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AN UNABASHED LOOK AT BRIGHAM YOUNG UNIVERSITY'S STRICT HONOR CODE, COULD COST BYU A SHOT AT AN NCAA BASKETBALL TITLE

The Brigham Young University Honor Code ("The Code") first came to my attention on March 1, 2011 when BYU dismissed Brandon Davies, a center on BYU's Cougar basketball team for violating The Code, reportedly having engaged in premarital sex, the same day the college basketball rankings came out listing BYU as the #8 ranked team in the nation.

 

The Honor Code itself was not created until about 1940, and was used mainly for cases of cheating and academic dishonesty.  The Student Honor Council, created around 1949 oversaw case violations. This council met with enough success among students in alleviating cheating that BYU's President Wilkinson suggested in 1957 that the Honor Code expand to include other school standards. This led to an expansion during the 1960s which created the bulk of what the Honor Code represents today: rules regarding chastity, dress, grooming, drugs, and alcohol.  

Let's have a look at The Code...

Standards

The BYU honor code governs not only academic behavior, but morality, and dress and grooming standards of students and faculty, with the aim of providing an atmosphere consistent with LDS principles. The Honor Code requires:

• Abstinence from illicit drugs, alcohol, tobacco, coffee and tea (substances forbidden by the LDS Word of Wisdom)
• Honesty
• Encouraging others in their commitment to keep the Honor Code
• Living a chaste and virtuous life:
  • Appropriate gender-specific behavior (no sexual harassment)
  • No involvement with pornographic or indecent material
  • No inappropriate sexual activity (no sexual relationships outside of marriage)
  • No homosexual behavior including expressions of physical contact
• Obedience to the law
• Active participation in Church services (according to whatever religion of which one is a member)
• Respect for others
• Clean language (in otherwords, no F-bombs)
• Following the "Residential Living Standards" (visiting hours for members of the opposite sex)
• Dress and Grooming Standards. Abiding by the guidelines for dress, grooming, and housing. Skirts and shorts must reach to the knee and shirts may not be sleeveless. Form fitting, strapless and revealing clothing is not appropriate. Male students may not wear beards or goatees without permission; such permission is usually granted only to men with skin conditions aggravated by shaving, men whose religious beliefs require them to wear beards, or theatrical performances requiring beards.
• Students are prohibited from having guns on campus.

Housing accommodation

Students have the option of living in on-campus housing, with family members who reside in the local area, or in off-campus housing which must pass a school inspection for health and safety, as well as satisfactory separation of gender quarters and compliance with other standards. Students under certain conditions can apply for a housing waiver for special approval.

• Single parents with children.
• Single students living with parents.
• Single students who are taking classes away from Provo.
• Graduate students.
• Under certain conditions, as determined by the Off-Campus Housing Office, the university housing requirement may be waived for other students who have a special circumstance or hardship.

This approval is designed to ensure that students live in a safe environment that is consistent with the standards of the University. Since BYU students are only allowed to live in BYU-approved housing, landlords in the area consider it important to meet the standard in order to gain residents. Among the BYU housing standards is that bathrooms and the bedrooms be off limits for members of the opposite sex. Members of the opposite sex are required to be out of the apartment by midnight. Guns are permitted in off-campus housing only if the gun owner receives written permission from both the landlord and all residents in the apartment.

Enforcement

Honor code policies and principles are promoted by the Student Honor Association, and the Honor Code Office. The Office handles all accusations and violations, and works in conjunction with Bishops of BYU wards. If the student's Bishop is thought to be able to corroborate the alleged infraction, the accused student may be required to sign a legal form waiving his or her rights to ecclesiastical privacy, which allows the school direct access to the Bishop and any content discussed on the said topic, or others which may have been in violation of the Honor Code, but not yet reported. Not all students at the school are familiar with LDS standards, so students who break the code for the first time are usually only contacted by mail as a warning and clarification of standards. Later violations may cause the student to be called into the office to speak with an Honor Code officer. Severe and continued violations can merit expulsion. Students may be brought to the attention of the Honor Code office by faculty, staff, or other students. BYU Events Staff patrol school dances for Honor Code violations. Cafeteria, library, athletics, and BYU Testing Center employees are asked to encourage students to follow dress and grooming standards, sometimes denying service to students living against policy.

COMMENTARY:   I have always been a bit suspicious of religion in general, and even more so of the The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints a.k.a. the LDS Church or as it is commonly referred to the Mormom Church, the founder and operator of Brigham Young University.

Brigham Young University (BYU), established on October 16, 1875, located in Provo, Utah, is a private, co-educational university owned by the LDS Church.  It is the oldest existing institution within the LDS Church Educational System.  It is also America's largest religious university, and has the fourth-largest private university enrollment in the United States.  Approximately 98% of the 34,000 students at BYU are members of the LDS Church; one-third of its American students come from within the state of Utah.  BYU's mascot nickname is the Cougars.   The name of the mascot is Cosmo The Cougar. 

