OCR Text |
Show 1 the review helped foster the careers of William Faulkner, Allen Tate, Andrew Lytle and Robert Penn Warren. Legends, too, abound. There is a semiwhich are said to be reincarnated professors. All canine pets have run of the campus and, according to student-activitie- s director Chris Asmus-sen- , "People do talk to the dogs, and the dogs have a lot to say." Ghosts are also said to roam the campus. A favorite is the headless gownsman, reputedly a seminary student who studied so hard his head fell off. Sewanee, owned by 28 Episcopal dioceses in 12 Southern states, is predominantly Wasp: 84 percent of the students hail from the South, about half are Episcopalians and almost all are white. (Twenty blacks are enrolled this fall, compared with two in 1981.) Women make up 48 percent of the undergraduate body of 1,050. Although the college is by no means the most expensive in- the South, and about half its students receive financial aid, Sewanee has long had a reputation for social elitism. Many stuo dents come from homes; it is not unknown for a student with a broken leg to have a golf cart sent up from home. Given Sewanee's relative isolation 60 miles from Chattanooga and 80 from Nashville it's perhaps not surprising that more than 60 percent of the students seek companionship in fraternities and sororities. Greeks dominate the social scene and "road tripping," in which pledges dump an active miles away with neither money nor transportation, is a common response to ( official reverence for dogs well-to-d- V L W - X '.V Wf1i i V 4utJJULfcitdw'' T. Signal of good grades: CLAYTON SCOTT . V":.' UNIVERSITY OF THE SOUTH Order of Gownsmen member hazing. Recently one fraternity active was badly hurt when he jumped from a moving car. The pledges then promised him a ride back to campus, only to tie him up and dump him in a stagnant lake. The student survived. The pledges did not: their fraternity kicked them out and the discipline committee expelled them from school. Drinking is another unofficial Sewanee tradition. Though use of fake ID's is considered a violation of the honor code, underage drinking is not, in fact, it is widely accepted. "Drinking is against the law," concedes Michael Hoath, a senior economics and religion major who is on the discipline committee. "So is speeding." On any of three annual festival weekends, beer flows from morning till night, and students can be found downing pitchers every evening at their favorite dive, Shennanigans. Things were worse before ready transportation made mountain life less isolated and before women were first admitted to the university in 1969. Administrators insist that a sober monitor be present at all functions where liquor is served to steer the inebriated to a nearby van for a ride home. There are alternatives to the hearty party scene, including a high degree of volunteerism UNIVERSITY OF THE SOUTH among the students, but their social consciousness may not be student verger leads convocation procession, nature matched by the administra learns safe rappelling OCTOBER 1987 tion. The university has been criticized for not alleviating segregation in the town. Most black residents 170 in a town of 2,300, according to the 1980 Census) work for the university, but nearly all live in one of two areas where housing is far below the community average. Senior Bobo recently sat embarrassed on a plane as the woman with whom she had struck up a conversation drawled, "Sewanee. Oh, yes, that's the school with its own indigenous servant class." Wardell Vance, one of six blacks who graduated last spring, agrees: "Sewanee is like a country club, and every country club needs to have servants." Vance says, however, that he was drawn to Sewanee by academics, and "that's what kept me here." Historically, the school's president is also automatically mayor of the town of Sewanee. The current president, Robert Ayres Jr., claims that he, too, is concerned about "the less fortunate" in the community and observes that "we can do more to help them," but little appears to have changed over a long period. Ayres has increased Sewanee's endowment from $20 million to $90 million in the last 10 years largely through aggressive fund raising. Funds are yet being sought to complete a "master campus plan" that calls for new dining and athletic facilities, new dorms, improved lighting, a fine-art- s center and an expanded curriculum. Noncareerist attitude: It is doubtful that Sewanee will ever have difficulty recruiting faculty. Students and professors (about 110, all of whom teach) enjoy remarkably close interaction on this campus. "You get to socialize with your professors," explains junior English and religion major Brian Jackson, who, like several dozen Sewanee students, lives in a professor's home. This closeness has helped to produce an unusually noncareerist attitude toward education among Sewanee students. Though they seem confident they can find jobs, as senior English major Lynne Caldwell puts it, "It is an offense, almost, when people ask you what you are going to do when you get out." Students come to Sewanee, she says, "for knowledge's sake." George Core, editor of the Sewanee Review, has observed that "a fair number of students who come out of this university learn to think for themselves. And this should be the end of education. I don't know the precise chemistry that causes it to happen at Sewanee, but it does happen." Barbara Burgower in Sewanee NEWSWEEK ON CAMPUS 17 |