Commencement is fast approaching for the seniors at Hamline University, including me. On top of all of the work we are currently scrambling to finish before we graduate, we recently had to attend a thing called Grad Fair. At Grad Fair, seniors went around the Anderson Center following a checklist of required pre-commencement tasks such as checking the pronunciation of our name for the ceremony, completing online loan exit counseling, and most notably, purchasing our caps and gowns.

I know I wasn’t the only one shocked when I saw the price of our caps and gowns: nearly $50 for a cheap-feeling, unflattering piece of black fabric, an equally cheap-feeling cap and a boring black tassel (it costs extra to get a tassel with Hamline colors). The cost is even higher for graduate and doctorate students, which cost $75 and $100 respectively. For most students, this is a pretty hefty investment for something that we will only wear for a few hours of our life. It’s even worse when you consider the fact that purchasing a cap and gown is required to walk at commencement. Because of this requirement and the price of caps and gowns, some students are even choosing not to attend their own commencement ceremonies.

I recently spoke with a current Hamline graduate student who has elected not to attend commencement because of the reasons I just mentioned. According to them, in the not-so-distant past Hamline allowed students to rent their caps and gowns rather than purchase them, and the cost was significantly cheaper: as low as $15. Supposedly this changed when the Hamline bookstore was taken over by a national bookstore chain rather than being locally run. To me, this seems like an attempt by Hamline to sucker students out of even more money than we are already giving them. Even if the prices aren’t set by Hamline and are set instead by Herff Jones, the question still stands: why do we have to purchase them? I know for a fact that Herff Jones does rentals, and I bet you anything renting would be significantly cheaper for the students than buying them to keep forever in our closets.

At the other ACTC schools, only Augsburg for certain charges as much as we do for caps and gowns alone; Macalaster rents them for $25, and St. Kate’s and St. Thomas include them in their commencement fee, therefore I cannot tell exactly how much they are charging solely for the caps and gowns. Why can’t Hamline take a lesson from Macalaster and rent caps and gowns to us for at least half the price that we pay for them currently? No one wants to pay $50+, and I can guarantee that the majority of seniors don’t want or need to keep their caps and gowns after commencement. It’s a waste of our money and resources because these caps and gowns will likely be used once before sitting in a closet until they are donated, thrown away, or repurposed.

Commencement is supposed to be a celebration of students’ accomplishments throughout their years at Hamline. I’m all for tradition, but do we really need to require students to buy a cap and gown at Grad Fair in order to participate in their own ceremony? It is unfair to students who are already in extreme debt coming out of school to make them pay one more expensive fee merely to celebrate the culmination of their hard work at Hamline. The fact that students are actively choosing not to go to a ceremony that is supposed to be for them because of cap and gown prices indicates that there is a problem that Hamline should fix. Alas, I suspect most of us have still purchased these overpriced pieces of fabric that are destined to become Harry Potter cosplays. Thus, I will be seeing you at commencement fellow graduates: hats off to us!