With the recent Q&A and the protests, I thought I would talk a little about the BYU Honor Code.
http://news.byu.edu/news/q-kevin-utt-director-byus-honor-code-office –today’s released Q&A.
There has been a great deal of discussion about enforced vs voluntary honor codes. With all the publicity you might wonder what is the administration afraid of that they don’t go for the easy public relations win.
They believe that the proposed changes would lead to a massive upsurge in casual promiscuous sex that female participants would not consider fully consensual.
Now you might wonder, how in God’s green earth did they get such an idea? Simple. Observational economists have studied the issue.
They started by studying the rates of casual promiscuous sex. Those go up dramatically at schools where there are more unmarried women than men.
In those studies they also discovered that most of the women did not feel that the sex was fully consensual.
The next thing they did was study sub-populations. In general, members of conservative religions are much less promiscuous.
So they studied schools with strong honor codes that were religiously affiliated with conservative religions.
Make/female imbalance resulted in the same dramatic change. The only places you don’t get the huge uptick in sex women perceive as not fully consensual is where you have honor code enforcement.
Now.
So:
1. There may be another factor the statistics missed.
2. The issue of perceived non-consensual sex may not be as significant as college administrators believe it to be and may have an easy solution they have all missed.
3. Compared to freedom from an honor code, the other issues might really not be that important.
4. Anecdotal evidence might be more believable that multiple replicated statistical studies.
What do you think?
Regardless, what changes would you suggest in honor code enforcement would you suggest.
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A draft of this essay had significant discussion.
Past treatment of sexual assault victims would make some honor code employees accessories after the fact to rape in some states.
There are also additional ongoing changes to the office.
There were also these comments [read the Q&A to get a sense of the dynamic situation. Things have changed some in the past three years, and it appears there are more changes to come].
It may well be that the era of anonymous referrals is over, and other changes.
The Q&A comes at an interesting time.
link to national news on the protests:
Wheat & Tares 
If an Honor Code (aka policing) is the only reason single people don’t have sex and Mormon kids are rushed into premature marriages by their hormones only to have kids before they figure out whether or not they’re in the right relationship, have we done them any favors? And that’s regardless of whether or not they avoid out of wedlock pregnancies. …’cause they manage to do that as well. The church is just good at helping them hide that.
In fact, morality is people mastering themselves in the quiet privacy of their own consciences. It starts developing around 8 and continues into our maturity, in most cases, completely in the absence of any Honor Code Office breathing down our necks.
”It may well be that the era of anonymous referrals is over…”
That would be good. No one should be condemned by anonymous referrals. Everyone should be able to face his or her accuser in open process. Evidence should be required before an institution imposes punishment.
For crimes, the local constabulary is trained to investigate. For sins, confession is best, and the testimony of two witnesses (both church members) is the alternative. Investigating for sins seems unseemly, and especially so because we are not trained to investigate sins — for sins, it is better to wait for the confession or the witnesses.
Alice. I obviously was not clear enough. The overwhelming factual evidence is that sex occurs as a result of imbalanced ratios.
And that in such situations people feel it wasn’t fully consensual.
I’m sorry that somehow did not get communicated to you.
Nicely said ji.
“They believe that the proposed changes would lead to a massive upsurge in casual promiscuous sex that female participants would not consider fully consensual.”
Where did this assertion come from? It sure doesn’t seem like the type of thinking I’m familiar with at BYU.
Personally, I have a problem with bishops being asked to effectively police BYU students with their ecclesiastical endorsements and I think some of the hardcore dress and grooming standards could be relaxed, but fundamentally I support the honor code and its enforcement. My first semester roommate in Deseret Towers came home drunk at 3am, turned on the lights, and urinated out our 4th floor window. He and his buddies had some scheme where they stole phone service. I was writing a report on my computer when I had to step out, and when I came back he was messing with my computer and had deleted my paper. When I pulled him away and bent down to assess the damage, he punched me in the back of the head. The result was the first and only fist-fight of my life, and I suspect it wouldn’t have gone as well for me if he hadn’t been chemically imbalanced at the time. This dude didn’t need to counsel with his bishop — he needed an attitude adjustment and he needed to do it someplace else.
I think it’s ridiculous to have and honor code and not enforce it. That just means those who honor it have to put up with the shenanigans of those who don’t. The way it’s enforced may need upgrading (I’m not advocating a big brother state), but there seems to be this idea that you’ve paid your tithing and therefore are entitled to the cheap tuition, even if you aren’t inclined to keep the honor code, and I have no sympathy for that. There’s also the idea that all things sexual should be written out of the honor code, and I have no sympathy for that either. What are these people saying? That if there isn’t explicit consent, people are expected to control themselves, but if there is explicit consent, then they’re not?
