Stanford Magazine > May/June 2003 > Feature Story

Diplomania

Deconstructing that sacred scrap of paper and the customary hoopla surrounding it.

by Laurie J. Vaughan

Photograph by Glenn Matsumura

What Your Score Means

Answers, Explanations and Sources

THE GRADUATE: Louis Allen, Class of 1896, looks solemn—or is it scared?—as he prepares to leave the Farm.

IT’S A UNIVERSAL NIGHTMARE. You show up for the final, then realize in panic that you never studied. You never even went to class. The subject, aptly enough, is diplomas. Graduation is tomorrow, the whole family is here—but there’ll be no sheepskin for you unless you pass.

You breathe deeply, clear your head and go straight to the first question. Like every Stanford senior, you know exactly what to do: take an educated guess.

And consider the bright side—at least you’re wearing clothes.

1. Which of these can get you a diploma, albeit a nonacademic one?

(a) five-time championship on Jeopardy!
(b) winning Hormel’s national chili cook-off
(c) finishing seventh in Olympic curling
(d) extraordinary service as a Delta flight attendant

2. What was the original connotation of “diploma”?

(a) folded over
(b) conferring depth
(c) having a double meaning
(d) marked by dual loyalty

3. Stanford’s earliest diplomas were:

(a) sheepskin
(b) linen
(c) paper
(d) papyrus

4. Which school today lets students choose between paper and sheepskin, despite protests from campus vegetarians?

(a) UC-Berkeley
(b) Amherst
(c) Sweet Briar
(d) University of Virginia

5. What officially adopted motto appears within the registrar’s seal on a Stanford undergraduate diploma?

(a) Perpetuity of Life, Growth and Strength
(b) Die Luft der Freiheit Weht
(c) Semper Virens
(d) none

6. Who does not sign a Stanford undergraduate diploma?

(a) the University registrar
(b) the University president
(c) the dean of the school
(d) a University trustee

7. Where, and in what subject, did Leland Stanford Sr. get his college degree?

(a) Cornell, economics
(b) Harvard, law
(c) Cazenovia Seminary, philosophy and debate
(d) he did not go to college

Match these alumni with their Stanford majors (1 point each):

8. Ray Dolby
9. Herbert Hoover
10. Dianne Feinstein
11. Jack Palance
12. Jim Plunkett
13. Sigourney Weaver

(a) electrical engineering
(b) English
(c) geology
(d) history
(e) drama
(f) political science

14. Against what backdrop did the Class of ’64 graduate?

(a) a peace symbol
(b) a Shakespearean stage set
(c) a replica of the Parthenon
(d) a portrait of John F. Kennedy

15. How might a Stanford student get two undergraduate diplomas at once?

(a) double major
(b) concurrent BA and BS degrees
(c) interdisciplinary major
(d) it isn’t possible

16. Who designed the heraldic banners carried annually at Commencement?

(a) English professor Margery Bailey
(b) chemistry professor Eric Hutchinson
(c) art student Richard Diebenkorn
(d) police chief Richard Wright

Match the Commencement speaker to the quote (1 point each):

17. Stephen Breyer
18. Carleton Fiorina
19. Mae Jemison
20. Ted Koppel
21. Robert Pinsky
22. Condoleezza Rice

(a) “When my father was at Stanford, he could not join any of the social organizations. . . .”

(b) “We have been reminded in dramatic and terrifying ways of what happens when difference becomes a license to kill. . . .”

(d) “It has occurred to me that the body-pierce shares some roots and motives with the current American resurgence of my own art. . . .”

(e) “I was made an honorary [Theta Xi] because I . . . could survive an initiation ceremony that involved a stein of vodka and an iron stomach. . . .”

(f) “Your parents are no longer responsible, nor do they want to be responsible, for you and your finances. . . .”

Scores

21-22: honorary PhD (unprecedented in Stanford history)

15-20: gloatworthy

9-14: B+, thanks to grade inflation

4-8: hopefully you did better on your driver’s test

0-3: this won’t look good on your transcript

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Answers, Explanations and Sources

1. (c) Olympic competitors placing first through eighth receive “victory diplomas.” (International Olympic Academy)

2. (a) The ancient Greeks typically folded important documents in half for safekeeping. (Online Etymology Dictionary)

3. (a) (Stanford University Archives)

4. (b) (Amherst College)

5. (d) Founding president David Starr Jordan used the German slogan, translated as “The winds of freedom blow.” It was never officially adopted as the University motto, however, and fell out of use for several decades. President Gerhard Casper observed in 1995 that it is not so much a motto as a guiding principle. In any case, it’s not on the registrar’s seal. (A Chronology of Stanford University and its Founders by Karen Bartholomew, Claude Brinegar & Roxanne Nilan, Stanford Historical Society, 2001)

6. (a) (Office of the Registrar)

7. (d) Leland Stanford, like many of his contemporaries, read legal texts while working in an established law office and three years later passed the New York bar. Before that, he attended Cazenovia Seminary, the equivalent of a high school, where he focused on philosophy and debate. (A Chronology of Stanford University and its Founders by Karen Bartholomew, Claude Brinegar & Roxanne Nilan, Stanford Historical Society, 2001)

8. (a) (Alumni Records)

9. (c) (Alumni Records)

10. (d) (Alumni Records)

11. (e) (Alumni Records)

12. (f) (Alumni Records)

13. (b) (Alumni Records)

14. (b) The University was celebrating Shakespeare’s 400th birthday with a summer festival of the arts in Frost Amphitheater. (A Chronology of Stanford University and its Founders by Karen Bartholomew, Claude Brinegar & Roxanne Nilan, Stanford Historical Society, 2001)

15. (b) Under certain circumstances, Stanford grants separate diplomas for concurrent BA and BS degrees. (Office of the Registrar)

16. (b) Diebenkorn, ’49, loved heraldic art, but it was another heraldry buff, British-born Hutchinson, who in the mid-1960s designed the coats-of-arms and flags of Stanford’s schools. (A Chronology of Stanford University and its Founders by Karen Bartholomew, Claude Brinegar & Roxanne Nilan, Stanford Historical Society, 2001)