The BYU Honor Code: Another Take From the Press

Rooting for BYU's sex ban

Philly.com   Fri Mar 11, 2011  By Jonathan Zimmerman

I did not attend Brigham Young University, and I'd be shocked if either of my teenage daughters decided to go there. But Brandon Davies did decide to attend BYU, where every student signs an annual pledge to refrain from premarital sex. And, as every sports fan now knows, Davies broke it.

That's why the BYU basketball team - ranked third in the nation at the time - suspended Davies, its top rebounder. The team then promptly lost to unranked New Mexico. Many hoops junkies now predict that it will make a quick exit from the NCAA tournament, which starts next week.

I hope not. I have a warm spot in my heart for BYU, just as many conservatives do. But I have my own liberal reasons.

To people on the right, of course, it's about morality. Americans have lost their ethical compass, the argument goes, especially on matters of sex. By suspending Brandon Davies, BYU is helping to revive long-lost values that made this nation great.

Others lament a college sports scene dominated by sleaze and double standards. Whereas other universities coddle miscreant athletes, BYU makes every player follow the same rules. And surely there's something admirable about that.

But I like BYU's decision to suspend Davies for another reason: diversity.

Remember diversity? My fellow liberals love diversity. We want diversity in our neighborhoods, diversity in our workplaces, diversity in our classrooms.

By diversity, we usually mean representation of different races and ethnicities, and sometimes of different genders and sexual orientations. But that leaves out religion, which never really made it into the multicultural pantheon.

And that's too bad, because religion is intimately linked to all the other identities. A Catholic Hispanic woman isn't Hispanic on Monday, female on Tuesday, and Catholic on Wednesday. She is all those things all the time. So if we care about diversity, we should defend and develop all three.

But in America, which separates church and state, the government can't promote religion in the same way it celebrates different races and genders. Our public schools just finished Black History Month (February), and now they're marking Women's History Month (March). But they won't - and shouldn't - commemorate Catholic History Month in April, or Jewish History Month in May.

That's where churches, synagogues, and religious schools come in. Without these institutions, religious identity would decline. So anyone who cares about diversity should support their efforts to defend it.

That's why I applaud Catholic schools such as Georgetown and Boston College for hanging crucifixes in their classrooms. I realize that non-Catholics attend and teach at these institutions, and they might resent such displays. But religious icons and rituals maintain the rich character of these schools - their diversity, if you will - and we would all be poorer if they lost it.

Likewise, I like the idea of Orthodox Jewish schools maintaining strict dress codes, as well as rules against male-female fraternization. Although I'm Jewish, I'm not Orthodox, and I wouldn't choose to patronize such institutions. But I'm glad they exist, and changing their conservative ways would also diminish diversity.

Then there are the Mormon schools such as Brigham Young, where students pledge to abstain from alcohol and coffee, as well as from premarital sex. Odd? To me, yes. Old-fashioned? Ditto.

And that's precisely why I support them. You don't have to agree with all the BYU rules; I certainly don't. But their presence adds a unique stroke to the broad American canvas. For our society as a whole, that's a very good thing. It reminds us about the many ways of being American, and it challenges us to reach across these differences to discover what we all have in common.

Is it good for Brandon Davies, too? I really don't know. But here's what I do know: By holding Davies to account, Brigham Young University struck a blow for our nation's diversity. That's why I'm rooting for the BYU Cougars in the NCAA tournament. Vive la différence. And go Cougars.

Jonathan Zimmerman teaches history at New York University and lives in Narberth. He is the author of "Small Wonder: The Little Red Schoolhouse in History and Memory" (Yale University Press). He can be reached at jlzimm@aol.com.

Honor

We use words like honor, code, loyalty. We use these words as the backbone of a life spent defending something. You use them as a punchline. -- A Few Good Men

Brandon Davies is gone from the basketball team.  He broke the BYU Honor Code and if there is one thing that BYU holds up as their raison d’être it is the honor code.  Brandon was the rising star center on the Top 10 ranked BYU Basketball team.  Brandon was the heir apparent to the Jimmer Fredette crown.  And the 6'9" big man was a big reason Jimmer could work the key inside to out.

