University Ritual Research

University rituals can be generally found in the life of universities as the forms of University of institutionalization. However, as faced with the instinct split of science and superstition, natural objection between religion and atheism, the rituals itself in the special field and horizon in university is not so much. Studying the university rituals deeply is helpful to normalize the organizer of university rituals and humanize the process of implementation. Also, it does help to let off the mood and express the emotion of the participants of university rituals.This paper regards that the main content of university rites include symbolic system and symbolic meaning. For the university, with the function of symbolically、meaningfulness and education, that educators put more symbolize symbol meaning on the rites of university. University Commencement Ceremony will be an analytical framework to study in this paper. According to the theory of Turner that the ritual symbols can be divided into explanatory symbol、 operational symbol、positional symbol, academic dress、commencement address of the president and seating distribution are chose to review the formalism tendency which is widespread in the process of university rites in the way of all-round and muti-perspective.In this study, university rituals are divided into the economic rituals, political rituals and cultural rituals from the existing ritual forms. As we all know, the universities are being as a institutional place for production of profound knowledge, and the cultural rituals are the most common type at college campuses. This study discusses the ritual of passage, academic ritual, memorial ritual and generalization ritual. Through investigating universal forms of university rituals, this study generalize the main characteristics of them:ritual places are situational and symbolic,the time is cyclical and periodic, performance is intensive and economic, participants are present and onlooking, rituals purpose is expressional and educational. University rituals are important because of which can play an important role, which can develop "safety valve" functions, and to consume the historical memory and to product individuals memory, to help produce group cohesion self-identity, to represent cultural construction and school feature. The ritual process of university rituals consists of threshold and passage as well. However, the commencement is the most important transition and threshold.University ritual exists tendency of "formalism" in the process of performance in this study by critical reflection, which mainly in the following aspects:the disenchantment in ritual content, anonymization in the participants, politicization in the ritual process, and instrumentalization in the expression. The study found that there are four main reasons which result in tendency of "formalism":people’s limited rationality and institution limit rationality, the student are awakening from autonomy and suspicion of spiritual transplantation and aliasing of social fashion, and instrumental thought that attach importance to the form while despise connotation. The study also points out that we should take some measures to change university ritual from the tendency of "formalism" to play a positive function. First, set up a good cultural atmosphere to keep the sense of ritual. Second, to respect the individuals who participate in the rituals to enhance the sense of presence. Third, to design unique ritual to rich the sense of fulfillment. Finally, to organize university ritual logically and legally to keep the imagination.