Dear readers,
After 126 years of Sewanee Purple history, we are finally starting our 200th volume (give or take). Despite not personally witnessing the vast majority of that history, I could not be prouder of what we have accomplished.
It’s not easy to cover a small school tucked away in the mountains. We have no journalism major to guide us, no tradition of hard-hitting investigative journalism to give us precedents, and every story is a learning experience.
All of this is to say, we work very hard. On top of classes and other extracurriculars, each and every writer and editor for The Purple devotes time to create a paper we think reflects Sewanee’s climate and changes.
We do this because we love Sewanee. At times, this means questioning Sewanee. I encourage you to read Oliver Heffron’s (C’22) excellent piece about Brant Lewis’s (C’19) documentary about Sewanee’s LGBTQ+ history.
We also try to illuminate how Sewanee changes. Check out Colton Williams’s (C’21) look at the new Sewanee pledge, or the article by myself, Anna Mann (C’20), and Alicia Wikner (C’21) about questions into campus changes.
As Sewanee changes, so do we. After 200 volumes, we remain committed to covering and investigating the Sewanee we all know and love.
EQB,
Fleming Smith ‘19