Brandon grew up in Provo, knew the BYU (Mormon) culture and committed to conform to the honor code.  Some people say he should gladly just walk and take his place on another top 25 basketball squad.  He’s proven he can play at that level.  They ask why should he squander his college years playing at a “dry” school with a puritanical attitude towards sex?  Is BYU worth the aggravation?  BYU couldn’t even get an invite to join the PAC along with its natural compatriot, the University of Utah, because the liberal elite in the PAC 10 executive leadership couldn’t stomach having a school of BYU’s archaic definitions of morality being a part of its coalition.  

When you go to BYU you sign the Honor Code.  You agree to do certain things and if you don’t…well, ask Brandon what they do.  When I went to BYU there was even less tolerance.  If you did something wrong, they just kicked you out.  You entered Mormon outer darkness.  You were dismissed.  They wanted nothing to do with you anymore.  And that nothing could last for a long time.  University Guidelines say you may reapply for admission after a year.  But that didn’t mean they were going to seriously consider your application for readmission.  You had as much a chance at getting back in during your playing days as Charlie Manson does of getting paroled before he is a skeleton.  Colonel Jessup did not tolerate substandard performance; neither did BYU.  I found BYU to be like West Point in some regards, you were presumed to have Honor until it was proven otherwise.  Some professors would actually leave the room in which their students were taking a test.  But some at BYU think they are the moral compass for everybody else.  It was also like grade school, you had to behave or they would snitch you out if you broke a rule.  Unfortunately, the school attracts administrators, staff and students from both sides of that mindset.  I guess places with high standards attract both kinds.  And indeed, BYU does attract.



BYU is first, or second, depending on the year, in number of applicants for admission.  More potential prospects apply for a chance to live the honor code then apply for any “party” school in the country.  Because of this fact, many kids are turned away from BYU.  There just aren’t enough slots.  So the logic was, and you can’t really argue with it, that a kid who hadn’t messed up had a more deserving shot at future enrollment than the one who was already exposed in his character flaws.  But the weight that BYU used to have in the church culture was so heavy that to have gone to BYU and suddenly to not be going there was a scarlet letter.  Many a young adult quit going to church because the whispers could follow: “Did you hear?  Johnny got kicked out of the Y!” 



Brandon Davies - a choice is now placed before him.

Johnny is faced with a choice.  Buck up and get things squared away or take the “rejection” at face value and decide to make it a mutual split.  Since church and school are married in the minds of many that means attributing the fault to the church as well.  Often, all those Johnnys out there, now on the outside, will find other reasons to justify their shortcomings by blaming the church.  This is a common psychological defense mechanism.  To soothe their own conscience, some make it a point to denigrate and ridicule their past allegiance.  They troll the internet complaining of the latest Boyd K. Packer talk or making fun of temple ordinances.  Though they have left the church, they never leave it alone.  But really, it often just stems from the unwillingness or inability to live the standards of the church or, on the extreme side, the BYU honor code.    

I went to BYU and signed a contract.  Not that I agreed with the honor code in toto.  I still don’t.  But I did agree to live it.  It enforces standards that aren’t even required to enter LDS Temples.  It is, in many respects, archaic and attempts to enforce a cookie cutter mentality to suppress the “rebel” element natural in the young adult and to appease the personal preferences (i.e., dress and grooming) of an older generation.  People joke that Brigham Young could not even attend the university that bears his name (he had a beard).  Then again, neither could Jesus.  Many fundamentalist Christians agree that you would never find Jesus at BYU.  And as long as a student wants to assume the attitude of the malcontent rebel, they never will. 

When I was a freshman (1982) I lived in the dorms.  Some of the guys would cross over North Canyon to the 7/11 to buy caffeinated soft drinks.  This was considered by the dormitory supervisors an outright rebellion.  Mandatory attendance at honor code lectures from the floor Resident Assistant followed discovery.  The guys were supposed to be ashamed of themselves for violating the honor code which codified the Word of Wisdom standards into the BYU student diet.  Interestingly, a person will not be expelled from the church for disobeying the word of wisdom but at that time you could be threatened with expulsion from BYU.  I don't know if they ever actually did.      

I have no idea how the “no caffeinated drinks” thing came into LDS culture.  It is assumed that it was a logical progression from no coffee or tea, but apparently nobody really knows.  It just kind of infused itself into Mormon common culture.  Never let a supposed prohibition go to waste.  This is a core tenant of any societal organization’s ability to control and test loyalty.  It never made sense to me anyway.  You could eat chocolate, drink hot cocoa, but never have a coke.  The new member would be taken aside by some nose-inserting self-appointed but well-meaning mentor and told, “It has caffeine you know.” I remember how conflicted some true blue “Mike and Molly Mormons” were when caffeine-free Coke and Pepsi products hit the market.  They would never allow it in their refrigerators.  It was like candy cigarettes. The caffeine-free soft drinks were harmless in and of themselves, BUT those cans represented something that was evil. 

