The Fence

The Sarratt Student Center has been the center of campus life for just about 40 years.

That's right it opened the fall AFTER we graduated in 1973. Rats! It's still a little bit of sore spot for some of us.

But here's what we did get: THE FENCE which surrounded almost all of Neely/ Alumni Lawn throughout our senior year during construction.

Neely/Alumni was one of the few large green spaces we had to play (touch football, Frisbee) or just enjoy the sunshine and warm weather and maybe ride a bike. But not our senior year. Losing this access plus Sarratt not opening until after we graduated, was a bit much to take. Vanderbilt really didn't have a Student Center at the time. Alumni Hall and Rand was as close as it got...and it was not really all that close. 

If you read the signs below, which we hung on THE FENCE, you can see we weren't real happy.

   
The more explicit saying was "F... The Fence" and I can only imagine what it would have been like if Facebook and Twitter had been around in those days. But by letting us paint signs and find other ways to vent our unhappiness, the Vanderbilt Adminstration did a good job of keeping things under control and we found a way to do the best we could...

What are your memories of THE FENCE and having walk all the way around it going to class instead cutting across Neely/Alumi Lawn like we did our first three years? By the way, go by Sarratt while you're in for Reunion (we are holding our Class Party Friday evening in the new Rand Hall next door).

The Student Center been renovated and expanded several times over the last four decades, and it's still a showplace for students before you even start talking about the Student Rec Center and the other on campus amenities we could never even dream of back in the day. Oh, well.