Dance With the Devil
At this moment, the dance floor is looking thin. It’s a desert, a no-fly zone. Every so often an awkward lambada-ish romp appears, but usually the two-headed dance demon evaporates after a couple of songs.
Slowly the night begins to change. The sights, the sounds, the scene mutates as Olathe’s schizophrenic dance club, Orlando’s, goes from early-evening two-step to late-night hip-pop.
Monday night at Orlando’s resembles a dressed-down prom, with members of the eighteen-and-over crowd strolling around (usually in twos) or lounging at their favorite tables to watch the indoor traffic. People shout out to one another from far away, and two guys stand awestruck, drooling over a hot girl they’ve never seen before.
Sometime around 11, as the crowd begins to swell, 21-year-old Maria Magill (not her real name) walks through the front door and hands over her ID. Several hundred other people will go through the same motions tonight — in through the door and out comes the ID — but only a few of them run Magill’s risk.
As a student at Olathe’s MidAmerica Nazarene University, she is subject to the school’s strict student handbook, a set of rules she has now violated simply by stepping through the door. The school doesn’t just discourage students from going to bars; it prohibits them from doing so.
The action on the floor begins to pick up as the DJ ditches the Nashville nature of the early evening for more danceable beats. For a while this means a frighteningly erratic selection of tunes, which succeeds only because there are corresponding clusters of people who instinctively move to the dance floor in response. Under this radical system, hardcore rap begets rap-rock begets R&B begets old-school-heavy-metal begets Wham! and so on until the playlist becomes an incongruous slop of pop stew that somehow works for the congregation.
As Magill makes her initial walk-through, guys throughout Orlando’s take notice. If a gawker gets so courageous as to move in on her, his preoccupation with her curvy figure could give way to the magnetism of her sky-blue eyes and her pouty Betty Boop lips — lips now entertained by a cup of beer, striking another blow to the MidAmerica Nazarene University handbook. MNU doesn’t just prefer that students abstain from drinking or smoking; it demands they do.
Eventually the dance floor calls Magill over, romances her with its sounds. She shimmies without giving a thought to her school-imposed midnight curfew — or the fact that MidAmerica Nazarene bans “social dancing.”
As the evening nears its end, the low rumble about a wet T-shirt contest rises. First the DJ announces openings for the three key roles in this weekly production: judges (a crew of people who pay to sit up front but have no true authority over a contest decided by the cheers of a Thunderdome-like crowd), the water boy (who pays for the privilege of hosing down contestants) and the women, the bearers of flimsy Fruit of the Loom Ts. The judgeships are assigned fairly quickly, but the boob roundup stalls. A few ladies are willing to play, but not enough to respectably represent the American institution of see-through-apparel tournaments. So the DJ rambles between tracks, encouraging women on the dance floor to show what they shake, and Orlando’s staffers mingle in an attempt to persuade from within.
About a dozen competitors collect in an office to exchange backless shirts and tank tops for cotton uniforms. As the judges line up and the water boy claims the hose, Orlando’s transforms into a small stadium, with a jacked-up coed crowd surrounding the dance floor and calling for poorly hidden torsos.
The masses explode into cheers as the contestants walk out onto the dance floor. Among them walks Magill.
One by one, the women step into a tub, get hosed down and strut in front of the judges. Some wiggle and squirm seductively as the water appears to dissolve their tops, and they dance sensuously in front of each judge, playing the crowd for as much audience noise as possible. Others stroll casually or awkwardly past the judges and return to the lineup.
When her turn comes, Magill steps her athletic figure into the tub and is immediately bathed in a shower of water and cheers. Unwilling to grind for the approval of judges’ row, she simply walks before each judge, introduces herself and then walks to the next. She has entered this contest for no reason and for several reasons: because she was goaded, because she has been promised some sort of prize money, because she was goaded some more and because, when it comes down to it, what’s the big deal? Magill now stands in line, a drenched T-shirt clinging to her well-regarded chest, because at the moment, this is just another experience.
