Tom Walker, Junior Editor
Over 150 years after students first donned the gown in Sewanee, we’re still asking ourselves what the Order of the Gown (OG) can be. Throughout the years, leaders of Sewanee’s oldest student government organization have reimagined the OG to fit their wants and needs. Undoubtedly, some of these changes helped bring the tradition into step with the modern era. Updating the name of the organization from OGsmen to OG was a move in the right direction, but drastic changes to the OG run the risk of devaluing the tradition of the gown by straying from its founding principles. Adding a service requirement to OG membership loses sight of its origins as an academic distinction for students to strive for.
The OG’s 2010 publication, Student Traditions and Time-Honored Customs, states that Sewanee’s oldest student traditions are the gown society and the Honor Code. “The gown, in the words of the Gownman’s ritual, [is a] “symbol of high and pure learning which is the ideal of the University,” that “was authorized for upperclassmen.”” Almost 100 years earlier, members of The Sewanee Purple observed, “Sewanee has held to [the] old English custom of the use of cap and gown to indicate a certain attainment in scholarship.”
In the book Men Who Made Sewanee, author Reverend Moultrie Guerry said the OG strove to “preserv[e] standards and ideals among the students” who “were a miscellaneous lot from the standpoint of scholarship.” From 1871 to 2025, the OG has existed as a society whose membership marks academic achievement and whose influence inspires that same achievement in all others. Changing the OG to require community service hours would depart from its goal of academic achievement.
Proponents of the change have noble intentions. We should bridge the town/gown divide and more students should participate in service activities (especially because there are so many incredible opportunities available with the Office of Civic Engagement), but these goals shouldn’t come at the expense of the OG. Currently, the OG is solely dependent on a student’s grade point average. Anyone who has been accepted into the OG has met the academic requirements through their hard work and dedication to their classes. Thomas E. Dabney (C ‘1905) described what getting gowned meant to him in his 1965 submission to “Reminiscence Literature.”
[The gown] was an earned distinction after passing the prescribed courses for two years, the toughest part of the entire curriculum…We took enormous pride in not being as other college men for whom the cap and gown were a perfunctory observance for a day or a week. We were gownsmen for the rest of our student life at Sewanee even after completing the academic course…Gownsmen were allowed twice as many class and chapel cuts as lower classmen. By the time we reached gownsman distinction, we upperclassmen had lost all interest in cuts… We learned that the easiest way to miss classes is not to go to Sewanee and we could not abide the thought, especially after we had become gownsmen…then as now [students] might withdraw from the University at any time, but gownsmen did not quit. They could only die.
While the circumstances of Sewanee students have changed in the last 100 years, there is a continuity between Dabney’s feelings about the gown and those of students today. Earning the gown, especially early in one’s time at Sewanee, signifies a real accomplishment. Adding another requirement cheapens the whole thing. It takes away from the real accomplishment on display: academic excellence.
Once adopted, the service requirement could go one of two ways: it can be easily met after a few hours or it could require far more time. If the service requirement is relatively easy to obtain, it becomes a footnote to the real academic achievements of inductees. If the service requirement is much more difficult to obtain, it becomes a massive headache to hardworking students with busy schedules. During service projects, plans run smoothly because everyone wants to be there. Participants in service have a good time, but they are primarily there to work. If service becomes a requirement to receive our gowns (perhaps even right up to graduation), volunteers won’t be there because of any desire to work: they’ll be there because the OG told them they had to be. If the OG wants to create a habit of service that will extend past the gates, it should consider trying to persuade students into taking up service opportunities voluntarily. The OG should be sponsoring events to bridge the town/gown divide, offering service opportunities, and partnering with local organizations to build a community on and off the mountain. Organizing events like these seems like the logical first step towards the goals the OG’s leadership is so clearly seeking.
Students who feel forced to do a day (or perhaps many days) of service to get the gown that they’ve already earned through their academic excellence are unlikely to remember service opportunities as the fun and meaningful experiences they can so often be. It goes without saying, but students who have bad experiences with service are unlikely to voluntarily pursue it after they graduate. It seems to me that there are many less drastic options that the OG hasn’t considered. For instance, they could award pins to students who complete service hours or provide honor cords to students based on participation in service projects to encourage students to pursue service and community building opportunities without holding their gowns hostage. If these changes failed, it might be worth considering a measure like adding a service requirement to OG membership. But, adding a service requirement to the OG feels like the nuclear option, and it doesn’t make sense to go there just yet.
All in all, there is a unique feeling of accomplishment that students have when they put on their gowns for the first time and this feeling is at risk if other requirements come into play. The OG’s page on the University website puts it best:
“You’ll put in the time, energy, and work. Then you’ll put on something that proves it.”
Agreed
I agree. The Order of the Gown is a fundamentally academic organization and membership is meant to reward outstanding scholarship. I think that your ideas of promoting community engagement rather than requiring it would be much more effective. Making community service an accessible option rather than a stressful requirement is more likely to produce the intended result of instilling volunteering habits in the Order of the Gown’s members. Students who have attained membership are already putting forth the extra time and effort in their studies, and requiring a certain number of service hours may detract from this time and effort, or perhaps even the desire for students to join the organization at all. I agree that steps should be taken to bridge the town/gown divide and promote community engagement within Sewanee’s student body, and that there are perhaps smaller steps that can be taken to achieve these goals.