower">Eisenhower</a> was installed at <a href="Columbia_University" title="Columbia University">Columbia</a> in 1948:
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<p>...dignitaries from the world's oldest universities—<a href="University_of_Bologna" title="University of Bologna">Bologna</a>, <a href="University_of_Oxford" title="University of Oxford">Oxford</a>, <a href="University_of_Paris" title="University of Paris">Paris</a>, <a href="University_of_Cambridge" title="University of Cambridge">Cambridge</a>, and <a href="University_of_Florence" title="University of Florence">Florence</a>—led the procession, and representatives from over three hundred American colleges and universities followed, including <a href="Harvard_University" title="Harvard University">Harvard</a>'s <a href="James_Bryant_Conant" class="mw-redirect" title="James Bryant Conant">James Conant</a>, <a href="Yale_University" title="Yale University">Yale</a>'s <a href="Charles_Seymour" title="Charles Seymour">Charles Seymour</a>, <a href="University_of_Pennsylvania" title="University of Pennsylvania">Pennsylvania</a>'s <a href="Harold_Stassen" title="Harold Stassen">Harold Stassen</a>, and <a href="Princeton_University" title="Princeton University">Princeton</a>'s Harold Dodds, and some two hundred other presidents.<sup class=" nourlexpansion citation" id="ref_eisenhower"><a class="external autonumber external" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Academic_procession#endnote_eisenhower">[2]</a></sup>
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<p>The order of academic processions explains in part why universities have a tendency to use strained rationales to claim traditional dates of founding that are as early as possible. For example, the University of Pennsylvania's George E. Thomas<sup class=" nourlexpansion citation" id="ref_thomas"><a class="external autonumber external" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Academic_procession#endnote_thomas">[3]</a></sup> writes of a
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<p>...debate over the founding date of the University that began in 1896 when The Alumni Register promoted the story that the University's origins lay in George Whitefield's <a href="Charity_school" title="Charity school">charity school</a> that was ostensibly founded in 1740. Because this school was to be located in the church building later acquired by the board founded by Benjamin Franklin in 1749 to house his new Academy, it could be claimed as the beginning of the University... this mergers-and-acquisitions model of institutional history had the desired effect of placing Penn ahead of Princeton in academic processions that in turn represented, in highly schematized form, the pecking order of American higher education. (The year before, in 1895, elite universities banded together to establish a national system of academic regalia that asserted an age- and class-based hierarchy and was most obviously expressed by placement in academic processions.)
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<div class="mw-heading mw-heading2"><h2 id="See_also">See also</h2></div>
<ul><li><a href="Academic_administration" title="Academic administration">Academic administration</a></li>
<li><a href="Encaenia" title="Encaenia">Encaenia</a></li></ul>
<div class="mw-heading mw-heading2"><h2 id="References">References</h2></div>
<ol><li><style data-mw-deduplicate="TemplateStyles:r1041539562">
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</style><span class="citation wikicite" id="endnote_dress"><b><a href="#ref_dress">^</a></b></span> See <a href="Academic_dress" title="Academic dress">Academic dress</a> and American Council on Education, <i>An Academic Costume Code and An Academic Ceremony Guide,</i><a rel="nofollow" class="external autonumber" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20051108105420/http://www.acenet.edu/AM/Template.cfm?Section=Frequently_Asked_Questions3&Template=%2FCM%2FHTMLDisplay.cfm&ContentID=8086">[4]</a>, "Reprinted with permission from American Universities and Colleges, 15th Edition © 1997 Walter de Gruyter, Inc."</li>
<li><span class="citation wikicite" id="endnote_eisenhower"><b><a href="#ref_eisenhower">^</a></b></span> Jacobs, Travis Beal (2001), <i>Eisenhower at Columbia.</i> Transaction Publishers, <style data-mw-deduplicate="TemplateStyles:r1238218222">
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</style><a href="ISBN_(identifier)" class="mw-redirect" title="ISBN (identifier)">ISBN</a> <bdi>0-7658-0036-5</bdi>. (Description of academic procession, p. 119)</li>
<li><span class="citation wikicite" id="endnote_thomas"><b><a href="#ref_thomas">^</a></b></span> Thomas, George E. (2002), "Building Penn's Brand" <i>Pennsylvania Gazette</i>, Sept-Oct. 2002, 101(1), <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.upenn.edu/gazette/0902/thomas.html">online text</a></li></ol></div><!--htdig_noindex--><div><div class="zim-footer">
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