Editor’s Note: For now over 75 years, Baylor Line has been publishing vivid storytelling from across the Baylor Family. I don’t think our archives full of deep, inspirational features should live solely on shelves, so we are bringing them back to life in BL Classics. This Classic article from November 1985 is the first of a two-part series–Collins Then and Collins Now-capturing life at Ruth Collins Hall where many freshman women, including myself, cut our teeth as Baylor Bears. Given the dormitory’s most recent round of upgrades, it may be time for another installment to the series.
In the fall of 1960, Baylor’s campus was enclosed by Eighth and Fourth Streets. John Kennedy and Richard Nixon were campaigning for the presidency, and Lyndon Johnson was running for two offices–vice-president and U.S. senator. Racial segregation in restaurants, transportation, theatres–and Baylor–was the law. Girls had few realistic options for supporting themselves after college: teaching, nursing, office work–or marriage to a professional with a large income.
For good reason, when I arrived at Baylor that September, being acceptable was the most important thing in the world.
For an instant after I burst into Room 259 of Ruth Collins Hall and saw my new roommate, we each held our breath. Then we let it out with relieved laughs, started talking, and didn’t stop for three years. In my roommate, Caren Alayne King from Houston, I found a kindred spirit. For about a week we were careful in keeping our things organized and our room clean. Then we discovered we could both tolerate a high degree of mess, and we relaxed. We were “roomies” for the rest of my time at Baylor and are still friends today. Our dorm director was Mrs. Kabrick (“Mrs. K”), whose gimlet eye we never seriously challenged. We were too busy having fun, at least that first year.
All rooms in Collins were not created equal. We were at the end of the corridor by the stairs with the Home Management House about a yard away from our windows. Since that brick wall gave us privacy to keep our windows wide open, and the stairwell acted as a chimney to create a draft, Room 259 was cool and reasonably quiet.
Neither Caren nor I came from an air-conditioned home. Ruth Collins was a vast improvement over the living conditions I grew up in. For a good part of my life, there were five of us at home, we rented a room to a woman and her young child, and we had one bathroom with faulty plumbing. At Collins, my closet was bigger–much, much bigger–and the bathroom worked. Dorm food was no hardship. It was available at regular hours and somebody else washed the dishes.
Moving into the dorm was like boarding the Love Boat. Planned social activities, intellectual stimulation, new friends–drama! excitement! adventure! ROMANCE!! Baylor seethed with boys, young and old. They were the reason for the football games, they led the yells, conducted the pep rallies, taught the classes, and ran the university. The potential made my head swim.
Caren and I bought navy blue ribcord bedspreads, and that was about the extent of our decorating. We had a radio, popcorn popper, and a little gizmo to boil water in a cup. I stocked up on Lipton teabags, Pream instant coffee creamer, sugar cubes (less messy than granulated sugar), Holloway Slo-Poke All-Day Suckers, and Mister Salty Pretzels. We were ready for the real work of the fall semester. all-night gab sessions on Life, Death, Related Subjects–and Men.
Every night anyone interested would gather in 259, sit on the beds, roll hair on metal rollers with plastic bristles that were murder to sleep on, cover the curlers with lacy nylon curler caps, clean faces with Pond’s Cold Cream and a box of Kleenex, and talk. We didn’t watch television or listen to records or talk on the telephone–we had no TV, hi-fi, or phone. Dorm hours for freshmen women had been relaxed by 1960, but weeknights. we had to be inside by 9 p.m.; Friday and Saturday, 12 a.m.; and Sunday, 11 p.m. There was nothing else to do but talk. Oh, we could have studied, but nobody wanted to do that.
Sophistication soon set in. I wrote a friend, “I’m picking up many bad habits. I drink cokes constantly and ‘Crap!’ is an exclamation oftimes found on my lips. To keep from swearing etc. a new word is ‘hecky-durn.’ Pretty good, ha?”
I had never heard the term “in loco parentis,” but I knew Mrs. K kept better tabs on me than my parents ever had. The Baylor Coed’s Handbook instructed: “It is necessary for girls to sign out anytime they leave the campus and anytime they leave the residence hall after 6 p.m.” Some restrictions applied to everybody: “All students are expected to remain on the campus the weekend prior to final examinations week, except in cases of emergency.”
