It’s no surprise that a number of stories and rumors have swirled around TCU over its 150-year-plus hhistory. Generations of Horned Frogs have wondered whether they get free tuition if they get hit by a car on University or heard whispers about tunnels under campus.
Here, we break down various stories, separating the facts from the folklore.
Most incoming students learn this fact at orientation or Frog Camp. While Horned Frogs are mostly quite docile creatures, they shoot blood out of their eyes when threatened. Occasionally, the football team dons uniforms with red accents, to intimidate opponents and pay homage to our mascot’s primary defense mechanism.
According to TCU Facilities, utility tunnels under the old Worth Hills connected the chiller plant to sorority and fraternity house basements. The tunnels contained pipes and electrical conduits and were difficult to navigate; access was restricted by locked doors. These tunnels, along with the old houses, were demolished in 2017 to make way for Greek Village and new dorms, but a similar utility tunnel still exists on the east side of campus, connecting mechanical rooms in Winton-Scott Hall and the Mary Couts Burnett Library.
From erroneous online gossip to whispers among generations of students, there is a long-standing rumor that student pedestrians who get hit by a car while crossing University Drive will get their tuition paid. Various iterations of the rumor exist — from any type of car to only if it’s a TCU vehicle.
There’s no truth to any of it. However, be careful as you cross the street anywhere on campus!
Built in 1921, Erma Lowe Hall, formerly known as the Ballet Building — and before that “The Little Gym” — was home to TCU’s first gymnasium. As the center of all on-campus physical education activities, the building housed a swimming pool on the entrance level. The pool remained until 1973 when the University Recreation Center opened in the Rickel Building.
Completed in 1954 and renovated in 2016, the Robert Carr Chapel is a beloved university landmark. It hosts over 400 events annually for 30,000-plus people, including around 100 weddings each year.
The tip of Robert Carr Chapel’s steeple is TCU’s highest point at 130 feet 7 inches because it sits on a slightly elevated part of the rolling plain. However, the tallest structure on campus is Amon G. Carter Stadium. From field level to the top of the lighting structure, it’s 163 feet 3 inches tall.
While there is not an official mandate that the steeple must be the tallest structure on campus, Mrs. Frances Sadler, the wife of former Chancellor M.E. Sadler, visited the East Coast in 1953 to study architecture and decorative styles. When she returned, she suggested that the chapel’s steeple be the highest point on campus.
In March 1918, a pilot flying near campus experienced a problem when his elevator cables broke, leaving the plane unable to climb above the flagpole in front of the Main Building (now Reed Hall). The plane’s left wing hit the pole and bent it to the ground, while the propeller struck the northwest corner of the building and damaged the vestibule over the northern door; several students in the revolving doorway narrowly escaped injury. The rear of the plane swooped around and hit the iron-frame arbor leading into the south entrance of Jarvis Hall. Badly damaged, the plane landed upside down, but the pilot was fine.
Just a month earlier, TCU senior Harry Rhodes tragically died after jumping in front of an aircraft’s propeller. The student body of 1,100 was shocked and saddened by the sudden lost of a fellow Frog.
Additionally, a small plane crashed in 1956 at TCU Airport, the university’s short-lived airfield located southwest of campus. The pilot suffered minor injuries after his plane struck telegraph wires before landing.
The Sid W. Richardson Physical Sciences Building, which “chews up first-year students and spits them right back out,” is infamous for its confusing hallways and twisting staircases. The labyrinth-like building is also long rumored to have been modeled after a Scottish castle.
While that anecdote is unconfirmed, Sid Rich, as it’s commonly called, has hosted a head of state. Former U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson served as a special guest at the building’s dedication in the spring of 1971.
William Tucker ’56 BDiv, who served as TCU’s chancellor from 1979 until 1998 and was famous for working until midnight, stopped by a dorm room to check on students during a cold spell in the early 1980s and stumbled onto unsanctioned revelry. The recollection:
“Second semester, 1980, Pete Wright dorm: Thirty degrees outside during a horrible cold spell. Pete Wright interior was 100 degrees as the heat would not shut off. This went on for 10 days. All the windows were open. I wrote a letter to Chancellor Tucker to complain. We had a weekly beer bash in my room with several friends at 1 a.m. Knock-knock on the door. “Come in!” Standing there was Chancellor Tucker who stopped by after a late evening at the office. But we were not busted for the beer and the heat was fixed. We were mortified. Tucker was cool.”
— Scott Vernon ’84
TCU’s friendly and nutty squirrels have become a campus phenomenon over the years. @TCUSquirrel was a popular student-run Twitter account until 2019, there are three TCU squirrel-devoted accounts on Instagram and even TCU360 has covered the furry creatures. Madeleine Young ’20 noted: “There are times when I’m walking to class and an acorn falls in front of me, and I feel like the squirrel is out to get me.” But Kathryn Perkins ’18 viewed the squirrel situation differently, saying, “I think squirrels on any campus are friendly and happy because they are around people all the time.”
As of press time, TCU cannot confirm that any squirrels on campus have been trained to behave in certain ways. They just seem to like their student buddies. And who wouldn’t?
In early 1949, 15 young men “bound together by little else than to get their picture in the yearbook” founded TCU’s Yacht Club in the reflecting pool in front of Mary Couts Burnett Library. Though the Yacht Club was created as a student antic for notoriety, it has been conflated with Fort Worth’s massive flood in May of the same year. Ironically, the flood cut off water to campus for 10 days right before finals, and Goode Hall, a neighboring residence hall to Clark Hall, flooded. (Goode was later demolished in 1958.) Finals still went on as scheduled, but students who were affected were excused from exams.
Three historical anecdotes detail little-known student stories in TCU Magazine’s special Sesquicentennial issue.
© 2026 Texas Christian University
.jpeg?auto=webp)
.jpeg?auto=webp)
.jpeg?auto=webp)
.jpeg?auto=webp)
.jpeg?auto=webp)
.jpeg?auto=webp)
.jpeg?auto=webp)
.jpeg?auto=webp)
.jpeg?auto=webp)
.jpeg?auto=webp)
.jpeg?auto=webp)
.jpeg?auto=webp)
.jpeg?auto=webp)
.jpeg?auto=webp)
/1x.jpeg?auto=webp)
/1x.jpeg?auto=webp)
/1x.jpeg?auto=webp)
/1x.jpeg?auto=webp)
/1x.jpeg?auto=webp)
/1x.jpeg?auto=webp)