![]() ![]() ![]() “But most people would study, and then on weekends, we’d let loose and the girls would come up from, you know, a long way away in buses, and that was life as we lived it. “It wasn’t ideal, and weekends were pretty rough because there was nothing to do during the week, nothing, except study or be an ass,” he said. The early experiences of Carlson’s life at Sewanee mirrors a theme still on campus today: study hard on the weekdays and party hard on the weekends. “The athletes formed their own organization, the Organization of Independent Men, so they could compete with fraternities and beat the hell out of us in intramural sports.” Carlson would eventually join Kappa Sigma, becoming its president in 1962. “When I came to Sewanee, the only social life, it was an all men’s school then, was fraternity life and athletics,” he remembered. ![]() When Professor Thomas “Tam” Carlson (C’63) arrived at Sewanee in 1959, he found that his options for social interaction were quite limited. Having survived their troubles in the late nineteenth century, by the 1960s the fraternity had become well established and was consistently one of the largest fraternities throughout the years. One such fraternity was, of course, Kappa Sigma. To put it quite simply, the absence of women directly correlated to more young men being funneled into joining fraternities. While humorous, the statement itself helps explain why fraternity life at Sewanee was so big during the early-to-mid-twentieth century. These are the words from a 1961 Kappa Sigma pamphlet that was handed out to potential new members during the autumn rush season, found within the University Archive’s folder on the fraternity. This is unhappy, but inescapable, and it means that almost your entire social life for the next four years will be, fortunately or unfortunately, tied up in some way with other men, most probably your fraternity brothers.” “Your choice of a fraternity at Sewanee is important to you if only for one reason: there aren’t any women up here. ![]()
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