Besides, she’s got a body that could win.
With graduation set in May, Maria Magill has had the past few years to formulate a philosophy about her school. It is not the typical viewpoint one might expect from a college student who drinks and dances but attends a university that prohibits both. She does not blather on about her civil liberties, about how the Constitution protects her right to down Long Island iced teas and shake her moneymakers.
“They can’t govern everybody by those standards,” Magill says of MidAmerica Nazarene’s system. “They think if they do, everybody will have the same relationship with God, and nobody has the same relationship with God.”
Maria Magill might reveal her real name for this story if graduation were tomorrow. But this early in the spring, too much is still at stake. Exactly what school officials might do if they found out about her Monday-night activities is unclear — MNU rules allow for a variety of punishments, from warnings to fines to campus volunteer-work to expulsion — but Magill knows enough about the school’s disciplinary tendency not to chance it.
When she first walked onto Olathe’s MNU campus, Magill wasn’t certain what to expect. She knew about the university’s reputation, even among other Christian schools, as a place wound tighter than a steel ball. But how bland could it be?
So Magill began attending one of the ten schools around the world supported by the Church of the Nazarene. The church, with international headquarters at 63rd and Paseo in Kansas City, Missouri, expects these different institutions to recruit regionally and attract both Nazarenes and non-Nazarenes onto campuses that promote the fusing of intellectual and spiritual growth.
To outsiders looking in, that means mandatory chapel services, curfews and stringent rules that, among other things, require most students to live on campus until they turn 22. But to insiders, students, faculty and administration, this means an opportunity to develop spirituality in an academic community. Almost 70 percent of MNU’s approximately 1,400 students consider themselves Nazarenes, which means they believe God’s grace has called on them to live a holy life and serve others. For many, going to college at MidAmerica is part of this life.
“If your spirit is right, it’s easier to focus on things you should be focused on,” says Shawn O’Connor, MNU freshman. “As for socially, it seems like students have their priorities straight and academics come first. When you do stuff socially, it’s more of a fellowship time. This is a place where you can get to know people on a lot more intimate level.”
Founded in 1966 when the church decided Olathe’s potential for growth (and a generous land donation from a local banker) made it the best of prospective locations, the school has become a major presence in the city. Community groups hold meetings and events on campus, New Year’s and Fourth of July festivities take place there, and city initiatives (such as the recent acquisition of the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics) find significant support there. The school employs more than 250 residents and boasts of nearly 2,000 alumni still living in the community — including Mayor Larry Campbell, who got his master’s degree at MNU, and Mayor Pro Tem Michael Copeland, who graduated with a bachelor of arts degree. MNU President Richard Spindle did not return phone calls for this story.
The campus itself, spread upon a 105-acre plot of land, sits within a residential Olathe community — close but not too close to the congestion of Sante Fe Street. Visually, the campus owes much to whoever first combined red brick and white shutters — the Colonial architecture reflects the institution’s staid atmosphere. But MNU’s style has remained consistent through the years, and the campus’ flat, pedestrian layout allows students to stroll all the way from the dorms to the giant College Church without threat of fatigue or vehicular injury.
For the most part, life at MNU is placid. Students praise their classes, enjoy an intimate student-to-teacher ratio, cheer on a powerhouse men’s basketball team and, to an extent, even take part in the nighttime activities their school outlaws.
“This is just like any university,” O’Connor says. “You’ve got your people who like to go out and have a good time, and then you’ve got your crowd that doesn’t do that stuff, that’s trying to live a Christlike life.”
But the past few years have shown Magill that on those rare occasions when students deviate from the norm, the level of denial is extraordinary. Some of the rebellious students, posing as model Nazarenes, hide their secular activities even from friends. Few partiers will let their peers know exactly where they stand and what they believe. (That number is reduced even further when you subtract scholarship athletes.)
