BYU Honor Code

The Brigham Young University Men’s basketball team’s season looked so promising just a week ago. After all, they had the best scorer in the country, in Jimmer Fredette, and only two losses on the season. Then the nation received news that the team’s leading rebounder Brandon Davies had been dismissed from the team for having sexual relations with his girlfriend. At almost any other university in the United States, these actions would not have warranted a suspension. However, at BYU having pre-marital sex violates the schools honor code. This honor code also includes bans on alcoholic and caffeinated beverages. The national reception of this event was mixed. However, many people began to believe that BYU’s honor code was unfair and Brandon Davies’ suspension was unjust. Many people found it laughable that Davies was suspended for such a “petty” infraction. The reaction to Davies suspension reminded me a lot of the reaction that our class had to many of the old school ideologies which we learned about in lecture this week. Many of these ideas were created with the sole intention of reinforcing female inferiority in society. Very few if any of them were based on any kind of scientific fact.
Pat Griffin’s blog discusses what it is like to be LBGT at BYU. Griffin did some research on the honor code and found that BYU is accepting of homosexuals at the university as long as they do not engage in any “intimate contact.” Griffin goes on to discuss that, while BYU is accepting of homosexuals at the school, there is a whole section in the honor code devoted to telling homosexuals what they can and cannot do. Griffin feels that an action of two homosexuals holding hands would be enough to get them kicked out of athletics whereas heterosexuals would have to have sex in order to be disciplined. There does seem to be some kind of inequality at BYU for LBGT students. To have an entire section in an honor code about one group shows that the university does have some kind of opposition or worry about homosexuals.