By Randy Fiedler

It once took a little creative thinking to slip around the ban on dancing at Baylor.

In the spring of 1977, when on-campus dances were in their 132nd year of prohibition, students sought to publicize a few non-credit classes being offered by Baylor’s Free University program — including two dance classes. However, President Abner McCall told the student group that because of Baylor’s ban he could not approve any official fliers or newspaper ads that would promote dancing.

The members were forced to spend about five hours with felt-tip pens laboriously removing all dance references from the 2,000 fliers they had already printed up. But when it came to the advertisements the group planned to run in the Lariat on March 16 and 17 listing the upcoming Free University classes, the students used a different strategy.

The text of the ads was altered so that country-western dancing was renamed “The Art of Western Movements,” and soul dancing was changed to “Rhythmic Soul Movements.” The ads ran without incident.

Baylor would not lift its ban on campus dances for another 19 years.

(Sources: Baylor Lariat March 16-17 and 30, 1977)