Gossip becomes an unofficial way of keeping people in line. Word flies here, and nothing gives it wings like a well-known indiscretion. Magill remembers two friends who used to smoke pot together. Then one of the guys decided to change his life, so he turned in his friend.
“Oh, you can peer-pressure somebody to be a Christian,” Magill says, estimating that 30 percent of MNU’s straight-and-narrow students are just going along with the crowd. “At a state school, they probably wouldn’t last more than a minute. Half of these people don’t even know who they are. They’re just doing what they’re told.”
While she compliments her school’s faculty and academic programs, she slams the disciplinary policy that keeps students from encountering the world on their own. When she runs into fellow students at a bar or nightclub, Magill sees the fear in their eyes when they recognize another MNU student.
“You never saw me here!” they say. Once Magill was shocked to see two former MNU students, “goody-goodies” to the utmost, drinking at Orlando’s.
“I didn’t know you drank,” she told them.
“Well, you get out of there and you start opening up,” one girl replied.
If Magill disagrees so vehemently with the school’s policy, why doesn’t she just leave? The truth is that Magill preferred the less-restrictive Southern Nazarene University in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Her parents, however, disliked the urban setting of SNU’s campus and said they would pay for her education only if she attended school in Olathe.
And in a way, sending her to Olathe was just as significant as sending her to MNU. With its prudish reputation and hefty evangelical presence, Olathe goes hand in hand with the school.
Wendy Orlando has never spoken with the man sitting three seats to her right, and that alone could be the cause of her tears.
The man, John Miller, is an assistant attorney for the City of Olathe. In the past hour he has presented the owners of Olathe’s three dance clubs — Orlando’s, Roadhouse Ruby’s and the teen spot Studio 2000 — with the newest draft of an ordinance that has cost Wendy Orlando much sleep over the past two months.
When a Roadhouse Ruby’s manager asks Miller whether the city understands how the ordinance affects those involved, Orlando begins to break under the tired repetition of it all. Yet again, the city has sent a messenger to offer a slightly tweaked version of a law it seems hell-bent on passing. Yet again, the club owners’ concerns fall on the ears of a city rep who can offer nothing more than his service as a relay man. Yet again, it looks as though Orlando and her husband, Louie, might be forced to close the business they financed by skipping their honeymoon, emptying their savings and soliciting loans from the bank, family and friends.
“You have absolutely no idea what you’re doing to our families,” she tells Miller. “We’ve got twins at home that Orlando’s puts food on the table for.”
The event that brought on this threat to Orlando’s livelihood was a fatal shooting outside Roadhouse Ruby’s in the early morning hours of December 31. Witnesses told police the dispute was over drugs, and officers found 21 hits of Ecstasy on a man wounded in the gunfire.
City officials panicked. Over the past ten years, their city’s population had boomed. Development had flourished. Franchises and chain stores had flooded the community. But growth doesn’t just bring Home Depots, Super Targets and AMC megatheaters. It also brings the sort of behavior that can shake the security of a town just a few years removed from the civic malady of cruising. Ten days after the shooting, City Manager Michael Wilkes and Police Chief Art Mabry presented to the city council a proposed ordinance that would strictly regulate Olathe’s “entertainment clubs.”
“We cannot comment as to how a final ordinance would affect entertainment club businesses if and when it is enacted,” Wilkes told council members. “However, we do believe that it will substantially reduce public safety problems, which reinforces our goal and the goal of this council, to be the safest city in the metropolitan area.”
Business owners countered that city officials were having a typically extreme reaction to an isolated incident. Under the ordinance’s general language, every bar and grill, tavern, bowling alley and nightclub in Olathe would undergo radical changes. In one laughable but emblematic section, the “safety” ordinance even sought to regulate patrons’ private parts (“Woody Watch,” February 15).
To local pub owners, the proposal seemed ridiculous — especially since it was clear from the beginning what the city really wanted: the three dance clubs.
