I love the pomp and circumstance of graduation ceremonies. After all, I earned a degree based mainly on the color of the hood (two of my favorite colors wine and silver blue, which just happen to be Pi Beta Phi’s colors).
The doctoral hood is wine and silver blue and, yes, that is a very big arrow, worn in the manner sometimes seen in late 1800s pictures of Pi Phis.
If an organization is coed, or if a college or university is coed, the individual female graduate is still an alumna. If there is a male/female ratio greater than zero on the male side, the group of all graduates is called alumni. A lone male graduate is an alumnus. Graduate members of an all-women’s organization (a sorority/women’s fraternity perhaps) or an all-women’s college/university are alumnae. I will illustrate these points using family photos (after all, Mother’s Day is around the corner and I need all the brownie points I can get!).
Twin B and Twin A, Knox College alumni wearing Beta Theta Pi tassels, with their grandmother, a Goucher College alumna. Goucher College in Baltimore had been a women’s college, but it is now coed, making its graduates alumni, after years of having been alumnae. Her son, their father, graduated from Washington and Lee University when it was an all-male institution. The W&L Alumni Association remained the Alumni Association after W&L admitted women in the 1980s.
A Mount Holyoke College Alumnae Association (MHC is a women’s college) member minutes after she became a member of the Syracuse University Alumni Association. She is also an alumna initiate of Pi Beta Phi and is a member of a Pi Beta Phi Alumnae Club.
© Fran Becque, www.fraternityhistory.com, 2013.
You’ll want to cover your ears around Kappas! We teach our members to use the classical Latin pronunciation where AE sounds like eye and a long i like in Alumni sounds like the ee in knee. I fear my old Latin teacher would haunt me if we didn’t!
You’re a wonderful and loyal student, Kylie, and I appreciate your insight. Lucky for me I have no old Latin teachers in my past so I’ll be on board with that classical Latin pronunciation when all the Alumn(eye) Associations in American colleges and universities start using the Alum(knee) pronunciation. And I’m not sure why the stupid Fran Becque, Ph.D. thing is showing up. One of these days, I will figure this blogging stuff out!