The Fence Club at Carpe Diem University has a venerable history, evolving from a 19th-century quasi-secret society for men to a service organization known and respected throughout the City on a Hill community. The origins of the Fence Club are murky, as it emerged as a secretive society in the early 1880s when Carpe Diem was an all-male college. It takes its name from the fence that separated the main Carpe Diem quadrangle from City on a Hill Park, which is adjacent to the campus. Legend has it that juniors would congregate on a Spring evening on the fence, and some would be secretly signalled to come to a specific location to receive an invitation to join the Fence Club.

Following the end of World War I, the club emerged as a more visible presence on the Carpe Diem campus, serving as a social nexus for seniors who were invited to be members and a center around which charitable activities to benefit the City on a Hill community were organized. Fence Club members are members for life, and the organization, incorporated in 1899 independently from Carpe Diem University, has amassed a considerable amount of money over the years through donations and bequests from its members.

In 1925 the club purchased an ornate mansion on Regal Street, near the campus, which continues to serve as the center of Fence Club activities to this day. The Fence Club began inviting women students as members in 1967, the year after Carpe Diem University became coeducational. Potential members are still recruited in a secretive ritual on a set day each Spring, and only rising seniors may be invited to membership. Twenty-three new members are initiated each year, as they have been since its first recorded initiation, in honor of the founding of Carpe Diem in 1823.