"Monstrance for a Grey Horse," now known simply as “Monstrance” by students, is a hallmark of any current Southwestern campus tour, and an important cultural touchstone for current student life.

All throughout the school year, but especially during exam and holiday seasons, students will leave “offerings” to Monstrance. These offerings can be for many things: while they are usually for luck on tests, students can also ask for guidance or blessings. Whether or not Monstrance responds is irrelevant; rather, it is the act of sacrifice that seems to imbue the sculpture with such incredible power.

Common offerings are single-serve snack packages, fruit, wildflowers, and pumpkins, particularly around Halloween. These items are laid at the base of plinth or stacked, tied, and hung from the horse skull itself. Now ritualized communicative practices, passed from student to student, have dictated that it is good luck to leave an offering, and unspeakably bad luck to take an offering. This results in a consistent pile at the base of Monstrance, which grows and shrinks as the seasons change.

This campus tradition has created strong collective memory surrounding the sculpture, and a powerful community feeling regarding its presence. Put simply, Monstrance is revered on campus, inspiring poetry and art such as that displayed in the May 2023 Megaphone: one student wrote a poem about Monstrance as a good-luck charm, featured alongside photographs of offerings stacked around its head. This is just one tangible example of the awe that students feel towards Monstrance.

This pagan, cult-like, almost religious following perhaps echoes the creation of "Monstrance for a Grey Horse" itself. On the Southwestern website, there is a news release from 2011 announcing the gift of the sculpture. According to the news release, “Monstrance,” was begun in 1980 and hand-carved over a twelve-year period by artist and sculptor James Acord, and was named after the object in which the eucharist is held in the Catholic church. The sculpture is meant to be a reliquary and a commentary on the nuclear age and the evolution of society.

Acord was fascinated by nuclear science, and made the sculpture out of granite, which contains uranium and will supposedly last 30,000 years – the half life of radioactive material. For this sculpture, Acord acquired a license to handle nuclear materials, and while he was unable to obtain the necessary components, the license was so important to him that he got the license number tattooed on the back of his neck. His intention was to place the sculpture at the edge of nuclear waste sites as a sort of reminder of the power of nuclear energy and the potential dangers of this power.

A common Southwestern student myth is that the sculpture itself is radioactive, or that its base contains radioactive materials. The base of the statue does contain a stainless steel canister of crushed Fiesta ware, a pottery that is known for its uranium glaze which becomes more dangerous upon being broken. However, the material is less so actually radioactive than symbolic of radioactivity.

Following its life at Acord’s own studio and then its stay at journalist Fred Moody’s house, the statue was purchased in 2000 by Southwestern alumnus Joey King, the person responsible for the King Creativity Fund, and officially moved to the university in 2011.

"Monstrance for a Grey Horse" used to reside on the east side of the Library, facing the Fine Arts Center, but as a part of building the decks on the front of the the Library in the summer of 2021, the statue was moved to the north side of the Library where it now stands, facing the Academic Mall.

Early photos show the statue as a clean white-gray granite; now, it is darkened from weathering and the many fruit and vegetable offerings over the years, and stands almost as a sentinel, its empty eyes watching over students as they pass by.

Most students speak of Monstrance with respect, almost deference. A select few regard the statue as almost a deity, crafted with grand purpose and deigning to look favorably upon the students of Southwestern. The use of the statue as a good-luck charm, or perhaps even a being of some higher power, was outside of the institutionally designated use of the statue as an educational tool to teach about nuclear dangers. The folk practice of laying sacrifices has helped to solidify Monstrance as an object that exists solely for students, who have crafted a rich and unique memory practice surrounding the statue.

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Charles Woodruff McCook, informally known as Woody, was a Southwestern graduate and the son of the respected Southwestern Business Manager I. J. McCook. Woody graduated from Southwestern in 1941 and immediately joined the Army Air Corps in 1942. That same year, Woody was assigned to China where he met his untimely death when he went missing during a bombing flight over Burma. While he was not the first Southwestern alumni to die in World War II related combat, his death had an impact on many Southwestern faculty and students. It was impactful because his father was employed by the University at the time of his son’s death.

When former President King Vivion heard of Woody’s death, in honor of the McCook family, he and his wife donated their equity towards an on-campus infirmary which would be named McCook infirmary. A few years later the McCook infirmary was “no longer suitable” for the physical changes the Southwestern was undergoing. A new infirmary was constructed in 1953 when Edward L. Crain, alumni and long-time trustee, bequeathed $25,000 to Southwestern to preserve his legacy on campus. This new infirmary adopted the Crain name while preserving the McCook legacy, combining the two for the McCook-Crain building.

The McCook-Crain Building itself has moved around a bit. It was first located just Northeast of LK Hall, where there is now a parking lot. Since the 2010s, it has been located on the far East side of campus, just behind the Turner-Fleming President’s House. The last tenants of the building were the Upward Bound Program, a community outreach organization focused on college-readiness for local Georgetown first-generation students.

There are plans for the demolition of the McCook-Crain building as part of the current Facilities Master Plan. After this building is gone, the McCook family legacy may not have a physical place of memorialization on campus, as nowhere else carries that namesake.

