The Oxford MJur/BCL: Matriculation

By Oxford Blogger 2015 in LLM GUIDE Student Blog: Oxford MJur/BCL 2015-2016 on Nov 15, 2015

I am finally an official member of the University of Oxford. In other words: Matriculation took place last weekend. Matriculation is another peculiar event from the perspective of a continental European law student that produces plenty of opportunities to take Facebook-suitable photos. The event’s idiosyncracy bascially draws on the „subfusc“ dress, that is mandatory and consists of the following elements:

One of

Dark suit with dark socks, or
Dark skirt with black tights or stockings, or
Dark trousers with dark socks

Dark coat if required
Black shoes
Plain white collared shirt or blouse
White bow tie, black bow tie, black full-length tie, or black ribbon.

On top, you have to wear a gown and are supposed to carry your mortarboard (= academic hat). But beware, you are not allowed to actually wear that hat. For that, you have to graduate first! The procedure seems not to have changed over the past centuries. Students meet in their respective colleges and walk in procession to the Bodleian. Here, the president of the university gives a speech in Latin (in our case at least for some minutes) before joking aroun d. This is something that strikes me as emblematic of Oxford life: tradition is valued highly in form but mostly not taken too seriously in content (typically British, one might say). After the speech (and even more photos), students march back to their colleges, where they take group photos: the kinds of photos they may someday have framed and hung up on the wooden walls in their private libraries. For more about the MJur program, please see Oxford's Full Profile on LLM GUIDE.