Baylor had tried to prepare us with publications such as The Bear Facts of a College Education: “As a general estimate, students should expect to need from $125 to S150 monthly to meet their total expenses, including board, room, tuition, and incidentals. A student who is careful in his expenditures could expect to manage his financial affairs for nine months on $1200.”
Of the women, only seniors in good standing could have cars on campus. The rest of us walked everywhere. Urban renewal and I-35 had not yet transformed Waco, and groups of us walked downtown through some truly sleazy neighborhoods to go to the movies or to shop.
Deciding what to wear was no problem. We could choose between skirt and blouse or a dress. Some went to great lengths to circumvent the restrictions printed in the Handbook: “Picnic clothes include jeans, bermudas, peddle pushers, and toreadors (shorts are worn for gym classes and on tennis courts). Girls leaving for and returning from week-end trips in cars wear casual clothes but not jeans or other types of picnic clothes which are inappropriate.” We never thought to challenge another dictum: “Sunday is a special day at Baylor and clothes should be in keeping with the day; no loafers and sox, please. Hose are to be worn on Sunday morning and evening. For church, a hat is A MUST!”
Of course, Collins Hall was not perfect. One day a howl of outrage came from the room next to ours. One of the girls came out into the hall holding a shoe full of double-edged razor blades. When we investigated, we discovered that the medicine cabinet over our sink had been installed by just setting it in a hole in the wall. The little slot in its back designed for the disposal of used blades (in the days of “safety razors”) emptied directly into her closet.
And the elevators were inadequate–not much of a problem for those of us on second–and sometimes stuck between floors. Occasionally, there were reasons. One girl moved her “roomie” into the elevator–desk, radio, clothes, posters–while she was out one evening. But when Mrs. K realized something was up, the conspirators kept stopping the elevator between floors so she wouldn’t catch them.
One night, loud screaming brought everyone out into the hall to see a newly engaged girl being dragged, stark naked, toward the shower for a congratulatory dunking. Across her rear were various slogans written in lipstick. Mrs. K was not amused, and even I was a little shocked.
One unverified tale had some girls going out after hours through the window of a three-girl room on first floor. I don’t doubt they went out, but the rumor said when they climbed back in, Mrs. K was sitting on one of the beds waiting for them.
But for the most part, everything was routine. On Sunday mornings, church buses were at the door of the dorm to help us cope with those high, high heels with pointed toes, the little pillbox hats with veils, and gloves. Church was a great place to meet guys. Campaigns were, too. Of getting John Tanner elected freshman class president, I wrote, “We were all off to a good start by not studying.”
The administration seemed to think that only girls leading cheers appealed to carnal interests, but over a photo of the boys-only group, I wrote, “The yell leaders were considered by many to be the cutest things on campus. Well, they almost were.” The yell leaders started a controversy we freshmen didn’t even know was a problem until a Lariat editorial pointed it out: “CLAW ON TRIAL–A cruelty joke type of humor has become connected with a trial event on campus this fall, and it’s beginning to border on the ridiculous. . . . The point of reference is THE BEAR CLAW! Initiated by the yell leaders to the ‘as yet awed by upper-classmen’ freshman class, this extended-arm, curved-hand symbol may well put us into a position where Baylor will be the laughing stock of every campus and the butt of many jokes. . . . How many students are going to do this properly? In fact, how many students are going to do it at all?”
The wider questions of the time did encroach on Baylor from time to time as I discovered in listening to a sermon at First Baptist Church. In “The Issue Before Us: Its Threat to Religious Liberty,” the pastor said, “if any loyal son of that power [Catholicism] ever becomes President of our country, the same power which claims to hold (and he believes it does) his very soul’s destiny in its hand will certainly use him to forward its cause.”