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The Southwestern Lacrosse team was the first in Texas to become an official NCAA team and as of today, Southwestern has the only NCAA-affiliated varsity team in Texas for both men’s and women’s lacrosse.

At a school that has played such an integral role in the expansion of lacrosse in Texas and the American South and Southwest, you would think that this would be something everyone knows, but there seems to be a general lack of knowledge about how the team began and just how far it has come since its inaugural season. Additionally, it is important to look at this history to have a better understanding of how having a lacrosse team relates to Southwestern’s identity as a national liberal arts university.

The story of SU Lacrosse begins in the 1983-84 school year when the team first came together as a club. The club met at different times throughout the week for practices. The twenty-four person roster was recognized in the 1984 yearbook, but the team had yet to gain much traction across campus. The first couple of seasons were difficult and the charter members had a hard time putting together a team that remained consistent due to injuries, illness, and other priorities.

It wasn’t until the third season that the team was able to pull off a win. Finally in the 1988 season, the team experienced their first winning season with a record of 7-6. This was a huge milestone for the club and it provided hope to team members at the time that the future of the program could be a lasting one.

Through documentation in yearbooks and The Megaphone, we see the progression of the team throughout these first couple of years. Then, in 1989, we are given the story of an incredible season where the club lost only one game and won the league championship versus The University of Texas. Part of the reason the team was so successful this semester is because of the support from the Southwestern community who would consistently show up for the members of the team.

Following the monumental season for the 1989 lacrosse team, there are a few years worth of coverage in The Megaphone about notable games and/or players, but as the years go on the information seems to dwindle.

A common problem that the team seemed to have until about 2000 was a lack of players. Additionally, the team struggled for a few years starting in 1995 because their original coach, Monty Curtis, left and finding a replacement proved to be a difficult feat. This had a huge impact on how well the team was able to do and whether or not they could even play in certain games. Throughout this time, though, the Southwestern community continued to support the team and encouraged them to continue fighting to keep the team alive.

Despite their hardships, they continued on and started picking up more players. Lacrosse eventually started to gain more interest on campus, and in the 2001 yearbook the creation of a women’s club team is documented. Up to that point, women who wanted to play lacrosse had played on the men’s team.

There are a few articles over the next six years that mention men’s and women’s lacrosse club teams and how both teams continue to grow and improve. After 2007 though, there is little to no documentation of the lacrosse teams on campus until they’re made NCAA sports in 2010 (men’s) and 2013 (women’s).

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The current men’s lacrosse coach, Bill Bowman, is entering his 28th season as a coach, with 12 of those seasons being during the club days of the sport. That means that he has experienced the years that we have little documentation about. Bowman was also involved with the team during his time as a student at Southwestern and played in the 1989 and 1990 seasons.

When I sat down to talk with Coach Bowman, he stated that he had never played lacrosse before he came to Southwestern, but once he joined the team, he immediately fell in love with the sport. I also learned from Bowman that the team has a rich history, much of which he would document through writing and online documentation. However, all of this documentation seems to have disappeared despite his efforts to keep the history of the program alive.

Bowman said that years worth of game scores, player statistics, team statistics, and other little facts were digitized and that the digitized file is gone. This means that much of the history of lacrosse before 2010 relies on the people who were a part of the history to tell the stories. So, that is what Bowman did for me, and now I can now share it with you.

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In 2000, the club team consisted of both men and women, but with a growing number of women interested in the sport, they wanted to start their own team. One of these women in particular was so excited to start that when she went to the league meeting to get more information, she signed Southwestern up to compete with a women’s team (despite not having a coach or enough players for a team).

So starting in 2001, the women began practicing and Bowman would conduct the practices for the men and women at the same time. The following year, the women would play their first game against Trinity University in San Antonio, which they won 6-5. They would only play four games for the season but they proved themselves as a force to be reckoned with.

The main problem that arose for the women’s team was that they could not hold the numbers that they needed to field a team, much like the men when they first started. The men’s team, on the other hand, was thriving under the guidance of Coach Bowman. They were climbing up the ranks, getting as high as #9 in the entire nation in their final season as a club.

The women would go on to get a coach and win many more games before also converting to an NCAA sport in the 2013-14 school year. This was the same year that the football program was reinstated so adding the women’s lacrosse team was a way for the school to stay within the requirements of Title IX. This law requires the university to provide equitable opportunities for men and women to participate in sports on campus. By adding the women’s team the university could stay within these requirements while simultaneously expanding opportunities for participation in lacrosse in the South.

Both club teams were extremely successful, sending many players to All-American games and racking up recognitions for All–Conference selections. And with the start of their NCAA DIII status, the sports began documenting their games and important season information on the Southwestern Pirates website where that history still lives today.

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So, what difference does it make whether or not we know this information? For many of the people that were a part of the team in the past as well as those that still play today, lacrosse is a huge part of their lives. They have poured their hearts into the team and made an effort to leave a lasting impression that paved the way for what the team is able to become today.

Because of the determination of many of these athletes to keep the program going through hardships, Southwestern is able to continue making an outsized impact and making memories in the lacrosse world.

While the campus takes time to try and remember its history through buildings, names, stories and much more, we should also remember that specific athletic communities leave just as much of a lasting mark on campus life. The experiences shared by members of the lacrosse team deserve recognition because they represent decades of dedication, friendship, and the continuing evolution of Southwestern University.

