During warmer months, students can be spotted crowding the bus stops in cowboy boots, flannels and denim attire. No, there is not a new microtrend, a missed day of Halloweekend or a failed attempt at implementing Southern culture into our Midwest campus: These students are preparing for a time they can only hope to remember by dancing the night away in a barn.
Barn dances, also known as bances, are an important rite of passage for every University student. Usually held by RSOs or panhellenic organizations, students are bussed from Campustown to a rented space for an evening of drinking to country tunes, tractor rides and bonfires.
While bance’s reputation precedes itself, the man behind the scenes is arguably just as well-known. Dan Miner, the 88-year-old owner of Miner Farm, opens his space to students and provides them with a safe environment to revel in every semester.
The farm’s roots trace back to 1850 when Miner’s great-grandfather settled on the land. Miner was born in 1936 and raised in Champaign, graduating from the University with a degree in agriculture during the 1950s.
Before Miner took over the farm, his family predominantly raised horses, chickens, hogs and cattle. Miner expanded the farm to eggs — at one point, he had over 120,000 laying hens.
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Miner also owned expansive corn plots where he farmed over 600 acres of land and picked the corn by hand until he discovered new technologies, such as the corn picker in the 1940s. His business was successful until he suffered from a catastrophic event that led to bankruptcy.
“After the bankruptcy, God provided miracle after miracle, and I got the farm back,” Miner said.
Miner was approached by two girls from Gamma Phi Beta who asked him to rent his barn for a party in 1986. In preparation for his debut bance, he worked at clearing out the barn for several weeks. Unbeknownst to Miner at the time, this would be the inception of an event that has become crucial to student life and culture at the University.
“We had one barn dance that fall of 1986, but word spread around, and next year we had several, and that grew pretty fast,” Miner said.
Although students were initially responsible for hiring their own DJs and bringing the equipment, Miner quickly sought an alternative. The time it took for the provided DJ to pack up and go home caused him to go to bed late. It made waking up for Sunday Mass the following morning a challenge.
In keeping his faith, Miner made the necessary adjustments to attend church and retain the fiscal opportunities bances provided for his farm.
Miner invested in the proper sound equipment and provided music himself, with the first DJs being his sons. Eventually, Miner himself took over, and as of 2024, he is incredibly prolific — he has DJ’d over 700 bances.
His method of selecting music is crowdsourced; when Miner receives a recommendation, he writes it in a large binder and inputs the song into a computer program that ranks the most recommended songs.
“We have over 27,600 songs on our laptops, and we know what to play because we just play what was requested the most,” Miner said. “So there’s nothing special about me. I just let the college kids cause me to play what I play.”
Miner said bances occur most often in April and October, and because many students attend multiple times a semester, it is hard to keep track of all of the students that have visited his farm.
“At least one week in October, I might have two every night, six nights in a row,” Miner said.
Miner added that he enjoys feedback and support from students and takes pride in providing a safe place for them.
“I like to see them having fun, and some people, like from Chicago, have never seen a star before,” Miner said. “And during hay rides, they see the stars in the maze.”
Miner is unsure how much longer he will be able to keep up bance events but is confident his family will want to continue the almost 38-year-old tradition for years to come.
