For the last 143, all the students at Wheaton College wanted to do was dance. Now ? for the first time ever ? the private Christian school in Illinois will be able to get down.

“Change happens very slowly at this school,” said Will Sleeth, junior class president at Wheaton.

Since Wheaton was established in the 1860s, dancing has been prohibited due to its “sinful” characteristics. For the past several decades, students and alumni have been pushing for the ban’s removal, and this year the college finally agreed.

“Beliefs haven’t changed, but the times have,” Sleeth said.

Because of these changing social and cultural norms, the Board of Trustees at Wheaton made the decision to lift the ban. The school had their first dance last week with large student attendance. Before the event, the university sponsored dancing classes, and many students got involved in the event.

The new Community Covenant allows student to dance, but stipulates they must avoid behavior “which may be immodest, sinfully erotic or harmfully violent.” In essence, the college still has reservations about dancing, especially among today’s youth.

The ban’s lifting was the next step in a line of slowly changing processes in the university’s history. Not until the 1960s were students allowed go to movies, and students and faculty were not allowed dance with spouses or relatives at family events, such as weddings, until the 1990s.

“We’ve wanted it for a long time. [Wheaton’s president], Duane Litfin, the students and most of the alumni are supportive of the change,” Sleeth said. “The mindset […] among the alumni was the seed of the change.”

The university has faced little opposition since making the change, mainly sprouting from some alumni who disagree with lifting the ban.

Otherwise the college campus has been very supportive of the move, especially because the college feels that students need to be aware and ready for the real world. Keeping up with the times, then, was an important part of this change.

“Students need to learn how to make responsible choices. We want to make students learn how to think critically and be discerning,” Sam Shellhammer, vice president of student development, said in a press release.

Wheaton has been receiving a lot of attention, especially from those who are surprised the college had the ban in the first place.

“[T]he ban was in effect for 143 years, since the 1860s. The cultural mindset was very different back then. Times have changed,” Sleeth said.