Furthermore, looking at the history of lacrosse prompts us to question what it is about the school’s identity that allows a sport popular for decades in midwestern and East Coast states to thrive here in Texas, despite a lack of exposure to the sport in most Texas high schools. More specifically: what accounts for the success of lacrosse at Southwestern when other Texas schools with more resources and students, such as Rice, The University of Texas (UT), and Texas A&M, are not able to support varsity NCAA lacrosse programs for either gender, much less both?

Researching the history of the lacrosse programs at Southwestern has made me wonder if it is related to President Roy B. Shilling Jr.’s goal of “National Maturity” in the early 1980s, the exact moment that the story of lacrosse became intertwined with the story of Southwestern.

Shilling’s goal for Southwestern in the 1980s was to create a distinctive liberal arts institutional identity for the school that positioned Southwestern as a national liberal arts college instead of a Texas-focused, Methodist liberal arts college, which had been its identity for years.

Especially in the “preppy” 1980s, that meant projecting an image of Southwestern that resonated with the public image of East Coast liberal arts colleges, and their ties to East Coast college prep schools. And although lacrosse had origins in Native American culture and has since grown more inclusive nationally as well as at Southwestern, in the early 1980s, lacrosse was thoroughly associated with the culture of East Coast elite private prep schools and colleges that provided the model for Southwestern’s aspirations toward National Maturity.

Either way, though there have been some struggles since becoming a DIII program for both the men and women, the teams have become a part of the identity of Southwestern, even as that identity itself continues to evolve. Ultimately, this intertwining of lacrosse and Southwestern’s identity is what allows the team to persevere through hardships and what sets them apart from other programs.

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For centuries, physical activity for women was framed as recreational rather than competitive. It focused more on health and maintaining image rather than athleticism or competition. The idea of women participating in organized sports, especially at the varsity level, was seen as inappropriate or even harmful.

But by the late 1800’s and early 1900’s, that idea began to change. Across the country, women began to form athletic clubs, challenging the restrictive norms put upon them and promoting the idea that women belonged in competitive sport.

On Southwestern University’s campus, this shift was evident. As early as 1903, there are records of club teams in tennis, basketball, and golf, all led by women. These student-driven efforts signaled a desire to engage seriously with athletics, but institutional support did not follow.

While men’s sports received funding, structure, and recognition, women’s teams remained unofficial and unrecognized for decades. It was not until Title IX passed in 1972, mandating gender equity in educational programs, including athletics, that Southwestern began to officially add women’s varsity teams.

From that point forward, a pattern emerged. Whenever Southwestern added a women’s team, it was because they had to because of external pressures, not because they chose to provide access to their students.

As a result, women’s athletics at Southwestern has lagged behind--not because of a lack of interest or ability from its female students, but from a lack of institutional will rooted in a heterosexist commitment to a kind of separate and unequal idea about educating men and women.

This pattern is not confined to Southwestern, as there are gender equity issues throughout higher education and especially college sports, but this entry is about how it has played out specifically here at Southwestern.

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As I have shown in other Placing Memory entries, women have actively sought and created opportunities to compete in organized sports since the early days of the University, but University leaders have not always been supportive.

In 1961, the Board of Trustees voted to make women’s physical activity “...sponsored as part of the Southwestern program of Physical Training for Women, and not to be or become a part of an inter-collegiate athletic program for women in manner, shape or form.”

This restricted women’s athletics to entirely intramurals. These intramurals were sponsored as part of the Women's Recreation Association--a gendered counterspace created by Southwestern female students that created continuity between the efforts of women in the Ladies Annex in the early 1900s to the women striving to be seen as equals to men up until the 1970s--but were mostly separated from the men.

A little over a decade later, in 1972, Title IX of the Education Amendments was passed by Congress and signed into law. This mandated universities to provide equal opportunities for women and men to access all opportunities provided by colleges and universities. While today Title IX is interpreted more broadly to include things like gendered violence as an access issue, the most prominent realm where Title IX was first applied in the 1970s was in equal opportunity for men and women to compete in varsity athletics.

Once the law was passed, Southwestern had no choice but to begin funding women’s varsity teams in order to be in compliance. In the fall of 1973, women’s tennis and volleyball were officially allocated a budget and allowed to play at the intercollegiate level.

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In the fall of 1975, a letter appeared in The Megaphone titled “A Case for Women’s Sports.” The author, Lee Ann Everette, was, along with Eva Mendiola, a prominent figure in getting the volleyball team set up as the first women's varsity athletics team at Southwestern. You will see her on the right end of the the middle row of the inaugural volleyball team photo from the 1975 yearbook included below.

In her 1975 opinion article in the Megaphone, Everette argued that women’s athletics was growing, that there was clear student interest--directly pushing back against men's claims that women’s sports were unnecessary or lacked value.

The article shows what the institutional timeline include below alone does not. We can clearly see that women were not passively waiting to be included. They were organizing, pushing, and publicly advocating for their right to compete. But it also shows that even after Title IX was passed, women’s athletics had to be justified in a way that men’s athletics never did.

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In 1976, women’s basketball was brought back to campus and officially recognized as a varsity team, rounding out the initial waves of programs brought on by legal compliance.