Since I was an art major, I joined the Collins committee to make dorm decorations for Homecoming. Wanting something that would not be ruined by bad weather, we made a banner out of white cloth with brown burlap letters and a large chicken-wire bear covered with burlap to stand guard by the door. When we finished with the figure, it did resemble a standing bear–a pregnant one about due to deliver. On a large Homecoming Hostess button, we wrote her name: Mama Bear. I still have the button, but I think the bear was stolen within the hour. We had even less luck with the banner. Our spirit was better than our spelling, and our banner proclaimed: “ASSINATE THE AGGGIES!” After we had the banner up, some guy pointed out our mistake. Mortified, we hurriedly corrected the spelling to “ASSASSINATE THE AGGIES!”
I loved Homecoming. It was perfect. We even beat the Aggies, who looked pretty good to me. I wrote, “Their band was the best I have ever seen or ever hope to see. Their little section or two of boys could have out-yelled our stadium if their hearts had been in it. The game was wonderful. So exciting. (We almost got beat—or tied) The way our boys bounced back after severe set-backs was a thrill. I’m dead. I’ve never seen so many people so tired. This is no joke–the Slime boys didn’t go to bed from Wednesday through Sunday. John T went to sleep at the game. It was a wonderful time.”
I invited all my UT friends up for the Texas game I was convinced Baylor would win: “What blasty times we’ll have!!! Fun, Fun! I cut French today. We get only three unexcused cuts then ###!” The UT friends who didn’t make it to Waco for the game sent a telegram that told the results: “Congratulations Longhorns Yea Stomp Whistle Snort.”
After the game, I sat on the end of my bed and wept over our defeat. Some of my less sensitive friends who visited the campus made sarcastic remarks about what we had not yet learned to call “The Baylor Bubble.” True, Baylor and the University of Texas were not alike, as The Green and Gold Guide reminded us: “Women students do not smoke anywhere, anytime while they are enrolled at Baylor.”
Beginning to realize college life might not be all perfect, I joined Columbus Avenue Baptist Church to be established somewhere with a pastor–just in case disaster struck. But the real issues, it seemed to me, as a freshman, were being addressed elsewhere: “Had a good discussion at Chapel on separation of church and state by Charles Wellborn of Seventh & James Baptist,” I wrote. “One could have heard a pin drop in that auditorium and at the close there was thunderous applause. It was a thoughtful sane message.” Because most of my friends were Democrats, I was a somewhat ambivalent supporter of the Republicans. On the door to 259, we had two bumper stickers: one for Kennedy, the other for Nixon.
On election day I wrote, “When you get this letter, we’ll have a new president. I honestly pray to God that the best possible man will be elected. Next election, we’ll be voting. I just went down to eat & watch Chet & Dave [Huntley and Brinkley’s NBC television news] and I just put my clothes in the washer. I have to (har de har har) study now–.” I spent the rest of the night in the TV lounge on the first floor, watching election returns with Mrs. K and a few other die-hards until 4 a.m., when Nixon made a ‘qualified concession’ speech and I cried again. All my teams were losing.
A UT friend wrote, “On Tuesday, the day of the election, Sally and I went and stood by the Travis County Court House and distributed handbills reminding voters of fellow Americans who do not have this privilege in the deep South. The response was quite encouraging.”
Of course, some people at Baylor were active in promoting better race relations in a way quite comfortable for most of us. The Green and Gold Guide pointed out that BSU missions volunteer students “teach Bible stories, handicraft, and other phases of Bible School work to Latin American, Negro, and white children.”
Most of the residents of Ruth Collins just didn’t want to think about it. Then, as now, proper behavior was important at Baylor, typified by Mrs. K’s dictum, “Whistling girls and cackling hens always come to no good end.”
Somehow, proper behavior wasn’t working for me. In a November letter I said, “I’ve never seen a more beautiful day. It’s warm and windy–just like March. The leaves are all loyalists–green and gold–except for the Communist Crepe Myrtle which are red. The wind whips the fallen leaves around in whirlpools that get mixed up with my feet. I took my scarf off and let my hair blow.”
I was dreamy, excited, and puzzled. I went out with a guy who kissed me! But instead of kissing back, I said (quite properly) I didn’t court on the first date. He quickly dumped me back at the dorm.
“My heart is rent into many small pieces,” I wrote. “I could hear wedding bells in the distance. They turned out to be the chimes of Pat Neff. I really think he thinks I’m angry. Angry!? I was flattered. If all he wants to do is court, I don’t care about it. But I don’t think so. He’s a sort of shy guy–not the wolf type at all. Anyway, I hope he calls–or at least speaks in Art tomorrow. I’ll keep you posted.” He didn’t call or speak to me, ever again. Football, politics, and love were not going as I had been led to expect.
