For the May 1970 Commencement ceremony, RISD dropped several of its customary practices. This decision sparked an entirely new RISD tradition: the Design Diploma.
Earlier that month, more than 300 colleges and universities across the country suspended classes as students went on strike, protesting the expansion of the Vietnam War into Cambodia and the death of four students at Kent State University. However, RISD remained open during its prolonged student strike. RISD gave students a choice - take an incomplete for the semester, accept a pass/fail grade for work completed to that point, or complete their courses for the term.
RISD's administration also held firm with its plans to hold graduation exercises despite student demands that the college apply the $10,000 Commencement Fund toward supporting strike activities and sending students to the march on Washington, DC. The ceremony was held on the grounds of the recently renovated Woods-Gerry house. Students dispensed with caps and gowns, there was no parade of students and faculty, and the college typed and copied the Commencement program onto colored 8.5'x11' paper.
Instead of the traditional parchment diploma written in calligraphy with the official RISD seal and signed by the president, RISD issued Class of 1970 diplomas designed by students Akira Arita '70 PT and Mark S. Reichert '70 PT. The 1970 design diploma featured a silkscreen reproduction of Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres' La Grande Odalisque against a pale green background with an overlay of rust and purple-colored flowers. A handful of students objected to having a nude reproduced on their official diploma, so President Talbot Rantoul offered to sign any alternative diploma they chose to produce. The traditional diploma returned the following year, but from 1972-2020, graduates received a student-designed object - the Design Diploma - and an "official" parchment diploma. The tradition was discontinued in 2020 amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
- Andrew Martinez, RISD Archivist. Revised by Zoe Johnson, AY26 Term Archivist
The design diplomas gathered from the RISD Archives and presented in this collection offer a peek into our students' meaningful (and sometimes whimsical) point of view over the years.
