So there’s this college in Provo, Utah, that’s run by a socially conservative church. All of the students who choose to attend the school agree to adhere to a pretty strict honor code that governs the way they dress, forbids them from drinking alcohol, and explicitly bans students from having sex. I am, of course, talking about Brigham Young University and it shouldn’t exactly be news that the place exists or that students there are held to pretty strict moral standards.
But despite the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints’ somewhat undeserved reputation for a being comprised of a bunch of catalog models marching lockstep, I know from personal experience that BYU is a pretty diverse place ideologically and otherwise. (My mother and sister went there and a number of family friends have worked or taught there as well.) College kids, as they are wont to do, have bucked the school’s honor codes in any number of ways over the years from various forms of public protest to publishing underground satirical newspapers. There have always been students determined not to adhere to the honor code. My sister attended BYU while Jim McMahon was the school’s quarterback and I don’t think I’m divulging any big secrets to say that he didn’t win awards for piety while he was a student there. The bottom line is that BYU has an honor code and the students are supposed to abide by it. The Mormon church penalizes flagrant violations of the code, but isn’t running a prison camp here. Nor is BYU unique in running a religious college where students are expected to adhere to certain moral standards.
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