Brigham Young (June 1, 1801 – August 29, 1877) was an American leader in the LDS movement and a settler of the western United States. He was the President of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church) from 1847 until his death, the founder of Salt Lake City and the first governor of Utah Territory, United States. BYU was named in his honor.   

By BYU's own Honor Code standards, Brigham Young would be in violation of the rule forbidding beards.  

I feel very sorry over the suspension of Brandon Davies, because he is a star basketball player on the BYU basketball team, which is currently ranked #8 in the NCAA.  Without him their chances of winning an NCAA title have been severely hampered. 

No. 8/8 BYU basketball enters the 2011 Conoco Mountain West Conference Championships and will play the winner of Wyoming vs. TCU in the quarterfinal round on Thursday at 12 p.m. PT in the Thomas and Mack Center. The Cougars finished the regular season at 28-3 overall and 14-2 in conference play and boast the league’s player of the year in Jimmer Fredette, defensive player of the year inJackson Emery and co-coach of the year in Dave Rose. 

I perused the BYUCougar's sports homepage and the only reference to Brandon Davies is that he received All-MWC Third Team honors, but he is no longer listed on the BYU Cougar basketball team roster.   Go Coogs!!  Hope yuo don't get knocked off in the first round.  BYU's fight song is "Rise and Shout" and is played at all BYU athletic events. 

 

NOTE: This post is not meant to offend the LDS Church and its parishners or Brigham Young University faculty, students and athletes.  The LDS Church does great things on missions helping peoplearound the globe.  It's all in good humor, but seriously I can't have sex while a BYU student? Are you kidding me?    

Courtesy of a WikiPedia and BYU

By TwitterButtons.com 

DUKE UNIVERSITY STUDY: RELIGIOUS BELIEVERS NOT VERY BRAND LOYAL, APPLE EVANGELISTS ARE PROBABLY AGNOSTICS

As it's stated in the book of Jobs: Thou shalt not worship false iPhones.

Or so goes the thinking in a new study from Duke University, which concludes: "The brand name logo on a laptop or a shirt pocket may do the same thing for some people that a pendant of a crucifix or Star of David does for others." In fact, the more religious a person is, the less brand expression appears to matter.

Researchers at Duke ran several experiments to determine this disconnection between brand importance and religiosity. In one, the team analyzed geographic areas for the number of Apple, Macy's, and Gap stores per million people. These statistics were compared with brand-discount stores. "Then they compared these rough measures of brand reliance against the number of congregations per thousand and self-reported attendance in church or synagogue, controlling for income, education and urbanization differences," the report says. "In every analysis, they found a negative relationship between brand reliance and religiosity."

In another experiment, a group of students were asked to write an essay on "what your religion means to you personally." A second set of students wrote essays on an unrelated topic. Both groups then underwent an imaginary shopping trip, where they were asked to choose between a series of products. A similar online experiment was conducted with hundreds of participants, divided between those who reported being religious and those who did not. In both cases, "those that were highly religious [or primed to think about religion] cared less about national brands ... religion reduces brand reliance by apparently satisfying the need to express self-worth."

While this perhaps finally solves the mystery of why Christopher Hitchens and Nietzsche were such label whores, it also provides insight into how certain brands--namely Apple--develop cult-like followings. Similar to Duke's report, brand expert Martin Lindstromconducted a 3 year, 7 million dollar study comparing brain scans of the religious to those with high brand loyalty. Lindstrom discovered that the scans of people loyal to Apple matched the scans of devoted Christians.

All praise the almighty Steve!

"Brands are a signal of self-worth," said Gavan Fitzsimons, professor of marketing and psychology at Duke. "We're signaling to others that we care about ourselves and that we feel good about ourselves and that we matter in this world. It's more than 'I'm hip or cool'...I'm a worthwhile person, and I matter, and you should respect me and think that I'm a good person, because I've got the D&G on my glasses."

And an Apple on my iPhone.

COMMENTARY:  So basically, if I understand this article, if you are not religious you are a "brand whore" or as I refer to individuals crazy over a brand, "brand loyalists" or "evangelists", both used interchangeably to describe Apple customers.  I actually met an Apple evangelist the other day at a bar.  He had the new Apple iPhone 4.  We spoke a bit, and he told me very proudly that besides the iPhone, he also owned an Apple iPod, iMac and iPad.   Therefore, I can only assume that he downloads his music from Apple's iTunes.  But, never in my mind would it cross my mind that he might not be very religious, or worst (OMG) an agnostic.  

By the findings of the Duke University study, all brand loyalists are probably non "believers", and when Judgment Day comes the clouds will open and we will be struck down like dogs.  Only those who practice religion religiously, like those Looney Tunes from the Religious Right, will be sparred, sucked into heaven and forgiven their sins.   

Courtesy of an article dated September 29, 2010 appearing in Fast Company