After this, progress slowed once more until 1990, when Southwestern decided to pursue NCAA Division III membership. This move came with a new set of external requirements for athletic teams, which once again forced the university to expand women’s offerings.

That year, Southwestern created an Athletic Transition Steering Committee made up of faculty, staff and students, and the result was a large growth of women’s varsity programs. In 1992, women’s track & field, soccer, and golf were added. Cross country followed the next year in 1993. In 1998, women’s swimming was added. Finally, in 2008, the university added varsity softball.

The final dot on this timeline of women’s sports came in 2010, when Southwestern began planning to bring back its football program, which had been dormant since 1950. However, in order to stay in compliance with NCAA rules and Title IX, a new men’s team that large couldn’t be added without equivalent athletic opportunities for women. So, in 2013, the same year the SU football team was re-established, the university introduced the women’s lacrosse team, marking the newest addition to the women’s athletic program.

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This timeline makes one thing quite clear. None of these women’s varsity programs were introduced as part of a long-term strategic investment in women’s athletics or in response to clear student demand. They were rather added to satisfy Title IX or NCAA rules.

Women’s athletics at Southwestern has rarely been the result of proactive support from the University. Instead, it has unfolded in response to external pressure, whether that be federal mandates or the administrative agendas of the NCAA.

Even when there was clear evidence of student interest and large participation in intramural sports and club teams by women–such as with women playing for co-ed lacrosse and soccer student organizations in the 1980s, and competing in women’s swimming & diving club in 1995-1996–the University delayed formal recognition and equitable budgetary support of female athletic teams until it became unavoidable.

Despite the lack of consistent institutional support, women at Southwestern have continued to show up, compete, and advocate for their right to belong in the athletic sphere. While the University’s delayed and reactive response are frustrating, this history is equally a testament to the determination and resilience of its female students.

The turnout and support that some of our women’s teams receive now is the product of a long, uphill fight for visibility and respect. Women have always had to fight for their place in sports, and in many ways, they still do. The work of fighting for equity is still ongoing, and remembering this history of women's athletics at Southwestern is essential to recognize the patterns that still shape our present.

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When people talk about the history of women’s basketball at Southwestern University, they usually start in 1976. That is the year the sport became officially recognized as part of the university’s varsity athletics, but it is not where the program begins.

More than 70 years earlier, women were already playing organized basketball on campus. They had formed teams, held practices, competed against other schools, and held quite an impressive record.

However, they were not officially sanctioned by the school’s Athletic Association, which, at the time, did not include or support women’s sports at all. Even now, on Southwestern University’s current athletics website, this early history is summed up in a single line: a club team existed in 1903.

The true story, however, is scattered across years of the Sou’Wester yearbooks and a few older issues of The Megaphone, the student newspaper. It is there–in roster lists, game reports, and team photos–that we can trace a much richer and largely forgotten history. This story speaks not just to the early legacy of women’s basketball on campus, but to what happens when memory is shaped by what an institution chooses to value.

The first reference to a women’s basketball team appears in the 1904 yearbook. At the time, the players were affiliated with the Ladies Annex, a part of the University designated for female students when Southwestern was technically co-ed but enforced a strict separation between male and female students. The team practiced within the Annex Gymnasium, a place that was physically and symbolically apart from the University’s main athletic facilities, and the palce where this entry is located on the story map. Men were prohibited from attending games. Even as the women competed, they remained out of sight.

That year, 1903-1904, was the first year that female and male students took classes together, but it would be several generations before they were able to participate in the social life of campus together, and even more generations before they were able to live together.

Despite their lack of visibility within the mainstream–read male–culture of Southwestern at the time, the team grew. In 1906, the yearbooks began to reference contests beyond campus. By 1909, female students organized their own athletic association, with the goal of increasing participation and interest in sports.

In 1912, a large shift occurred. For the first time, men were allowed to actually attend women’s basketball games. With male spectators now present, the team began to receive more coverage both in the yearbook and in The Megaphone. Profiles on the players became more detailed and game summaries became regular. Visibility, as it turns out, was directly tied to the presence of a male audience. Still, despite the increase in popularity, the team remained unofficial in the eyes of the University.

In 1913, the women's team was undefeated until the state championship game, where they lost to Thomas School of San Antonio. In 1914, they came close again, losing once more to Thomas in a bid for state. In 1916, it was the University of Texas at Austin that beat them out. And in 1920, the team finally won the state title, becoming champions.

These weren’t intramurals. These were serious, organized, intercollegiate contests. The team had opponents, coaches, travel, and fans. They had a record. They had, in every meaningful way, arrived. But none of it was recognized by the university’s official Athletic Association.

That lack of recognition had its consequences. In 1924, the yearbook noted that the team had a rough season, and that the future of the women’s basketball team was in doubt. But this wasn’t the fault of the team. In the 1924 Sou’Wester yearbook, there is an open letter titled “A Backward Glance on the Season” where it is written, “The girls do not have a court of their own to practice on and had to work in their practice when they could get access to the court. Twice a week was as often as they could have the court, and then it was for one hour and a half at the time.” Without access to better facilities, the program couldn’t continue. “It is likely,” the Sou’Wester concluded, “that we will not have another girls’ basketball team until Southwestern has a new gymnasium with modern equipment in every respect.”