And there was lots of time to reflect. Everyone stayed on campus for the weekends. Going home was something few students could afford since room and board were already paid for, and bus or train tickets cost too much. I traveled all the way home—to Dallas—for the first time at Thanksgiving.
In the days before Christmas, Caren and I decorated the door to 259 with a tree of styrofoam balls and sprayed-on “snow” over gold foil paper. Somebody scratched it off. We convinced ourselves we could catch up on studies during Christmas vacation. Instead, we rehashed all those letters with friends attending other schools. We returned to Ruth Collins after New Year’s needing a rest, but getting finals instead.
Somehow I made it through finals with passing grades and resolved to be more intellectual as a second-semester freshman. I enrolled in logic and began to read existentialism. In a letter I wrote, “I never knew that there was so much I didn’t know. I read it with a dictionary. Five pages in an hour. I can see that this will be a fight. The philosophy isn’t so hard, I just know nothing of the terminology. . . . I’m going into this thing cold. I’m preparing to delve into an excerpt of Sartre (whoever the devil he was! Not listed in dictionary).” I decided to be organized as well and made a schedule for myself: “How To Live Next Week: Mondav: Wake up happy, stay happy! Exercize.” My good intentions were still better than my spelling.
Late night talk sessions were more and more often on the pros and cons of integration, or more specifically, on civil disobedience. Most of the young people I respected believed in racial equality, but how to achieve it was something else. In Austin, segregation was being openly challenged with economic pressure. White protesters waited in line at movie theatres to ask if they could buy a ticket for themselves and “a friend.” When they were refused service–just in case the friend turned out to be Black–they moved to the back of the line and did it again.
An article from the Daily Texas was thought provoking for those of us who took religion seriously: “400 Expected to Stand In for Mass Protest. Time of protest to be announced from pulpits.” My friends sent me a mimeographed handout: “STAND UP FOR WHAT YOU BELIEVE . . . . you can demonstrate your belief that segregation is a glaring social injustice. Your democratic right is non-violent protest.”
The activities of Christians in Austin seemed exciting compared to safe Waco. The Christian Faith-and-Life Community in Austin, a “research and training center for lay ministry,” had on its faculty Joseph A. Slicker, the keynote speaker at Baylor’s Focus Week 1961 in February. The theme: “Can Christ Conquer?”
There was nothing saccharine about comments by Focus Week speakers, and they probably reflected the discussions we were having in our room: “Our faith is a faith that takes risks. Responsible skepticism faces the prospect of losing all values.” “We must accept the responsibility for our mistakes and not blame them on the will of God.” “As spiritual creatures, if spiritual matters aren’t important to us, we are not what we were created to be.” “Faith may be an insanity if it is blind.” “Remember Thomas. Jesus didn’t condemn him but showed him.”
I wrote my UT friends, “You would be proud of us. We are sitting in my room talking about existentialism.” Slicker was to address Guy B. Harrison’s history class, and I planned to ask him about Christian Existentialism. “I have many hot-cha ideas about that.” In my notes on his talk, I put down a comment from me: “He answered a question! Mine!! Ha!!! ‘Is this Christian existentialism?’ ‘ No such thing as Ch ex–the Gospel is never a system. It is a standpoint.'” And my observation of Prof. Harrison: “Poor Guy B. He looks a little red.”
And the ostensible reason for college–classes–continued, as well. I reported, “I got my first failing grade in French. I’m getting worried about that course.” I was right to worry.
Not everyone in Austin was a radical. In the Daily Texan, the amusements editor criticized stand-ins because they hurt theatre owners and asked the question, “How long has it been since you’ve seen a Negro picketer?”
Some Baylor students were activists, but in a more traditional college way, as the Daily Texan reported: “BED-ON-WHEELS VISITS AUSTIN.” A group from Rho Gamma Sigma, Baylor’s pre-law fraternity, pushed a bed from Waco to Austin non-stop in twenty-three hours, four minutes. “Since the bed was equipped by an electric light burned by battery,” the paper commented, “night traveling was perfectly legal.”
