A Hearty Howdy

TCU has a long history of welcoming new Horned Frogs into the family.

By TCU Magazine

August 21^st, 2023

By Rachel Stowe Master

Frosh, fish, slimes. Incoming TCU students have answered to several nicknames throughout the years, but when they first arrive on campus, they are treated like royalty.

The tradition stretches back to TCU’s early days. On the university’s then-new Fort Worth campus, the first and biggest reception of the school year was given by “the old students in honor of the new students,” reports a 1915 Skiff. The university orchestra provided music for the attendees, who were decked out in eveningwear.

Welcome week activities would grow in scope and importance from that point.

Freshman week

In 1924, first-year students were required to attend two evenings of lectures delivered by TCU President E.M. Waits, Dean Colby Hall and several professors. Subjects included TCU ideals, rules, religious activities, athletics and even note-taking tips.

By the late 1920s, Freshman Week featured three days devoted to welcoming incoming students and their families. “In this time,” reports a 1929 Skiff, “they can become adjusted before the upperclassmen come with their misinformation.”

Local auto dealers also furnished new cars to provide city tours for first-year girls, and campus groups hosted a watermelon feast, afternoon tea and a special church service.

Courtesy of TCU Library Special Collections

Freshman Week

In 1925, first-year students voted almost unanimously in favor of adopting caps to be worn by the incoming class. The caps’ purpose was “to aid the freshmen to readily recognize the members of their class, thus enabling them to be of greater service to the entire whole,” reports a 1925 Skiff.

Later classes repeated the tradition. Green was often the color of choice for the short-billed caps, emblazoned with the class graduation year. Freshmen were expected to wear them everywhere they went until fall decapping ceremonies or the first football win.

In the late ’50s, purple-and-white beanies became the norm. By the mid-’60s, beanies were mostly worn just during Howdy Week, with a decapping ceremony held during the first home football game. The tradition faded in the 1970s.

HOWDY WEEK

In 1949, Freshman Week gave way to a campuswide Howdy Week of evening parties, musical productions, dances, a bonfire and pep rallies intended to welcome incoming students and rejuvenate school spirit among returning Frogs.

Through the decades, Howdy Week became packed with a smorgasbord of festivities, including fireworks, picnics, concerts, helicopter rides, roller-skating, country-western dance lessons and the selection of a Howdy Week Queen.

Wrapping up the activities was a more solemn tradition — the freshman pledge and the burning of TCU letters by the TCU Vigilantes. “As the fiery letters ‘TCU’ crumbled to the ground, freshmen recited an oath of loyalty to their school and for the first time as a group sang the Alma Mater.

With this ceremony, freshmen became official citizens of TCU — Horned Frogs first class,” reports the 1955 Horned Frog.

Courtesy of the 1964 Horned Frog Yearbook

Frog Camp

In 1993, the university launched Frog Camp as an optional in-person opportunity for incoming students to make connections before arriving on campus.

Locations have varied for the popular summer programs — Fort Worth, New Orleans, Colorado and Costa Rica, to name a few — but all excursions give students similar experiences of making new friends and learning TCU traditions in small-group environments.

Frogs First

In 2011, the campus-wide Howdy Week welcome was replaced with Frogs First programming.

“We created Frogs First to be a small-group, cohort-based event where students would spend their first few days on campus with other students from their residence halls,” said Brad Thompson ’04 (MLA ’19), director of Student Activities.

The Frogs First Family Dinner for incoming students was initially hosted in faculty, staff and alumni homes across Fort Worth.

“Now we do Family Dinner in the stadium,” Thompson said. “We do about a half-mile of tables all the way around the stadium concourse, and everybody sits down for a meal together.”

Other Frogs First highlights include the Chancellor’s Assembly and Common Reading Program, during which incoming students read an assigned book and then discuss it in small groups led by faculty and staff.

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