The next year the Ladies Annex burned down, and along with it went the Annex Gymnasium. With this loss, the women’s basketball team disappeared, not to return until 1976, after Title IX, when it was made an official varsity team. What changed was not interest or talent, it was institutional commitment, and it was space. The university did not make room for women’s athletics to grow, literally or figuratively. And when the women no longer had a court, their team quickly faded away.

When we look at how Southwestern remembers its athletic history today, this entire chapter is mostly invisible. Women’s basketball is treated as if it began in 1976, shortly after the University began complying with Title IX. But if we stop the story there, we miss everything that came before. To me, this isn’t just a gap in the record, it is a problem of institutional memory and recognition. The documents exist and the stories were written. They were just never preserved as part of the university’s “official” athletic history.

This story is not just about correcting a timeline. It is about understanding how memory gets made and who gets left out. In doing this research, I am trying to place the memory of these teams back into collective memory and back on campus. Female student athletes–and everybody else–need to remember that their history at Southwestern traces back to the early days of the institution.

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In the Fall of 1995, the student organization SOAL (the Sexual Orientation Awareness League) celebrated National Coming Out Day by hanging a Gay Pride flag from the hearth in the Bishops Lounge Ballroom in the Student Union Building, a former community hub of SU. Although National Coming out day had been celebrated on campus before (with events dating back to 1990), 1995 was documented as an especially turbulent year for the event.

An article from the Megaphone written during the first week of the flag’s placement in the SUB argued that it: “constitutes poor policy on the part of administration,” because it directly opposes the Christian values of Southwestern and its students who practice the religion. This article inspired many arguments through Opinions and Letters to the Editor in the Megaphone and across campus over the course of the next few weeks, with conflicting perspectives on whether or not the flag should have been placed in a central community space.

The ensuing discourse surrounding this issue quickly coalesced into 2 main questions. The first was whether the presence of the gay pride flag in a central campus space represented an official endorsement of gay rights by Southwestern as an institution. The second was whether the flag’s placement in a community space infringed on the moral values of students who cited their Christian faith as the reason for the flag being offensive to them.

Regarding the first topic, students against the placement of the pride flag argued that SOAL was improperly using the flag’s placement to assert that the entire SU community supported the gay liberation movement. Alternatively, supporters of the flag argued that it was there not to officially endorse the group’s cause, but to celebrate the accomplishments of gay people and allies towards equality, while bringing an awareness of these accomplishments to others with the hopes of encouraging them to do the same, rather than speaking for them or assuming that they already agreed.

Moving towards the argument about how the installation of the flag was an “infringement of moral values” of some Christian students, I believe this notion relates to the way homosexuality is considered a sin within many religious circles, particularly until recently.

Both articles critiquing the pride flag cite multiple Bible verses claiming “the sin of homosexuality,” but I found it interesting that they both tied their arguments specifically back to Southwestern’s affiliation with Methodism, and how this was fundamentally a Christian school.

Southwestern’s relationship to Methodism is the subject of several other Placing Memory entries. Here, it is important to establish that the founding of Southwestern is rooted in Methodism, and its initial aim was to instill Methodist principles and incentivize continuing a life in the Church after college. Over time, the enforcement of these principles waned, evident through the cancellation of required Chapel attendance in 1967 in response to increased religious diversification of the student population after various social justice movements in the 1960s.

While almost all the requirements of a faith-based education were no longer in force at SU by the 1990s when this controversy over the pride flag emerged, the students who advocated removing the pride flag from the SUB in 1995 acted as if their perspective was authorized by Southwestern’s history as a Methodist institution. Therefore, they argued that their invocation of the Bible against homosexuality was more valid than SOAL’s argument for religious freedom and social equality.

What I find most interesting about this is that proponents of the pride flag never attempted to antagonize the institution of Christianity, even citing various faith-based gay and lesbian advocacy groups to affirm that the immorality placed on homosexuality was inspired through the bigotry of individuals rather than Christianity itself.

A final statement against the pride flag was written on the 26th of October and accompanied by an in-person speech given by a student in the Faculty Lounge 4 days later. Ultimately, the flag maintained its place on the hearth of the SUB ballroom during the 2 weeks worth of events held for National Coming Out Day.

Researching this discourse surrounding the presence of the Gay Pride Flag as a symbol for queer advocacy at SU, I had anticipated writing an entry that focused more on the specific points that were used to promote or antagonize its presence to understand how gay and lesbian identities were perceived and represented on-campus in the 1990s.

Here, I would like to recognize my own bias as a queer person with no religious affiliation detailing and critiquing this experience through this entry. I knew I would likely encounter some assertion that “homosexuality is a sin” by students against the flag, but as I read through the various arguments, I was surprised to see the students from SOAL characterize homophobia as a practice rooted in individual bigotry, as opposed to a form of systemic oppression supported by the institution of Christianity.

This is what prompted my deeper analysis of this situation’s relationship to the history of Methodism at SU, where I noticed a correlation between the diminishing presence of a religious education on-campus in the 1960s and 1970s, and the increased advocacy for marginalized groups in the 1980s and 1990s. In the 2000s, these strands were woven together differently as the University actively worked to align itself with the progressive wing of the Methodist Church on LGBTQ+ issues, but this moment in the 1990s shows that the battle could have gone either way.

