09/25/25 9:06am
The stormy forecast turns out to be right. Hit the Bricks, the event where everyone spends the day running around the Quad to raise money to fight cancer, was originally scheduled for today. But the students in charge postponed, in hopes of avoiding a repeat of last year’s relentless rain and slippery course.
The Army ROTC’s No Fear Battalion gets ahead of the rain with a pre-dawn rope climb, but most of campus awakes to a downpour. So, instead of circling the Quad in soggy steps, they’re breaking out umbrellas and seeking refuge at Campus Grounds, the student-run coffee spot on the Quad, and Smith’s Cafe in Z. Smith Reynolds Library. (Yes, you read that right, alumni from the previous century — you can buy, and consume, coffee and pastries in the library.)
09/25/25 9:03am
09/25/25 6:35am
Parents are trickling onto campus for Family Weekend, and by evening, the skies clear just in time for the kickoff performance of this year’s Secrest Artists Series — the multi-Grammy-winning Soweto Gospel Choir, with a joyful program that begins with South African freedom songs before moving into traditional spirituals, classics and the music of icons ranging from Aretha Franklin to Leonard Cohen. Their percussion, choreography and soulfulness are a sight and sound to behold.
09/25/25 10:17am Campus Grounds
The spark for the Secrest series goes back at least to 1901 with a longstanding committee on “Lectures” that soon added performances, and eventually focused exclusively on the arts, according to an account written by Carlton P. West, a history professor starting in 1928 and also College librarian from 1946-1975.
He writes about “older” faculty members’ recalling “with considerable appreciation” an appearance by Ida Tarbell, a pioneering investigative journalist who took on Standard Oil Co. Another memorable performance: “The play, probably by Shakespeare, was given in the old chapel, the only available auditorium on (the original) campus, excepting the church. The chapel had only a simple bare platform with absolutely no staging facilities, hence it was necessary to improvise dressing rooms by hanging sheets on either side of the platform. The result, perhaps unknown to the performers at the time, was a shadow show on either side of the open area in which the play was actually being performed. The effect had somewhat the quality of a three-ring circus.”
09/25/25 7:46pm Wait Chapel
Our librarian would hardly recognize what that series has become. Marion Secrest, a local performing arts patron, endowed it in 1987 in honor of her deceased husband, Willis Secrest, to enhance cultural education with appearances by both established artists and promising newcomers at no charge to students, faculty and staff. Past performers include a wide range of genres from Silk Road Ensemble, founded by cellist Yo-Yo Ma, to Carolina Chocolate Drops and Orchestre National de Lyon with Leonard Slatkin. Next up: Grammy-winning mezzo soprano J’Nai Bridges.
09/25/25 1:19pm
09/25/25 10:03am
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