“Everybody was really irritated,” says Stacy Woods, manager of Fred P. Ott’s Bar & Grill. “It was going to cause us all to shut down, and nobody would have any reason to come to Olathe.”
City officials sent letters to Olathe’s nighttime establishments inviting them to a public forum to discuss the proposed law. At the late-January meeting, owners and managers had to stand and explain the nature of their businesses and their concerns about the proposal.
Woods spoke first. She talked about how her bar had no need for the additional security the ordinance would require, about how she couldn’t afford it anyway and about how the police already hassle bar owners about everything from their liquor licenses to toilet paper on restroom floors. The ordinance, she said, was far too drastic.
When Woods finished, Wilkes and City Attorney Tom Glinstra had a couple of specific questions for Woods: Did Fred P. Ott’s have dancing? What nights did the club have dancing?
When Phil Mapes of Freddie T’s Bar and Grill stood up to speak, they asked him about entertainment. Did Freddie T’s have dancing? What nights did the club have dancing?
Kerri Morrison, general manager of Shooters pool hall, faced the same inquiry. What kind of entertainment do you have? Do you have dancing? What nights do you have dancing?
One by one, as the other representatives stood up, Wilkes and Glinstra asked them the same thing.
At one point, the agitated assembly managed to laugh at the question. “Not because it was funny,” Orlando recalls, “but because they were blatantly making it clear that it was dancing they were after.”
In the following weeks, city staff edited the proposal’s description of entertainment clubs to include only the three dance clubs.
Olathe officials point to the Roadhouse Ruby’s murder and a fight at Studio 2000 last November as examples of how large dance clubs incite violence. After both incidents, Police Chief Mabry went so far as to address the city council on the dangers of such clubs. He did not, however, address the council after a man from Omaha, Nebraska, was beaten unconscious with a pool cue at Scoreboards sports bar on February 23, or after a man was worked over with metal rods outside Shooters on February 25.
That sort of contradiction has club owners and patrons believing there are other motives behind the night club ordinance. They think Olathe’s evangelicals are targeting the local dance scene.
The offices of mayor, mayor pro tem, city manager, police chief and at least one city councilman are occupied by people affiliated with either the Church of the Nazarene or Olathe Bible Church (another church that frowns on dancing). And the severity of the ordinance seems a clear attempt to put club owners out of business.
“[Officials have] made it so they don’t have to worry,” Orlando says.
Among other things, the law would force clubs to close at midnight (Kansas law says 2 a.m.) and designate themselves as either teen or adult establishments (no eighteen-and-over admittance). Clubs would also fall under the liberally defined power of the police chief and city manager, either of whom could close a club for a violation as minor as a bouncer’s not recharging a patron who has left and wants to come back again. (For example, if a woman went out to her car for a pack of cigarettes, she would have to pay to go back in.) More serious, a lengthy set of prerequisites would dictate that an owner who has incurred a liquor violation in the past five years be denied a license to operate. That clause could close Orlando’s, which was cited in February for offering a promotion ($10 admission, free drinks) that the state doesn’t allow.
The crackdown has customers like George Tinius steaming. Tinius, who moved from Dallas to Olathe with his wife twelve years ago, has attended Orlando’s on Saturday nights since the club opened four years ago.
“[The nightclub ordinance] has brought it all out in the open,” he says. “Now they’re trying to pass some laws that are ridiculous. Wait a minute, guys — these are not good business decisions. These are personal decisions.”
“These are good people, and they want to live a good life,” Orlando’s regular Randy Every says of the churchgoing city officials. “But they also want everyone to live a life like them.”
Mayor Campbell, an MNU grad, says that’s not true. He dismisses the accusation that religious beliefs have interfered with government decisions — he says opponents are attempting to take the focus off the real issue.
“Public safety is the problem. We are going to take strong measures to ensure people’s safety. They can have fun with this all they want,” he says of his critics, “but a kid died, and that is the reality. Our job is to do what we can to prevent that in the future. It’s that simple.”
