In October 1950, the national fraternity Alpha Chi Omega conducted a campus-wide poll to determine the ugliest man on campus. Beyond the title of Mr. Ugly, the winner would receive bountiful gifts, including “the perfect weekend,” consisting of a lavish date, a luxurious sports car and a feature in the Baylor Homecoming Parade to promote the competition.

The Baylor Lariat, the voice for the student body for the past 80 years, was silent. An empty newsroom was echoed only by the fateful last stand of the Feb. 22, 1980, editorial. But in the spring of 1980, the lights went out in the newsroom. Students still went to class, and Fountain Mall still hummed with springtime chatter — but the newsstands remained empty.

What started as an advertisement in The Lariat morphed into Baylor’s own masked vigilante armed with coconut cream pies. For over a decade, the Pie Man turned campus into his bakery of chaos, leaving laughter, whipped cream and bewildered professors in his wake.

Before there were comments sections and quote tweets, there were letters to The Lariat — and Baylor students have never held back. From chef salad complaints to prison pen pals, the opinion page has always been where the campus found its voice.

As diverse as Baylor’s offerings are, though, the academic makeup of the student body is not exactly the intellectual rainbow that the triple-digit number suggests. The palette is probably better described as dozens of thin strips with slightly different shades, sprinkled among a few very wide bands of dominant colors.

Before the Wright brothers took flight or air conditioning cooled a single building, The Baylor Lariat was already in print. Now, 125 years and roughly 12,250 issues later, Baylor’s student-run newspaper continues to tell the university’s story with the same curiosity and conviction that first inked its pages in 1900.