Considering the Past: Topics in M.C. History

Meredith College was founded by the NC Baptist Convention, and the school’s policies, as established by the Board of Trustees, aligned with the Convention’s attitudes and beliefs. Regarding social dancing, the 1937 North Carolina Baptist State Convention issued a report that opined, “We disapprove and condemn modern dance as a means of social amusement. We recognize that it is demoralizing and that it tends toward immorality.” Ultimately, the NC Baptist Convention left had final policies to the individual schools. So on the Meredith College campus, while interpretive dancing, exhibition dancing, square dancing or folk dancing was acceptable, coupled social dancing (with male partners) did not exist. Eventually, students were able to travel to other venues to dance, albeit with curfews in place.
 
When under a different cultural era the issue of allowing dances on campus arose in 1957, a student editorial in The Twig noted that the arguments against dancing on campus had been based on the Convention’s disapproval – and the Convention provided much of the college’s financial backing. But there was also the concern by officials that the school’s social life would become centered on dancing – and thereby excluding the students who did not dance. The writer’s rather cynical retort was that Meredith College did not HAVE a social life, and certainly not one that might include dates – and so the students went elsewhere.

In early 1957, the Board of Trustees, in response to a request by students, and following the action of the Board of Wake Forest College, lifted the bans on social dancing on campus. This allowed Meredith students the opportunity for “informal and unorganized dancing” in “the Hut” – a casual gathering place for students and their dates – and, for the first time, a dance as part of the annual Junior-Senior Banquet.  On April 13, the dining hall was transformed into a “Spring Fantasy” with blue streamers and white picket fences decorated with roses and ivy. According to the TWIG, Meredith had “taken a huge step forward.”

Then in the fall that same year, prior to the meeting of the Baptist State Convention, the Board of Trustees at both Wake Forest and Meredith agreed to suspend campus dances as a compromise until the Convention could update or confirm their 1937 opinion. On November 20th, with a contingent of Meredith college students looking on, the Convention voted to reaffirm the 1937 condemnation of dancing as a form of entertainment. Furthermore, delegates to the convention, (referred to a “messengers”) approved the appointment of a committee to look into “attitudes, activities or organizations” that “might be hindering the development of a generally spiritual atmosphere” on Baptist college campuses. 

And with that, social dancing on the Meredith College campus disappears for several years. While no direct mention is made of the convention’s decision in the Twig, brief asides appear in passing. Students had apparently decided to bow to the inevitable: the Sophomore Dances and the Junior-Senior Dances continued, but now were held at various off-campus venues. And according to a 1976 article in The Twig recounting this recent history and quoting the handbook, students in 1964-65 were allowed to attend dances within a 35 mile range, but only from "approved organizations or institutions" and not those admitting the "general public."

The restriction on dancing on campus was removed from the handbook in 1969-70.