The group today consists of some 30 student members and some 600 associate alumni and faculty members. During the academic year, the students meet every three weeks to discuss topics of their choosing--subjects have ranged from campus safety to affirmative action--with the decades-old goal of providing a better understanding of the issues and of the differing points of view about them. Administrators and staff members knowledgeable about the selected topics are invited to participate. Each year, a winter banquet and a spring outing at the cabin are held, attended by both students and associate members.
The group continues to sort out what to preserve of its past, what to refashion for the future, how to remain relevant in a world much changed over seven and a half decades. But the challenges the group faces are many. Some of its members--some who formed the backbone of the group in days gone by--believe the order's time has come and gone, that it has no place in today's world. Others would like to see the group continue but feel that its effectiveness has been lost.
An immediate problem is sustaining student involvement. The order has relied heavily on senior students for most of this decade, meaning it has had to rebuild each fall after seeing its membership graduate the previous spring. That practice was changed this past year with the recruitment of a greater number of junior class members, including the group's current head, a woman, Devry Boughner, who returns this fall.
A more serious problem is the lack of faculty and administrative participation.
"For the group to succeed as a continuing organization, more university administrators and faculty leaders and staff people need to become involved on a regular basis, contributing and participating in the discussion," said McNary, who recalled that when he headed the UC Berkeley order he had a weekly standing lunch date with the Berkeley chancellor. "Without that, the students can meet and talk and nothing happens."
The lingering aura of secrecy clouds the group's reputation and makes some, including Chancellor Vanderhoef, reluctant to participate.
"Sword and Sandals' primary intention is a good one, an honorable one," said Vanderhoef, "but it has been damaged by the events of the last few years. I've often thought that's too bad, because what it has intended to do from the beginning is exactly the right thing--to give students an opportunity to have contact with people they might otherwise never have contact with, people who can inform and advise about issues where otherwise the students would know only one part of the story.
"But I did not go to the group's last initiation," he added. "If I were a faculty member I wouldn't hesitate a minute to participate, but a chancellor, vice chancellors, deans have a different responsibility. We must worry about perceptions. Sword and Sandals is a perfectly fine organization, but there is an outside chance that we could be tainted by some of the past. Most of the [1993 Aggie] allegations went way beyond reality, but it may be a long time before people forget them."
Faculty members are reluctant to join not only because of the past controversy but because of changing priorities. Faculty seem less interested, in general, in belonging to student organizations. With the demise of in loco parentis, the perceived need for that type of close faculty interaction/supervision disappeared. Further, changing obligations and allegiances have made such participation difficult.
"Faculty are not as closely linked to students or the institution as were their predecessors," said Bill Rains, professor of agronomy and range science and associate member of Sword and Sandals since around 1980. "Departments, for example, used to be strong units because they funded faculty and provided a home. Now that funding has been reduced and faculty have greater allegiance to entities outside the university, one result is a declining interest in campus activities and campus institutions."
*
Given the diminished faculty and administration involvement, can Sword and Sandals achieve its mission of improving the university?
Perhaps what's needed today is a slightly different view of how that mission is achieved. While members, and ultimately the university, can still benefit from the informed discussions provided by the group, that benefit seems today to be superseded by the value of something else--by the sheer longevity, the history, of the order. The group's 75-year existence, one could argue, has not made it outmoded, but has imbued it with all the benefits inherent in a campus institution.
When asked about why they've joined, current student members will point to the improved communication channels, but quickly move on to discuss the sense of continuity and tradition that the order provides. Indeed--in a clear sign of their desire for a continued link to the past--when asked whether they wanted to dispense with the group's distinctive titles for officers, the students voted to retain them during group meetings, using president and vice president only outside the group.
"We're learning from their generation and they're learning from ours," said President Boughner, an agricultural and managerial economics major who has been active on campus with Picnic Day. "These people know the history of the university, and that is what I enjoy. Now when I see the name of a hall, I know why it's named that. I know about that person."
Andrew Donnell '96, former ASUCD president who served as the order's vice president this past academic year, agreed, "I definitely get a sense of what tradition means and the value of passing along the ideas of one generation to the next. The members are pillars of the campus. Not only were they goofy students like us once, but no matter where or how far they've gone, they have still come back to help the institution. They are really an inspiration."
If it does nothing else, Sword and Sandals seems to be unequaled in its ability to create a strong tie to UC Davis that lasts long after the students go on to become alumni.
Seth Merewitz '93, a former ASUCD president and one of the first students initiated when the student group was reinstated in 1991, recalls a fellow initiate looking through the order's old photo album and spotting a photo of his grandfather helping build the cabin. The resemblance between the two was uncanny, said Merewitz, and especially touching because the student had never had the opportunity to meet this grandfather who had died young.
"The group is a wonderful link to the past and gives me a deeper connection to the campus, a feeling of being part of something larger," said Merewitz, now a student at UC Davis' law school. "One day I hope to be passing along my own memories."
In its ability to create a group of alumni whose allegiance to UC Davis is mythic in size, Sword and Sandals indeed seems to be accomplishing its mission of making the university a better place.
*
