Have graduation cords pretty much lost all collective meaning at Bucknell? Yes. Undoubtedly yes. Graduation cords used to mark grand achievements, and now we all get them simply for being in the GroupMe for an organization on campus. But my question is: if everyone is doing it, why is that such a problem?

Graduation cords now hold individual meaning, which holds a lot of importance as well. If we have transitioned to viewing cords as a marker of how a student views and remembers their Bucknell experience, who are we to stop them from thinking they were involved in a club they never showed up to? Who are we to decide what experiences are deserving of a cord? Since it seems the options are either cords galore or no cords at all, I vote that we make a fashion statement and wear those rainbow knotted strings around our necks.

I can’t pretend that I wasn’t once a cord purist. I had a strong belief that seniors with campus jobs, who were present for at least the majority of the meetings for an organization and who had academic honors should be the only recipients of cords. Then, I started learning about how the organizations I was a part of handled cords, and that expanded my view. Honestly, up until this week, I was judging people for ordering their own Amazon cords and making excuses to have them. But then I realized, who really cares?

Some people don’t think I deserve a cord for giving tours twice a week, and they would be valid in thinking that. So, who am I to judge someone who orders a commemorative cord to remember one of their Bucknell experiences that I don’t personally deem as important? The cords are really just important for the person who has them around their neck and the memories the cords will remind them of.

Let’s face it: you complaining about other people’s cords is not going to make them take them off. It’s not going to stop the cultural shift to seeing cords as mementos of a student’s time at Bucknell. And at the end of the day, don’t we want students to be excited to show off their Bucknell experience? There are lots of parts of other people’s Bucknell experience that we will never understand, and I think it’s time that their choice of cords becomes one of those parts.

This is really a lesson in judgment and how being upset about other people’s cords is only making your life harder and likely not impacting theirs at all. Brené Brown has this quote about how “comparison is the thief of joy,” and I think that all too often that’s what these arguments come back to. Whether it is self-comparison or worrying about other students comparing themselves to students who are being weighed down by all their cords, all it is doing is bringing you down. There is just simply no need for that when it comes to a $5 twisted string. 

Is this cord inflation a symptom of being the participation trophy generation? Maybe. But it is a part of the culture at Bucknell that the current students were brought into and did not create ourselves. We are not to blame for the rampant overuse of cords. Instead of worrying about having too few cords or judging people who have cords that seem unimportant to you, why don’t we just live our own lives and just let people enjoy their graduation cords?