Kylee Sanders
Junior Editor
As spring blooms at the University of the South, so does comping season. If you are unfamiliar with comping season, it is the time of the academic year when seniors at the University take exams that cover all the information they have learned for their majors. Each major’s comprehensive exam is formatted differently, though. Some majors have to write essays, or take an in-person exhaustive exam, some have to do presentations, and others may do both. There’s a lot of debate around the comprehensive exams, though, since some students find them to be pointless, some are in full support, while others have different ideas for the way they should be done.
English major Rylee Higgins (C’ 24) falls under the latter. She is in support of comps but would prefer if they’re done in a different format. “I think comps are a good way of rounding out your knowledge of your major,” she explained. “I just think there needs to be a different way of doing it. Most schools have a seminar kind of class, where you focus on one big last project, so then, you have that to show for what you’ve done the last four years. I think that’s really special.”
Although comps also demonstrate what students have learned in the last four years, not all students are recognized for the amount of work and studying they do for their comps. Having a seminar class where you focus on a project, as Higgins explained, would be a way of resolving this issue. “I know we have Scholarship Sewanee and that is a good way for people to show what they’ve done, but at the same time, there’s not a way for everyone to show the work they’ve done,” Higgins said. Scholarship Sewanee is how it sounds; it’s an annual, campus-wide celebration of student scholarship and creative works. It is also open to a larger academic community so that students and faculty mentors can be recognized for their hard work. Like Higgins said though, not every senior can have their comp work displayed and recognized at Scholarship Sewanee. Therefore it can feel that the work seniors put in for their comps gets overlooked.
However, Sewanee students do have a way of celebrating taking their comprehensive exams. In the past few months, periodically, there have been groups of students waiting outside of the academic halls with cardboard signs, alcohol bottles, party hats, and other celebratory items. These groups of students are waiting for their friends to finish their comp and walk out and celebrate the fact that they have taken their comp. The celebrations, though, tend to go too far. “I have seen so many people overindulging themselves. They’ll drink, then throw up, and then continue to drink while their friends cheer them on,” Higgins said. “I understand wanting to celebrate this accomplishment, but a majority of the time, it goes too far.”
English Professor Lauryl Tucker shared similar sentiments about how Sewanee students celebrate completing their comps. Every year, the English department professors take turns monitoring students outside of Gailor Hall as they celebrate completing the English comp. This year, Tucker took on that role. “It had been a while since I had been there at the moment where everybody celebrated, and I found it really upsetting that it seemed to be the goal for more than a few students to cause each other to drink in such a way that they had to throw up on the sidewalk that leads into my workplace,” said Tucker. “Although Professor Macdonald and I implored students not to be drinking out of glass bottles and to be careful with glass, there was still smashed glass in front of the building.”
Messes like the one Tucker describes have appeared in front of various academic buildings, such as Spencer Hall, Woods Laboratory, and Carnegie Hall. Not only is it unsafe for students and faculty for these types of messes to be left around, but it is also another task for Sewanee’s facilities management. Although it was not her job to clean up the mess outside of Gailor after the English comp, Tucker still helped with clean up, anyway. “I would rather I do that than our facilities management colleagues,” she said. “And I would, on the whole, rather that I didn’t have to do that.” Facilities management and professors alike should not have to clean up messes like this to begin with. There should not be vomit or broken glass outside of Sewanee’s academic buildings, and the behavior that leads to this should not be happening either, especially on campus and in front of academic buildings.
Since these messes have occurred frequently throughout comp season this year, the Order of the Gown has stepped in to help keep messes to a minimum and keep students safe. Order of the Gown president, Sofie Behr (C’ 24), said, “The concern with the administration is that the culture of comps revolves too much around drinking culture and binge drinking, which is a valid concern because we do want to keep our students safe. I am hopeful about the future of comps because we, the Order of the Gown in conjunction with the Student Government Association (SGA), peer health, wellness center, the conduct standards office, and student life, have been working towards addressing this problem. From my understanding, the goal is not to get rid of comps or have a paternalistic view; the goal is to keep students safe and harm reduction.”
To keep students safe and reduce harm, Behr advised for students to communicate with their peers about how they would like to celebrate their comps. Comps are a special tradition in Sewanee, which can lead to feeling pressure or excitement to participate in this tradition. Behr encourages, though, for “everyone to take ownership of their comping experience and communicate with their friends what they want out of it. No two people are the same, everyone celebrates differently. Recognize that this is your friend’s special day and that you should want to celebrate them in a way that makes them feel special. That is comps celebration in their purest form. And, as always, clean up after your comps.”
Here at Sewanee, comps are like a double-edged sword. On one hand, it is a unique way to celebrate completing your academic journey and a way to honor all the hard work you have done in the last four years. On the other hand, though, comp celebrations tend to be messy and can quickly become dangerous. It is hard to say whether comps should stay or go. I would like for them to stay because they are a special tradition, like getting your gown, and I have no protests against the academic work they require. My only issue is the comp celebrations, but as Behr said, we must take ownership of our comping experience and communicate with friends about what we want out of it. I hope to see more students taking this initiative and finding better and healthier ways to celebrate their comps.