The city’s staff might have an easier time making that case if its initiative to turn Olathe into “the safest city in the metropolitan area” focused more on safety. But as Studio 2000 owner Christine Freund says, “Just a few of the [proposed law’s] conditions cover everything they were concerned about.” One provision alone, which demands an increase in licensed security guards in parking lots, addresses what Mabry told the city council was the main issue: large crowds loitering outside clubs.
Even if the ordinance is solely about safety, city officials make it easy for people to deduce otherwise. In targeting businesses that offer “dancing to live or recorded music,” Olathe suggests an exclusive link between dance clubs and violence. Also suspect is a provision that forces club owners to write neighboring businesses and explain how their establishments will affect the “public decency, morals or goodwill” of the area.
“They’re not supposed to legislate morality,” Freund charges. “But if you look at the codes, it’s right there. It says right there that you have to say how it will affect the morality of the surrounding businesses. Very interesting.”
Freund has been the footloose triad’s most outspoken champion. Over the past few months, she has peppered city officials with question after question. If it passes, the ordinance won’t put Freund out of her home (she runs the club in addition to working a day job), but she’s furious over the city’s reluctance to ease up. Like others, she believes the city used the Roadhouse problem to legitimize a prejudice against all three dance clubs.
“We knew we were targeted; there’s just no doubt,” she says. “If they could make the city no drinking, they would. If they could make the city no smoking, they would.”
Campbell points out that Olathe’s accusers forget that the city council hasn’t even acted yet. (A study session and possible vote is scheduled for April 10.) He also maintains that the city’s history does not demonstrate a religious sway.
“I can only answer by saying that has not been our track record,” Campbell says. “I don’t think that’s been our track record, and I can tell you that the only concern I hear council members talk about is public safety.”
On its own, this theory of faith-based bias might disintegrate under such denials. But the club ordinance is not the only initiative in Olathe that sounds like a government call for religious conformity. The city already has enacted a program that blurs the line between church and state.
In July 1999, Olathe became the metro area’s first and only City of Character, a designation meaning that in the coming years, schools, businesses, law enforcement, city government and the media will all join together to create a community of integrity. Children will learn in the classroom what it means to have character, business leaders will discover how to choose and encourage employees of character, police officers will act as character role models and the media will remind everybody, in case they could ever forget, to practice building character.
Each month, the mayor will announce a new word to set the tone for the coming weeks. April, for example, is the month of “decisiveness.” March was all about “attentiveness.” June will be four weeks of “benevolence.”
As harmless as that seems, the City of Character program, created by the International Association of Character Cities, has inspired a rash of controversies throughout the country since its inception in 1998. Most of the racket centers around the program’s originator, an evangelical preacher named Bill Gothard, whose far-reaching Institute in Basic Life Principles offers Scripture-based seminars around the globe.
In potential Character Cities across the country, citizens and politicians alike have been surprised to learn about Gothard’s IBLP doctrine, which emphasizes a hierarchy that places authority figures closer to God. That puts civic leaders above citizens, ministers above parishioners, bosses above employees and husbands above wives. Gothard’s lifestyle guidelines extend to what followers wear, watch, listen to, eat and buy. Once, he called for the destruction of Cabbage Patch dolls because of their evil effect on children.
While the City of Character program makes no reference to God, spousal superiority or playthings of agricultural descent, its Character First! instructional materials have drawn criticism for bordering on Gothard’s own teachings. In particular, the IBLP leader’s zeal for obedience (his followers are instructed to answer to authorities as if they were answering to Christ) has appeared in song form in the classrooms of other Character Cities.
For these reasons, the City of Character initiative has been rejected by cities such as Gilbert, Arizona; Fayetteville, Arkansas; Scappoose, Oregon; Spokane, Washington; and Coeur d’Alene, Idaho. Some have considered similar but less contentious programs to promote the same benevolent ideal. Gilbert, Arizona, for example, chose to call itself a “City With Character” — a seemingly minor alteration, but one that avoids the IACC and its baggage.