Although (or perhaps because) I had attended church every Sunday and most Wednesdays of my life, organized religion seemed to have nothing whatsoever to do with the major concerns of my freshman life–existentialism, integration, and personal rejection. Like most other dorm residents, I quit going entirely unless I had a date. I didn’t feel guilty at all. Occasionally, I did think of organized religion. I wrote on a program for Columbus Avenue Bap-tist, “Church with Larry. He went to sleep in the middle of the service! It was the funniest thing I ever saw!”
In the spring, the corridors of Collins reverberated to rehearsals for All-University Sing. In those days, it was all university. Any group that worked up an act could appear. Since the Freshman Class act (organized, I think, by James Horn and Larry Coltharp) concerned dorm life in the future, we gathered props by sneaking our blonde formica-topped furniture from 259 down the stairs and out the back door. It never occurred to us that when Mrs. K saw the act, she might recognize the furniture.
The next morning she showed up at the door of our room, which was, quite literally, knee deep in dirty clothes, books, and papers, but devoid of night stands, chairs, and desks. When she asked, sternly, where the furniture was, Caren said, “We loaned it to some girls on fifth floor.” Declaring she would return in an hour, Mrs. K left, and we raced upstairs to borrow furniture from somebody else. When she returned, our room was full of furniture and the junk was off the floor.
In our Sing act, the coeds sang five verses of “I Enjoy Being a Girl,” which ended:
“. . . I’m strictly a female female,
And my future, I hope, will be
In the home of a brave and free male
Who enjoys being a guy, having a girl–like–me!”
It expressed my philosophy perfectly. Trying to nail down my future in case things didn’t work out, I took an interest evaluation test. My scores indicated I’d better get married: “Theoretical, 10, aesthetic, 11, social, 10, political, 12, religious, 16, and economic, 0.”
To celebrate special occasions, or anytime the dorm food got to be too much, we went to the Elite Steak House on the Circle, where the menu boasted: “Fresh Red Snapper Steak, The reigning king of the Texas seafood catch, broiled with parsley butter or almondine and served with french fried potatoes and green tossed salad with special Elite dressing . . . $1.65.” And, like all other restaurants, it had at the bottom of the menu, “We reserve the right to refuse service to anyone.”
For May Day elections we ran James Horn for Yell Leader and did most of our campaigning when the guys involved came to the back door after hours and whistled “Dixie” to signal us through the open windows. One of the candidates for Student Council was a progressive. “He’s anti-administration (almost),” I wrote, “for campus dances and other left-wing, radical, unheard of ideas. It would be nice if the government really ment something. Maybe if I supported all the Conservative candidates, they’d loose–then the radical forces would take over!”
I didn’t want the year to end, and wrote, “I have the biggest blasts in art. I have so much to do I’ll never have years enough–if I knew I was going to graduate with an MRS degree I wouldn’t worry about it, but until then–I can’t believe we’re going to be Sophomores–wise fools–. I like being a green (and gold) freshman. Part of life, I guess. Please write. Even my mother has forgotten my name.”
For May Day, we took special delight in walking by Mrs. K in our Bermuda shorts. The Lariat prepared us for the excitement: “Various activities will continue throughout the day in Minglewood Bowl including an egg throwing contest, a fat man’s race for those over 200 pounds and a three-legged race.”
I spent May Day with Larry Coltharp, a friend I described as “one crazy boy whom I like very much. We sat out under the stars and talked and talked. We’re so alike.” At least the guy didn’t run the other way.
Other things were looking up as well. “One of our boys, David Farr, ran on an integration platform and WON. I couldn’t believe it. Not that the world is going to explode now, but it is a beginning.”
When the end of the semester came, I wasn’t ready to leave the important things: “I’m staying late to have fun! Read, eat, party, etc. before home. It ought to be wild. No classes, etc.” Before long, even the partying ended, and the dust settled in the corridors of Ruth Collins. It had been a good place to be in 1960, but I didn’t look back and say, “Never again.” I only looked forward, wondering, “What next?” Ruth Collins Hall probably did too.
