By
Dan Cassino
Arizona Daily Wildcat
With a turn of the tassel on a mortarboard cap, thousands of students this week will symbolize that they have completed at least this phase of their education. Their diploma places a stamp of approval on them, signifying they have been measured to some standard and passed. Graduation is an act of ego, a claim to be - in some sense - better than those who have not received a diploma.
Of course, many would blanch at such a description. In America, our greatest fear is that someone will hold us responsible for some measure of success. We apologize for it, afraid that we will somehow be accused of cheating. There are many worthy people in society, the theory goes - everyone equal to everyone else; thus, if you have accomplished more than someone else, you have upset the balance of nature - done something wrong. Your success, it is argued, debases your fellow man.
This is by no means a fringe argument - rather, it is the dominant ideology of our society. For the last 40 years, work in social justice has largely been a response to John Rawls, who argued justice can only come with a recognition that the achievements of an individual are really the property of society as a whole. You cannot claim your success is the result of anything you did. It is a result of luck: you had better parents, you were born in a better part of town, you were born in a richer country, you were born male, you were born white. Our successes have nothing to do with us - and thus, it is right that we should apologize for gaining anything that is not also available to everyone else.
Indeed, there are many within the university who would agree with such an argument. They argue that individual achievement is an impossibility in a society that is racist and sexist. With the advent of affirmative action, even those from disadvantaged groups can no longer claim their achievements had anything to do with themselves as individuals. Everyone, it seems, it replaceable.
Which, in a way, brings us back to graduation. If there is no such thing as individual achievement, if our lives are pre-determined by society, then there is no reason that we should attempt to better ourselves. If everyone is the equal of everyone else, and the only the luck of the draw differentiates us, we should apologize for additional benefits, such as a diploma, or increased earning power, that society happens to give us.
But, strangely, this is not how we feel. On graduation day, those that turn their tassels feel a sense of pride. Pride that they have accomplished something that many others have not. Pride that they have bettered themselves. We are personally responsible for the errors we made along the way, and thus we should be personally responsible for the success we achieve. This intuition is not false, it is not ego; it is a justified pride in accomplishments that all of the social theorizing in the world cannot take away from us. Our pride in our accomplishments belies the Rawlsian argument that we are only automatons, simply going through the motions. If there is nothing of ourselves in our accomplishments, why should we have to do anything to earn a diploma? Why could not the university simply look at the demographic factors on our application, and determine if we would get the diploma?
The reason is that during our tenure here, we have gained something that sets us apart from those that did not attend, or those that failed to finish. It is not a construct of society, as much as some would have us believe that. It is knowledge, which, while not tangible, is real, and only comes with personal effort and action. No society can force knowledge on to an individual, and thus, it is something that you have earned yourself, and can justifiably take pride in. Turning the tassel means that you have learned something more than your social security number in your years here, and that is an accomplishment that you should never apologize for.