In Idaho, however, after attending an IACC conference, Coeur d’Alene City Councilman Chris Copstead told a reporter that “this is a fundamentalist Christian group. We’re talking fire and brimstone. I’m not chastising anyone’s beliefs, but it’s not the duty of the government to get involved in a religious revival.”
Olathe’s city council, on the other hand, voted unanimously in June 1999 to become a Character City. Today, the city’s character council seeks $200,000 from the city to fund an executive director position and purchase International Association of Character Cities materials for the next five years.
Word of the character initiative’s divisive background didn’t hit Olathean front porches until three weeks ago, when the Olathe Daily News reported on the program’s background.
“Other than the list of character qualities, when the city adopted the program, the public knew little about the IACC, its history, what it represents and some problems other cities have had,” reporter Patrick J. Powers wrote in an article titled “The Cost of Character.”
But the city’s emphasis on character already seems to be paying off. Last month, in deciding to bring its headquarters back to Olathe after being in Tulsa for seven years, the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics deemed the city the perfect place for its own character program. During its nine-month search, the NAIA made no secret that it was looking for a new home that would embrace its Champions in Character program, which includes building a Character in Sports Center.
The character connection was a “pretty major” factor in the NAIA’s decision, says Darin David, the association’s assistant director of marketing. “It just made for a natural tie-in and a perfect fit for everything we’re trying to do that Olathe already had a character council.”
That council, David says, will certainly benefit from the Character in Sports Center. In return for the $1 million to $2 million in tax money that Olathe will contribute to the construction of the NAIA complex, the city will be allowed to access the building for its own character programs.
“The center will be used primarily as a place for [the city] to hold seminars on character issues, and it doesn’t have to be just NAIA-related,” David says. “Our plans are to have our coaches come in, our athletic directors, whomever from our membership, to have seminars on how they can better develop character in their student athletes. Beyond that, if there are other organizations that focus on character, we want them to be able to use the facility for their workshops and seminars.”
Economic impact aside, Olathe’s preoccupation with personal conduct and the character council’s newfound accommodations worry some citizens.
“When you backtrack,” says one nightclub customer, “what is a person of character? It’s a person who doesn’t smoke or drink or dance.”
It may be difficult for Maria Magill to see, but out in the noisy gallery, where all the cheers are coming from, there are a lot of drinkers and more than a few smokers. Directly in front of her, one girl is doing something that resembles dancing. She raises her arms above her head and acts as though there’s no better feeling in the world than cold water hitting her chest. She then makes her way to the judges and really hams it up, which the crowd appreciates.
When the saturated seductress ends her run, the manic onlookers at Orlando’s raise their drinks, whistle and even yelp at the line of wonderfully wet women. After the final prance is pranced and the final strut is strutted, the DJ asks each of the young women to step forward for a show of applause.
Shouts, screams, shrieks, “whoo-whoos” and grunts make the results clear — a tie. The DJ walks along the line of contestants to crown the night’s tandem of royalty. Before the rambunctious crowd stands a buxom young lady rumored to have appeared in the pages of Playboy.
Beside her stands the lovely Maria Magill.
Later on, in a moment far removed from this sexy and cheesy and slightly disturbing atmosphere, Magill will actually regret that she entered the competition. She’ll express guilt about it because she doesn’t feel it reflects her own personal morals. She’ll even be slightly embarrassed to talk about it.
Then she’ll experience a schism. “As far as my relationship with God, with myself, I felt a personal feeling of guilt,” she will say, regretting that she crossed a line. Then she’ll be overwhelmed by the equally strong belief in her right to establish that line on her own.
If that means walking into a dance club, so be it. If that means downing Long Island iced teas, so be it. And if that means making a mistake, dancing in a see-through shirt as horny inebriates look on, so be it.
