Photo essay by Daniel Dubois, Joe Howell and John Russell
Long ago in the Land of Commodores, the taking down of Commencement tents ushered in three long and languid months. Professors abandoned their neckties and headed to the cooler elevations of places like Beersheba Springs. Nashville children spent their days roaming free until twilight fell and their mothers called them in for supper. Furman Hall and Neely Auditorium took on a musty aura of Southern heat and old books.
And then somebody invented air conditioning and antiperspirants (though not the same person), and somebody else offered the moms gainful employment—and everything changed. The university halls teemed with science camps for kids and water aerobics classes for their grandparents, and art exhibits for the artistic and Zumba groups for the zumbistic. And the campus photographers—who, it turns out, were there during the summer along with everybody else—went forth and took pictures.