By examining how both queer advocacy and homophobia were both influenced by Christianity, despite the loss of its historical centrality to the SU experience, this entry attempts to capture how the campus’ history as a religious space has affected student activism differently over time.

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It’s a late night and you want a break from homework. You begin to stroll around campus and your mind wanders. You pass Prothro, then Olin, then the Chapel. You walk along the paths next to the upperclass dorms and find yourself on the periphery of the Dorothy Lord Center Apartments. The street lights emit a warm amber glow and you can finally see a few stars. You ponder on where the night will take you. You take note of the charming one-story Georgetown houses along the way.

The cemetery gates come into view. You read the sign: IOOF Cemetery, The International Order of Odd Fellows, Open from 7 AM to 9 PM. It is well past 9 PM, but that doesn’t stop you.

As you walk on the dirt path, you kick the pebbles in front of you. The trees gently sway. The night breeze cools your face. Gravestones of varying shapes and sizes stand against the cosmic horizon, decorated with artificial flowers. Beyond the graves, you reach the far end of the path, closed off by a swinging gate with a combination lock on it.

Next to the gate, there is a gap wide enough for a person to comfortably walk through. A new dirt path opens up, but it is clear nature has staked its claim on the spot, as foliage outstretches into the path’s edges. The occasional lizard darts into the bushes. Looking down at the shrubs and wildflowers, you notice little squirrel statues and smile. After a few minutes, you find a more disturbing sight.

A cattle skull stares at you dead in the eyes, sitting atop a pole. The bones have been bleached white from the hot Texas sun. You have heard that this might be because the space beyond campus has been worked as a cattle farm for generations, but to you it looks like something from The Lord of the Flies.

Something tells you not to go on that path, so you continue your journey forward instead. The dirt path turns into asphalt, where you find another startling sight. Marked with faded red spray pain, the words “Getting closer…” and an arrow pointing in front of you appear.

It’s too far to go back now, so you keep walking. Finally, you reach a clearing, framed by old fence poles on either side. These poles are covered in stickers and sharpie drawings, signaling to you that this is a space claimed by students, not only cattle and squirrels. Ahead of you is an old concrete bridge. You hear the stream trickling below your feet. You can actually see the stream through the concrete on the bridge, because years ago a flood broke the bridge, making it unsafe for cars to use. You have made it to your destination: Graffiti Bridge.

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My favorite time to visit Graffiti Bridge is at night, as I have described in this entry. However, the pictures I took for this entry were during the day for better visibility. It is still beautiful during the day, but the ambience is more nostalgic and philosophical at night. Given that, it honestly felt strange to see it in the sunlight. Please note that you can probably find the place for yourself given my description above, but because many students try to protect the secret, we have not pinned this entry to its actual location.

Some students’ names are etched onto the pavement, as well as the initials of lovers. Some of the graffiti is religious, some of it is political, and some of it is just for fun. It is clearly a space where students are unsurveilled and feel free to do whatever they want without consequence, since they are anonymous and out of view.

This place has become my spray-painted solace. I have heard that this is a place where some students go to sit and smoke marijuana with their friends. I’ve never run into that here, and for a place where illegal activity occurs, it is actually quite serene. This is the place I have shared my most personal stories with my friends, deepening my connections to the people on campus I most want to connect to.

In a small school with limited opportunities to freely express yourself without consequence or judgment, it is vital to preserve places like this. It is out in nature, away from the burdens of “Mouthwestern” and Yik Yak, the platforms that foster student gossip. It is a place to truly be yourself, scream your secrets into the wilderness, skip stones in the stream, and do graffiti if you please.

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Although the graveyard leads you directly to Graffiti Bridge, it can also be accessed by walking past the EcoLab and through the fields. Much like walking on the seal after graduation, finding the Story Tree, and making offerings to Monstrance, it’s a student rite of passage, but one that the University has not yet adopted as its own.

There is a clear distinction between what traditions Southwestern University is willing to advertise or not. The Story Tree, Monstrance, and Graffiti Bridge are all student-created rituals, but only the Story Tree and Monstrance are openly marketed with pride. Students only hear about Graffiti Bridge through word of mouth by other students.

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Unfortunately, this space is at risk of being demolished. I’ve heard that the bridge is on a part of Smith Creek that will be developed in the next few years as the Southwestern 560 Development unfolds. This entry anticipates that fate, intending to keep the memory of the bridge alive even after it is gone.

But I have to say: even when the bridge is built over and long gone, the history of student culture at Southwestern tells us that students will find another secret spatial outlet to freely express themselves, ponder the human condition, and have heart-to-heart conversations with one another, outside of the purview of the grown-ups in charge.

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Bishops Memorial Union served as the first on-campus student center replacing the Pirates Tavern that was located across the street from Cullen. Designed by Cameron Fairchild, the space was named for university alumni and a faculty member who had been elected bishops in the Methodist Church. The Bishops were Sam Hay, H.A. Boaz, A. Frank Smith, H. Bascom Watts, and Edwin D. Mouzon. Constructed from the same limestone used throughout the campus, the building featured a large lounge, faculty lounge, music room, post office, snack bar, bookstore, and bowling alleys. The functions of this building, as well as the University Commons, were absorbed by the McCombs Campus Center in 1998.

