Could YOU Survive at BYU?
The BYU men’s basketball team is on a roll this year. Ranked #3 in the […]
The BYU men’s basketball team is on a roll this year. Ranked #3 in the nation, and boasting a leading candidate for the Player of the Year Award (Jimmer Fredette), BYU is 27-2. On Tuesday, though, their chances of winning the National Championship were dealt a crushing blow when Brandon Davies, a starter, was dismissed from the team for the remainder of the season for “a violation of the school’s honor code.” The nature of the violation has not been made public (UPDATE: Thursday morning, Davies was said to be dismissed for having sex with his girlfriend), but the nature of the violation is not what I’m writing about here. I’m also not writing about whether or not someone should be dismissed from a team because of such violations. What I am writing about is the code itself, and a question posed by ESPN’s SportsNation on Wednesday: “Could you live up to BYU’s honor code?”
A famously Mormon school, named in honor of the second most famous Mormon ever (and wearer of
the most famous Mormon beard ever), here is BYU’s code in its entirety:
1. Be honest.
2. Live a chaste and virtuous life.
3. Obey the law and all campus policies.
4. Use clean language.
5. Respect others.
6. Abstain from alcoholic beverages, tobacco, tea, coffee and substance abuse.
7. Participate regularly in church services.
8. Observe the Dress and Grooming Standards.
9. Encourage others in their commitment to comply with the Honor Code.
My seminary had a similar Code of Conduct that I had to sign before being admitted. I signed it, knowing that I could fulfill it only by the broadest and most superficial definitions of the “commandments.” Be honest, indeed.
SportsNation posed the question, though, and what do you think the answer was? Interestingly, there have been 13,700 votes cast (as of this writing) and EXACTLY 50% of people said that, yes, they could live up to the Honor Code for a year.
What are people thinking? That they can be completely honest for a year? How regular does regular church attendance have to be? How clean does clean language have to be? That a “virtuous” life only refers to their naughty bits and not to their minds? And that’s not even bringing up the uber-amorphous “respect others” dictum. Do we think that 50% of people are being dishonest about their human capability, or do we think that 50% of people underestimate the power and depth of a commandment like Be Honest? Could you survive at BYU?
UPDATE: You have to vote yourself to see the results, but there are now 56% of respondents claiming to be able to follow the Code for a year, out of 23,258 votes.
Sign up for the Mockingbird Newsletter
I couldn't last a week. I would probably not respect mu neighbor once I met someone I clashed with and I KNOW I won't be able to cut out the coffee or a beer. As I read through it, it bothers me that I grew up thinking Mormonism was an anti-Christian cult yet I heard similar things from my own family/church minus the whole don't drink caffeine thing.
One question, how on earth did they find out he was having sex? That has really been bothering me!!
Hey Robin – the Christianity a lot of us grew up in turned out to be the anti-Christian cult, right? And as to your question…Moroni probably saw them.
To Nick's point – Mormonism as a cult is different from legalistic Baptist church as a cult.
And while no one could fulfill that covenant to perfection, someone who was raised as Mormon probably has a better time fulfilling than does an athlete recruited from outside the camp.
Robin I wondered the same thing. I'm glad Nick settled my curiosity. I wonder if we took a similar "Christian" pole on how many people feel they keep the commands of God regularly, what percentage we would get. I used to think i could do it pretty well, with the help of the Holy Spirit of course.
Nick–LOL!
Im with you–as soon as I saw be Honest I knew I was out the door. Do people REALLY believe they can totally honest for a year? Heh, how about a day?
🙂
What is interesting to me is that they enforced it on a JOCK!! I seem to recall years ago when Jim McMahon wrote some autobiography he said BYU was completely hypocritical because they always looked the other way when football players went wild. Do you think a backup Bball player turned him in?
Has anyone seen the voting results lately? The entire West Coast believes they can live under the BYU honor code for a year, while the entire east coast does not agree. Why is the West so much more optimistic?
Probably because the West Coast voters are disproportionately Mormon.
Matt S is right in large part. If you allow your mouse to hover for a moment over each state in the map for the results, you'll get a state by state breakdown. Utah has a stunning 91% confidence rating in their ability to live by BYU's ten commandments. Idaho and and a few other heavy Mormon states also have stratospherically high numbers.
My guess also is that a strongly disproportionate number of Mormons are finding their way to the ESPN poll, and skewing the results. It would have been interesting if they had also asked the question "Are you Mormon?"
That said, the best explanation is that people around the world think they are pretty honest and so forth. If you hover over the globe icon at the bottom, you'll see that outside the US, those voting are more confident than not that they could obey the Law.
I remain curious about the question Robin raised: How did BYU know he was having sex?
A lot of people are asking that on the web but I wasn't able to find a definite answer.
The best theory I heard was that he knocked his girlfriend up, and he confessed because it was about to become public knowledge. That's just a guess, however.
Regardless I doubt many girls there are on the Pill and the boys there probably find it awkward to buy condoms — kind of hard to square that with complying with their code.
These results do not seem to support the theory that being overly "self-critical" is a burning problem with a great many folks, at least for those of the non-east coast upper,upper-middle variety. Just sayin'…as they say 😉
I like Mich's guess: that his back-up turned him in. In all seriousness, though, I'm sure it was some other student, intent on fulfilling all righteousness and "encouraging others in their commitment to comply with the Honor Code (#9)." On my freshman dorm, everyone knew when anyone was "making the beast with two backs."
Nick–HA! Isn't dorm life romantic?
@Nick,
I wanted to let you know that I heard you a couple of times on The Two Words podcast and I really enjoyed it. Is there anyway I can get some of your sermons?
Hey Robin – Thanks so much. For you, and all the other readers who are desperately looking for sermons from me, an archive exists on our church website, http://www.gracevanvorst.org. You're too kind.
Anyone who has actually seen Mormon missionaries at their door knows that only the actual Mormons could keep up the dress code, whatever the dress code could be. Anyone who isn't already a Mormon missionary and voted "yes" is probably in a self-deceptive mode.