Advent Semester Convocation 2026

President of the Order of the Gown Betsy Baker, C’27, shared the below remarks at the Advent Semester Convocation on Friday, Sept. 18, 2026.

Advent Semester Convocation story | Full text of Mobley's remarks:

Esteemed colleagues, friends—

It is an honor to welcome our inductees and their gowners, friends, and family to Convocation. I am so glad to be with you all. I am grateful to Vice-Chancellor Pearigen, Provost Wilson, Dean Cooley, and the Very Reverend Chris Epperson. Thank you also, Dr. Dotson, for taking the time to be with us today.

When William Porcher DuBose created the Order of the Gown—then the Order of the Gownsman—in 1873, he imagined an intellectual and moral kinship between the white aristocracy of the American South, attending Sewanee, and the elite, gown-wearing English students who attended institutions like Oxford and Cambridge. DuBose was a lifelong defender of the Confederacy and also a spiritual mentor to the Gownsmen of Sewanee—he lived under the institutional banner of Ecce Quam Bonum, but he glossed in its meaning a justification for the violent, hateful exclusion of everyone who did not look like, think like, and act like he did.

Today, over 150 years on, we still wear the gown, and we, too, agree to abide by the values represented in EQB. Women students, Black students, immigrant students, transgender students, and gay students all wear the gown at the University of the South, and all agree to abide by the values represented in EQB.

What values? Those of integrity, respect, self-expression, and community. We discern, in these values, a responsibility that runs counter to the legacy DuBose left behind; we recognize that integrity demands honesty, hard work, and cooperation; that respect demands a recognition of the humanity and the dignity of our peers; that self-expression demands self-awareness and positive growth; that community demands mediation, patience, and compassion. We recognize that we are all in the midst of the imperfect realization of these values.

Generations of students before us, all the way back to the first class of Gownsmen, have defined and refined the purpose of these values on campus for themselves—slowly, with great effort and great dedication, we have come into a fuller representation of the responsibility of EQB: a diversity of experiences, backgrounds, creeds, and dreams living together in pursuit of academic excellence.

You are the lifeblood of the Order of the Gown. You are the lifeblood of EQB; you are the next class charged with the duty to define the responsibilities of integrity, respect, self-expression, and community at Sewanee. The Order of the Gown began with a vision of exclusive, insular membership—today, the Order of the Gown has the privilege of celebrating and uplifting the excellent work of students here from every corner of the nation and across the world. Now, as members, it is your turn to take up the work of improving this living, learning, ever-evolving institution—it is hard, good work, and you are prepared to do it well!