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During late 1996, an announcement was made to the Southwestern campus that by Spring 1997, there would be a new fountain built on the Academic Mall. The main reason for building the fountain was to commemorate the impact of the Brown Challenge, a twenty-year grant established by the Brown Foundation Inc. of Houston that has a significant impact on the built environment of the University as well as its financial infrastructure.

When the Brown Challenge was built, the fountain was meant to serve as a reminder of the importance of philanthropy to the Southwestern experience for the community. Beyond that, the Brown Challenge Fountain was also meant to create a social place where students could gather while sitting on the bench that oversees the Mall, facing the Chapel.

In my time here, I have never seen anyone use the fountain as it was intended. Currently the Fountain mainly serves as the connecting sidewalk for the Sarofim School of Arts and the Smith Library. Aside from serving as a pathway for students to get where they need to go on campus, Today, the fountain’s purpose is purely aesthetic, as the memory of the impact of the Brown Challenge has cycled through after all of the students who directly witnessed the effect of the grant graduated from the University. If anything, people avoid the fountain because of its poor design: for years the slick granite stones marking its entrance were a slipping hazard, and the pool below the fountain is usually choked in debris from the latest storm.

However, there is one longstanding tradition bearing the same name as the fountain that has kept the name of the Brown Challenge alive on this campus, despite having no resemblance to the intention of the original fundraising challenge. The Brown Challenge, as recent SU students know it, involves streaking across campus all the way to the Brown Challenge fountain and jumping in.

Although there have been many streaking incidents on campus throughout history, I was not able to trace the first instance in which a student completed the challenge establishing it as a campus tradition. Student mythology says that it was originated as a prank by a member of one of the four fraternities. It has now expanded to involve those beyond Greek life, with students from all over campus completing the challenge every semester.

Despite being intended to be a marker of the Brown Foundation and its influence to the Southwestern infrastructure that we have come to know, the fountain has achieved its job as a memory marker on campus. Whether you see it and remember the fundraiser or completing a bet that a friend made with you, the Brown Challenge Fountain has created intergenerational collective place memory, which connects students back to Southwestern’s culture.

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After Herman Brown’s passing, George R. Brown decided to continue to express his brother’s interest in Southwestern through the Brown Foundation’s Matching Gift proposal. In September of 1963, in a special meeting with students in the Fine Arts Building, President Fleming reported that “Southwestern University is the recipient of gifts and grants totaling $1,350,000 from the Brown Foundation, Inc. of Houston.”

The Foundation had agreed to make a gift of $500,000 which would be matched by $1,000,000 raised by Southwestern. During this time, students were concerned about the feasibility of achieving the $500,000 double matching grant for permanent improvements to the campus as the challenge to raise one million needed to be completed first in three years. President Fleming expressed his hopes that the money would be raised during the school year, as he described the grant to be an “educational breakthrough” as it was a form of intelligent giving that had the power to strengthen the entire University structure.

In the end, the campaign was successful, and the improvements funded by the campaign in the next few years included Brown Commons, two men’s dormitories–Herman Brown and Moody-Shearn, and a major addition to Cody Memorial Library. Along with these capital projects, the Foundation also established three additional professorships which were later raised to endowed chairs. The three positions were valued at $250,000 each and were named the Herman Brown Professorship in English, the Margaret Root Brown Professorship in Fine Arts, and the Lillian Nelson Pratt Professorship in Science. The Foundation also raised the already existing Lucy King Brown Chair of History to be a $250,000 unit. These positions later became the backbone of the Brown Symposium program.

In making the gift, Brown, as the Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Foundation, expressed his desire to contribute to the traditional standards “and offerings of Texas’ oldest university.” He also explained that the pride and pleasure of the Foundation was intended to benefit the present soundness of the University, as well as, “the respect and love we hold in our memory for the person in whose names the professorships are to be maintained.”

George Brown’s gift through the Foundation looked to Southwestern’s past and shaped Southwestern’s future at the same time. It was initiated to commemorate two alums, his brother Herman Brown and his sister-in-law Margarett Root Brown, and their love for Southwestern. But the impact on Southwestern’s infrastructure and intellectual life from the gift since then has been significant in itself as well as being significant because it was the first phase of a longer-standing philanthropic relationship between the Brown Foundation and Southwestern. Current students encounter the Brown name in multiple places throughout the campus, and it all started with this matching grant in 1963.

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Being one of Southwestern’s longest-standing traditions, the Candlelight Service, also referred to as the Christmas Carol service or the “Candlelighting” service, has been taking place in various forms since 1915.

Before the event began, Christmas programming for the University was organized by the First Methodist Church or the SU Sunday School and followed a very traditional program, including dinner, hymns, and the dispersal of small gifts. In 1915, Dean of Women Laura Kuykendall and Mrs. Bishop (President Bishop’s wife) wanted to begin a new annual tradition within the community, and thus the Christmas Carol Service & Dinner began.

Being developed by Kuykendall, this event held the same level of extravagance and theatrics as other campus events she planned, all of which appear in separate entries within Placing Memory. Also like those events, this event was held on the Eastern “Women’s Campus” for years, until it was moved after the completion of the Chapel in 1953.

