The Free University, offering courses moderated by students or volunteer faculty, began in March 1969. Among the first courses offered were Free Poems Among Friends; Women’s Liberation, or Like Hell You’ve Come a Long Way, Baby; and Graffiti. The Free University’s catalog indicated that the Graffiti course would feature “guided tours through many of UT’s finest restrooms.”
The Student Senate revived the program in 1972 after having become defunct because of lack of leadership. In its renewal, more than eight hundred persons signed up for classes such as hiking, back packing, the occult, conversational French, parapsychology, cake decorating, strip mining, auto mechanics, and photography.