Dr. John C. Stevens wrote this letter in January 1971, and shared it with members of the Board of Trustees, the Advisory Board, the National Development Council, and the faculty.  "Not that I think the attached letter is a literary masterpiece, but I wanted you to see the answer I have written to a good friend who wrote to suggest that we are letting standards slip," he wrote in a cover memo.  "I have omitted the name from your copy. Perhaps the thoughts contained will be helpful."

January 29, 1971

Dear _____________,

I appreciate your writing to me and enclosing the newspaper article about our decision to allow pantsuits on the campus.

Actually, ___________, I believe the truth is that Abilene Christian College is just as faithful to its principles as it has even been. We still teach the Bible to all students, we still have daily required chapel for all students and faculty, we do not permit drinking by any of our students and any student who is caught violating that rule is sent home for the balance of the semester regardless of whether he is the son of a trustee of the College or someone we never heard of. We do not permit the girls to smoke at all; in spite of the fact that they claim that there is a double standard. No one is allowed to smoke on the campus. We have rules concerning the hours girls must be in the dormitory. We also have rules concerning the boys' dormitory. They stay out a little later, and I will admit that the rules are somewhat more lenient but no more lenient than they have been in the past.

Now with regard to the pantsuits, I must confess the pantsuits are a vast improvement over some of the dresses that have been worn. Pantsuits are the style now, and I cannot see, for the life of me, that there is anything immoral about them. We are not talking about shorts. We are talking about dignified clothes that happen to be in high fashion and, I believe, are quite modest.

____________, I believe that the fundamental greatness of Abilene Christian College through the years has been that it has stood for the teaching of the Bible and standing for the right thing. The College has never been able to control all of the behavior and the actions of the students. I remember when I first became Dean of Men of the College in 1950, a lot of people were coming to my office to tell me that if I were to get in my car at night and drive out along all of the country roads I would find our students parked out there doing all kinds of things. I went to Dean Adams at the time and asked him if it was my responsibility to do a thing like that. If he had said it was, I was planning to resign the job because I did not want to spend the rest of my life window-peeping to catch people doing the wrong thing. But the Dean told me that our responsibility here is to teach what is right and to stand up for what if right; we are still standing for what is right. We have many more problems now than we had even five years ago. Students come from homes that are confused and broken. The students themselves often are bitter against the church and against their parents and against the country. We do the best we can with them. I truly believe that we have some of the greatest young men and women that there have ever been on this campus in the history of Abilene Christian College. I am proud to be able to work with them. I wish you could know more of them personally. At the same time I shall see that your letter is handed to Dean Garvin Beauchamp and the others who work directly with students, and we shall do our best to continue to run a true Christian College.

Come to see us at Lectureship.

 

Sincerely yours,
 
 
 

John C. Stevens