University OKs Dances for Students

Baylor University in Waco, Texas, the nation’s largest Baptist-related school, will begin allowing on-campus dances this spring, a move that has upset some religious conservatives.

Robert B. Sloan Jr., the school’s 46-year-old president, approved the dances last week, lifting a ban that goes back more than a century.

“Obviously, there will be no alcohol and we won’t allow any obscene or provocative kind of dancing,” said Sloan, who was inaugurated as president last year. “We want to make sure it’s done in the right way,”

Students are planning the first event, possibly a street dance, for later in the spring, said Collin Cox, president of the student body.

“It’s exciting for us,” he said. “I think it’s great. We don’t envision mass dancing by the students. But it’s done at other universities and we’ve wanted it a long time.”

For several years, Baylor sororities, fraternities and other organizations have sponsored off-campus dances, sometimes euphemistically described as “foot functions.” But school dances have never been allowed on the 12,000-student Baylor campus.

The decision leaves Baylor open to criticism from some Baptist conservatives who say the school, founded in 1845 by Texas Baptists, is moving away from its roots.

“It’s the old slippery slope,” said the Rev. Miles Seaborn, pastor of Birchman Baptist Church in Fort Worth and president of Southern Baptists of Texas, a conservative caucus of the state Baptist convention.

Seaborn called the Baylor decision another compromise with the secular world.

“I don’t feel dancing is something in which God can be glorified or edified,” he said. “I’m not saying it’s all bad and not fun. It’s just something that presents a constant challenge to keep down bad influences.”

Sloan, an ordained Baptist minister, said Baylor doesn’t expect any repercussions from the Baptist General Convention of Texas, which provides about $4 million in annual funding for the school.

“Baylor is committed absolutely and completely to the Christian faith and Baptist principles,” Sloan said.

“This is a way of telling students we are not going to chase them off campus and we are not going to be hypocrites. Dancing has been going on around Baptist campuses for umpteen years.”

Sloan, a 1970 graduate of Baylor, said he and his wife attended off-campus dances while they were in school.

“Dancing can be, and is, when properly done, a very wholesome activity,” Sloan said.