The Way Back: Step Aside, Boys

By Ben Wright in Nov | Dec 2017 on November 1, 2017 at 8:00 am | No Comments

Founded in 1923, The Texas Ranger was a wild, raucous student-run magazine that poked fun at just about anything—including our farmer friends to the east. Each issue featured a “girl of the month,” which perhaps wouldn’t pass muster today but on the whole was a rather tame affair.

In 1961, The Ranger decided to photograph the November girl of the month on A&M’s then-all-male campus. After “wading through military red tape,” the magazine got permission. In addition to posing on the Aggie lawn, Ms. Eubank of Sherman, a sophomore, played a little table tennis and bowled before chowing down in the Aggie mess hall. The Ranger editors believed they were doing these “love-starved Aggies” a favor by giving them a glimpse of a “real, live UT coed.” Several years later, noted Longhorn lawyer Frank Denius, LLB ’49, Life Member, Distinguished Alumnus, would do A&M a much greater service: provide the legal framework which enabled them to admit women to the university.

Credit: Bill Helmer Papers/UT Austin’s Briscoe Center for American History