By Elissa Branum
Administrators at evangelical colleges often act as parents to their students, taking their place in student lives as authority figures and nurturers. What happens when these pseudo-parental decision-makers violate the student’s constitutional rights? According to an anonymous graduate from an Arkansas evangelical college, administrators lean into heavy discipline when they discover that a student is LGBTQ+. They are treated as children who need punishment and course correcting. As the disciplinary officer told the student I interviewed, “I’m doing this for your own good because your parents aren’t here, but we are, and God can see what you’re doing.”
When evangelical college administrators use “parenting” language, they invoke an archaic legal custom called in loco parentis or “in the place of a parent.” In the common law tradition passed from Roman to British to American law, in loco parentis meant college administrators could treat students as children. This common law doctrine gave higher education leaders authority over students, legally transferring power from the parent to the educator and allowing institutions to discipline and expel students without due process (a constitutional right).
From the beginning of American history, all colleges and Universities used in loco parentis to control student behavior and meet educational goals. In the late 1800s, college administrators and parents were worried about how to keep youth in line—with more women attending college and other societal controls such as apprenticeships falling out of practice. It was Protestant colleges that exercised a far more extensive and restrictive authority compared to Catholic or secular schools. This was particularly true in the South, and for many years, Protestant evangelical colleges were the only colleges available. Even after the Morrill Land Grant Acts of 1862 and 1890 founded state universities, Protestant colleges continued to recruit many students and influence community life.
One purpose of in loco parentis rules was to stop queer behavior among students. In my archival research, I’m excited but not surprised to say that I found historical examples of queer life at Protestant colleges in Texas. There’s Lela Jewell writing lesbian love poems to her classmates in the 1880s at Texas Christian. Or “Mikey” and “Frankye” sleeping together on the roof of their dorm in 1918 at Abilene Christian, and Gene Knight and Elizabeth Alexander getting married in a playful “manless” wedding ceremony thrown by the Young Women’s Christian Association in 1929. Though women’s romantic “crush culture” was “normalized” at secular women’s colleges between the 1870s and 1910s, women’s college relationships were expected to end to make way for heterosexual marriage.
By the 1920s, reformers and school officials were partnering with parents to put a stop to women’s “crush culture” at secular women’s colleges. The southern evangelical colleges I study responded to these concerns by creating even more strict campus laws based in loco parentis. Rules included curfews, dress codes, and conduct expectations. Punishment for rule breaking could mean reporting to parents and expulsion—and when students enrolled at evangelical colleges, they signed away the right to argue against being expelled. A number of court cases around the country in the late 1800s and early 1900s protected colleges’ use of in loco parentis rules. Then, in 1961, students who were expelled after participating in civil rights sit-ins won their case against a university (Dixon v. Alabama). After this case, courts were more likely to protect student constitutional rights at state colleges and secular colleges—but not at evangelical colleges. Southern evangelical institutions have benefited from the total lack of successful legal challenges to in loco parentis policies on their campuses.
During the AIDS crisis, evangelical colleges used their parenting authority to create campus rules requiring blood tests and reparative counseling for students under disciplinary review. In the present, evangelical college student life contracts prosecute queer relationships, lead to poor mental health outcomes, can result in expulsion (from organizations, sports teams, or completely from the university), and legislate conversion therapy or required counseling for premarital sex. Justifications for present-day anti-queer student policies rely on the tradition of in loco parentis. My oral history interviewees shared the overwhelming pressure created by these policies. Fear of penalty from administrators remained a motivator for staying closeted, avoiding dating, and having difficulty maintaining friendships.
Over time, campus governance based in loco parentis developed grounds to discriminate against queer students through religious exemption to civil rights protections. And no legal challenge has stood up against evangelical college rules that discriminate against queer and trans students—yet. This is why REAP’s lawsuit is so historic, and why we need to keep fighting.
Elissa Branum (she/her) is a PhD candidate in U.S. History at Rutgers University-New Brunswick. Her research examines race, gender, and use of the law on evangelical higher education campuses in Arkansas and Texas from 1860-1969.
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