A Harry Potter Affair

Last night was my Matriculation dinner. All the graduates in the college showed up at 7:10 for sherry. We were dressed in suits and tuxedos with black gowns over top. I biked over in such a gown. Anyway, around 7:30 there was some banging and an unseen guy yelled "Dinner is served!"
The dinner was held in the main hall. Five long tables stretched the length of the hall with a high table (literally on a raised platform) cutting across the front. The tables were decked out with candles, four different glasses (white wine, red wine, water and port), a bunch of silverware and Fitzwilliam china.
At Matriculation dinner you don't pick where you're going to sit. There are name tags for everyone. I was with the economics people. Everyone found their place and stood at their chair, waiting for something. Suddenly there was a massive gong sound and everyone bowed their heads. Someone said grace really quickly and we all took our seats.
From here we were served by waitiers. There was a choice of Fitzwilliam Red Wine or Fitzwilliam White Wine.
We had some kind of diced melon cocktail at first, then a palate cleanser (no kidding!), and the main course. There was a fancy dessert and then mints (which came in Fitzilliam sleeves). We topped everything off with Fitzwilliam port.
Then there was a speech by the Master of the college and the president of MCR (sort of the Fitzwilliam Graduate Body).

Afterwards we retired to the college pub, which was open late, in honor of the occasion, till midnight.

I addressed some questions about America over the course of dinner:
1) Question: Is it true that most colleges in America do not have gowns and formal dinners?
Answer: Yes.
2) Question: In Europe it seems like you're nobody if you haven't been all over the world by the time you're 21. Is this the case in America?
Answer: No. Why would we want to leave the greatest country in the world? Actually, I didn't say that second part.
3) Question: In the UK, most people apply to either Cambridge or Oxford, in addition to other schools. In America, does everyone apply to Harvard?
Answer: No. In America, we have to pay for the full cost of college (Undergraduate education is subsidized in the UK), so if you can't find the means to afford an education at Harvard, you probably wouldn't bother to apply.

Finally, here are some Harry Potter coincidences (?) for your consideration:
1) We eat in a hall with long tables, a head table and black robes. Plus the ceiling is really high.
2) One of the fellows at the college is a linguistics professor and he wrote the Snake language dialogue which Harry Potter delivers in the film version of Harry Potter and the something II.
3) At lecture today we learned about Granger causality, which is when the future affects the present (for example, people shop for Christmas before it happens). Recall that Hermione Granger has some kind of time-travel device which is used in Harry Potter and the something III. The result is the future affecting the present.