Legend of the Bell Pageant
This one-time event planned by Dean of Women Laura Kuykendall honored the "South Western Bell"
Legend of the Bell was a one-time-only pageant facilitated by Laura Kuykendall, held in 1927 at the 54th commencement of Southwestern University. Cited from a 1927 Williamson County Sun newspaper, “the pageant was worked up around the historic bell of the institution, and the men and women who [had] labored for the broadening of character.”
The program included three main sections. The first displayed “an allegory depicting time, the college year, day, night, sun, moon, opportunity and college degrees.” The second included showings of history, and each class depicted one of the four seasons of the year - spring, summer, fall, and winter. The final “closing scenes witnessed the bringing forth of The Bell of S. U. and the grand march” about campus. This event was structured similarly to Kuykendall’s May Fete, in both programming and location. Both events were hosted at the site of the Women’s Building.
This Legend of the Bell was only hosted once, and there isn’t much documentation as to why. After the event, though, the bell passed out of use and instead, according to a 1927 edition of the Williamson County Sun, was “given a place of honor” in “the tower surrounding the women’s building.” After the demolition of the Women’s Building (then named Laura Kuykendall Hall) to make way for Brown-Cody Hall, the bell was taken down and is now placed on the ground in a highly-trafficked location, outside of the Academic Mall. Although students pass this historic bell daily on their way to and from class, most do not know of its significance.
There is a plaque (created by the institution) placed below the bell. It was placed there as part of the celebration of Southwestern’s 175th year of existence as a college in 2015, the same time a small garden of commemorative bricks and a central plaque celebrating 175 years was placed nearby, in front of the McCombs Campus Center. The plaque for the bell claims that the bell was relocated to its current location “as a tribute to the 175 years of Southwestern University’s history, traditions, and culture,” as seen in the photograph below.
However, with the bell having been situated at the site of the women’s building for at least 70 years before that, where it was part of the female-focused Legend of the Bell event, it’s hard to tell what “history and traditions” this plaque is referencing. The plaque surely doesn’t emphasize these earlier feminine traditions. Instead, it neutralizes the bell’s original associations with femininity and claims it for Southwestern overall. This, with the bell’s displacement to a place in between the old women’s and men’s campuses (east and west campus), signifies a recentering of institutional tradition and history, thus altering the community’s previously gendered memory associated with the bell.