But I digress; and often, so does BYU.  It makes little things big.  And I can’t help but feel a great disconnect from that.  I’ve been told that the hardliner attitude from the BYU of my day has changed in the past decade.  I’m glad.  But I’m also glad that they will never be like everyone else. BYU will do what BYU does.  They really don’t care what the rest of the world says about them.  They never will.  BYU moves to its own sense of right and wrong.  But in my time, I just cringed hoping they could go away from the old time “my way or the highway” Wilkinson (a former BYU President) and the “It’s all about tradition” Holland (LDS Apostle Jeffrey R. Holland, another former BYU President) themes that were used to cull the undesirables from the herd.

But one thing the Honor Code does – and I agree with this facet of it completely – it shows the meddle of the person you are.  If you agree to drink pink lemonade and skip around tulips on odd Tuesdays for the right to belong to a group, then you need to do that until which time you no longer belong to the group.  Just keep your word; have honor.  Or stop saying you belong to the group.

One of BYU’s storied professors was Karl G. Maeser.  In the building that bears his name are some of his more famous quotes.  I have always loved this one.

"I have been asked what I mean by “word of honor.” I will tell you. Place me behind prison walls—walls of stone ever so high, ever so thick, reaching ever so far into the ground—there is a possibility that in some way or another I might be able to escape; but stand me on the floor and draw a chalk line around me and have me give my word of honor never to cross it. Can I get out of that circle? No, never! I’d die first."

Brandon made a mistake.  He stepped outside of the circle when he committed to stay within it.  All indications are that he intends to buck up and make things as right as he can.  I believe in the gospel.  People can change and they can be forgiven and they can be restored.  That is what Christ and the Atonement are all about. 

I wanted to see my cougars go all the way.  Now I don't think they can - unless Jimer can go off for 50 points a night.  Hey, I can dream, can't I?  It is disappointing to hear that a major cog in the machinery has been removed from the team.  But I'll live with it.  There is something bigger than basketball going on here; something important as we all re-assess and reveal by our reactions our own sense of honor.  I wish Brandon the best of luck and hope to see him back on the Marriott Center parquet in the future. 

This Slate article proves why I must have Jewish blood and how it is fighting for supremacy

Berkeley Prof Pinpoints Exact Birthdate of Jewish Humor

Posted Thursday, March 03, 2011 12:06 PM | By Nina Shen Rastogi

Where does Jewish humor come from? Is it genetic—or some kind of cultural adaptation to thousands of years of suffering?

Actually, it comes from Vilna, circa 1661.

According to UC Berkeley professor Mel Gordon, Jewish humor's distinctive blend of wisecracking and self-deprecation has a very specific, very unfunny source: The Chmielnicki massacres of the 17^th century, in which nearly 100,000 Jews were massacred across Ukraine within three years.

In today's Jerusalem Post, Gordon describes to Sue Fishkoff how, in the wake of that carnage and its resulting famines, a council of leading rabbis from Poland and Ukraine concluded that God must be punishing the Jews. To get themselves on the right side of the Lord, they decided to outlaw all things funny and indulgent. Before that period, there were "at least 10 different stock comic types in shtetl life," Fishkoff notes. Some were jugglers, some were singers. These performers were all banned—but one, the badkhn, was allowed to keep practicing. A kind of "cruel court jester," the badkhn was a "staple in East European Jewish life for three centuries":

His humor was biting, even vicious. He would tell a bride she was ugly, make jokes about the groom's dead mother and round things off by belittling the guests for giving such worthless gifts. Much of the badkhn's humor was grotesque, even scatological.

The elders decided that the badkhn didn't exactly encourage merrymaking, so he alone survived the prohibition—ensuring that Jewish humor would forever be stamped with his characteristically dark sarcasm.
Contemporary comedians like Sarah Silverman owe a lot to the centuries-old badkhn sensibility, Gordon argues.

"They would talk about drooping breasts, big butts, small penises," Gordon said. "We know a lot about them because they were always suing each other about who could tell which fart joke on which side of Grodno."