When it was still held at the Women’s Campus, Kuykendall and Mrs. Bishop decorated the entire Ladies Annex with red and green ribbons, holly wreaths, garlands, and mistletoe. Along with this, they included many natural elements too, such as orange and golden autumn leaves, flowers from the forest, and green vegetation. A grand Christmas Tree was placed in the middle of the dining room, centrally in the space.

As guests entered the area, two female students acted as “Christmas Spirits,” handing out programs for the event to follow. Then, the Southwestern orchestra began to play a Christmas song, “Holy, Holy, Holy”, while the women of the Ladies Annex marched into the event. They all wore matching white gowns and held lit candlesticks as they paraded in, singing and chanting with the music. With the lights in the space dimmed, their candles lit the way as they formed two chains around the Christmas Tree. When every woman was in her place, the girls then sang “Holy Night” acapella, for the whole building to hear.

After the procession, various songs, vignettes, and readings were performed for the guests. The attendees then enjoyed a buffet dinner, which included quite traditional Christmas foods such as ham, giblet gravy, and dinner rolls. To close out the event, the Ladies' Annex held an open house for any outside guests or male community members to stay and attend.

As the years went on, the event was slightly altered, with some years the female students wearing collating dresses of red, green, and white, and the program and menu changing from year to year. In some years, more pagan-style figures were also included, such as “Christmas fairies” wearing crowns of poinsettias. In typical Kuykendall fashion, symbolic meaning was assigned to some of the event’s colors, with red representing courage, blue truth, and the Christmas lights representing the light within every one of her female students, according to a 1918 edition of The Megaphone.

After Kuykendall’s death in 1935, the event continued to be held, and some of the traditions she instated were maintained for a longer time than those of her other events (see below the image from the 1958 Candlelight Service). Still, the event over time lost much of its original spectacle, becoming more and more traditional after some years of being held in the Chapel, where it is still held today.

The Candlelight service as it is held in the chapel today resembles many other traditional services: while there is a significant lack of white dresses and choreographed movements, there is still the lighting of candles at the end of the event and liturgical readings interspersed with lessons from a preacher and songs by a choir. What distinguishes this service from others is not just its rich history and lingering pageantry, but rather, the sense of splendor and unity that comes from such a longstanding event with a vibrant tradition behind it.

Megaphone articles dating back to its origin stress the beauty, tradition, and importance of the Candlelight service, and encourage attendance for all students. As an event that had been held in the Women’s Building for much of its existence, it did not originally involve men, but as time passed and it moved to the Chapel, the event became less exclusive and more unifying. Members of the Georgetown community have long been involved in the receptions and donation drives that occasionally accompanied the service, and now comprise the majority of those in attendance.

2023’s Candlelight service marked 107 years of the tradition. One of the authors is a member of Southwestern’s University Chorale and was involved in leading the audience in singing Christmas carols and the performance of several prepared pieces. The readings chosen for this particular service had wide-reaching applications for modern life, and Southwestern’s new Chaplain Reverend Swain led the congregation in seven transdenominational lessons about unity. While the Chapel setting and nature of the teachings and readings situated the event securely as one designed for those celebrating the Christian holiday, the solemn and peaceful air of the service seemed to call less upon the history of Methodism at Southwestern and reached more into the future of what spirituality at Southwestern could be.

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The “Madonna and Child” statue, alternately called “Virgin and Child” by the September 25, 1953 edition of the Megaphone, was created by Austin-based artist Charles Umlauf and installed in front of the newly constructed chapel on September 1, 1953. The piece was commissioned by Mrs. Margarett Root Brown, alumna and prominent benefactor of the university, in memory of her mother, South Carolina Easley Root (Jones 383) A plaque commemorating this is placed on the plinth of the statue.

The statue is carved from cast stone, an aggregate material which in this instance is rosy-colored and sparkles in the sunlight. Compositionally balanced, with the knelt figure of the Madonna supporting the upright figure of the child Christ, “Madonna and Child” is a quiet and reverent piece constructed in a restrained modern style.​​ This piece is part of Umlauf’s multimedia collection with the same subject matter and name, and which calls upon a longstanding artistic tradition of rendering this important Biblical story.

Umlauf himself is a Michigan native who spent a large portion of his life in Austin as an art professor at University of Texas. He had many art exhibitions at Southwestern University from the mid 1950s to early 1970s, and was remembered in the student newspaper as a prolific and well-respected artist. Many of Umlauf’s sculptures are located in a sculpture garden in Austin.

Originally, the “Madonna and Child” was placed in front of the Chapel, and would have served in tandem with the building as a reminder of the centrality of religion to student life. It was moved in 1981 during the renovation of the chapel, with the new courtyard being constructed around the sculpture. In its current location, it still depicts the Madonna as looking up to the cross at the top of the Chapel, though just from a different angle.

Ultimately, moving the sculpture placed it outside of normal student traffic patterns. One result is that most current students do not even know it exists, so it has largely dropped out of the collective memory of students as a place. The other result is more symbolic: where once the main reverential object that students encountered in front of the Chapel was a representation of the origin story for Christianity, today, that role is played by the University Seal, which represents the origin story of the University itself–and has its own reverential practices associated with it.

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