They keep Tar Heel traditions alive
For four decades, the blue-blazered members of the Order of the Bell Tower have formed connections through service.
You’ve seen them before a football game or at University Day, students wearing Carolina Blue blazers and ascots or ties with a distinctive Bell Tower motif. They are members of the Order of the Bell Tower, the oldest Carolina Alumni student group and the official ambassadors and tradition keepers of the University.
“They have one of the most engaged alumni bodies for their organization,” said Marcie Leemore, director of enrichment programs at Carolina Alumni. “The organization exists to keep Carolina’s traditions alive.”
The way the order’s members do that has changed over the 44 years of the group’s history. Chartered in 1980, the Order of the Bell Tower has helped host visitors to the chancellor’s box at Carolina football games and served up breakfast (Waffles at Wilson or Biscuits at the Bell Tower) on University Day. They also offer “care packages” of snacks and other items parents can have delivered to students during exams.
But the True Blue booklet that students could stamp when they took their first sip from the Old Well or climbed the Bell Tower has been replaced by the Carolina Alumni app, where they can win prizes by clicking off up to 70 traditions.
The group is also service oriented, sponsoring a Shadow Day that allows teenagers to experience what life on a college campus is like and working together on Habitat for Humanity builds. In fact, the very first students recruited for the order were already running an action line phone service to help answer questions about navigating campus.
“People would call and ask, ‘How do I make an appointment at student health?’ or ‘What are the free movies showing at the Union this week?’” recalled Laurie Norman ‘83, director of alumni relations and annual giving at the School of Education. Norman was a charter member of the order and an adviser for the group when she worked for the alumni association.
“I would describe it as a service-based organization that focuses on alumni and student engagement with one another. It’s just an opportunity to meet alumni that some other organizations would never have,” Norman said.
She remembered being awestruck by the alumni she met at football games, after coming early to place seat cushions in the chancellor’s box. “As a first-generation college student coming from a small town, Wilkesboro, to then meet some of these people that I knew were in the state government and in other roles — I thought that was a pretty big deal.”
Lexi Bell ’22 was a member of the Order of the Bell Tower. (Jon Gardiner/UNC-Chapel Hill)
Making connections with alumni and other students was one of the biggest challenges for more recent members, like Andrew Spratley ‘24, who joined the organization during the pandemic and became president his senior year.
The members brainstormed ways to keep traditions alive by revamping them with socially distanced and remote options. Spratley oversaw reinventing Shadow Day under pandemic conditions. He compiled a massive email list, asking guidance counselors across the state to promote a Zoom panel discussion to their students.
“There might have been 500, or there might have been somewhere around 1,000 because people just kept signing into the Zoom session,” Spratley said. “It was much more than what I was expecting to show up on a random Tuesday night.”
Spratley, now a first-year law student at the University of South Carolina, encourages new students to apply to join the order. “It’s always a great group of people, if you’re looking to get involved with UNC.”
Students are invited to attend Order of the Bell Tower interest meetings at 6:30 p.m. Sept. 12 or Sept. 20. Pizza and drinks will be provided during the event, which will be held at the George Watts Hill Alumni Center on Stadium Drive.