Do you have links to these studies? It would be interesting to take a deeper look.
Hold the phone. I am pretty close to agreeing with Martin on this one. I am not opposed to an honor code in principle, including things like rules about housing. Where it goes too far is when bishops are holding someone’s degree hostage because they were forced to seek an ecclesiastical endorsement annually. For any kid who makes a mistake or has doubts or *gasp* attends in their home ward in SLC a few times too many, they are essentially blackmailed into throwing themselves at the mercy of the often merciless HCO. Anecdotally I’ve also heard that connections matter. If you are the son or daughter of someone higher up in the church, you get a lighter sentence or a pass lest your parents complain. The rest of these poor kids are just hung out to dry.
The fact that the HCO think it’s somehow “normal” for kids to confess to them spontaneously points to their utter ineptitude. They have to know that these kids are being coerced.
Dsc
https://www.tcu360.com/2017/12/how-the-tcu-gender-ratio-affects-campus-hookup-culture/
That will lead you to other places and direct citations.
Dsc, I thought the essay I’m referring you to has a nice discussion, though there are places online with much more math.
Angela and Martin —miracles happen sometimes leading to agreement.
Great starting point. Thanks!
Martin,
You don’t need an honor code enforcement office for your problem. Your reporting of your roommate’s crimes to the local constabulary would result in a police report. That police report would serve as evidence of an honor code failure. If you reported his crimes to your bishop or the honor code office, well, that was the wrong answer — if those crimes were troubling to you, you should have reported them to the police.
Georgia Tech has about a 65% male to 35% female ratio and other tech schools have similar problems. In the 1970’s Ga Tech had over 10,000 students and less than 200 female students for a 2% female proportion.
All of these tendencies described above at TCU and potentially at BYU should be running in the opposite direction in the tech schools. Do they? If not, why not?
Personally, I think what drives the BYU Honor Code is money, donations from wealthy, loyal alumni and other members. These donors want a “safe” place for their sheltered children where they will not be tempted beyond what they can resist, which apparently isn’t very much.
Silly ji, don’t you know? You call the bishop instead of the police in Happy Valley, if you want anything done.
Very interesting. Reminds me of the Time article by Tom Birger on Mormon and Jewish dating patterns.
The central problem is the unbalanced number of men/women. I wonder why this is true at BYU? It does seem somewhat cruel to have a bunch of girls go off to college in search of husbands and then have them at a school without enough boys for everyone. (In my daughter’s HS class of 5 girls, 4 are attending a BYU and only 1 of those girls is getting a degree with career goals. Dating appears to be more important. Interestingly, a friend who is going to Baylor definitely is not going in search of a spouse.).
The imbalance makes for some desperate girls who end up in relationships that aren’t healthy because they feel they don’t have a choice in saying No when they are competing for boys. I write this as a girl who back in HS ended up in toxic relationship because I was so afraid I would end up the only girl without a boyfriend.
The whole thing is a mess.
A couple of observations. First, my daughter is a Freshman at BYU and when we dropped her off in Provo during her dorm orientation guide told her that if you report sexual assault you may get in trouble with the Honor Code office. Her advice was not to get into trouble to avoid any doubt of culpability. This was 8 months ago and so the message of the QandA hasn’t been absorbed by students.
Second, as a serving bishop outside of Utah I’ve received no training or messages that we should not report to the honor code office any sexual transgressions. In fact during a recent Bishops Welfare Council other bishops asked if they should report sexual transgressions of BYU or BYUI students to Honor Code offices. I told them definitely not.
These two experiences tell me that purported Honor Code changes are not making it to two key audiences – students and bishops.
So the central tenet of your argument is that if BYU relaxed the honor code more women would be sexually assaulted? I don’t think the critics are asking for an abolishment of the honor code in it’s entirety, just a change in how it polices those rules or a change in the rules. Maybe beards don’t lead to an increase in sexual assault?
I went to BYU 20 years ago and got in some trouble for breaking the honor code and was grateful that the consequence for me at the time for me was counselling. I was forced to go to a psychologist and discuss my issues – which was very helpful to me. Much more than my bishop who told me only that I was in danger of hellfire. The counselor helped me work through some underlying problems and really made a difference to my life.
It sounds from reading the students description of their interaction with the office that this is not how it operates today.
A key factor that sets BYU apart from other schools… alcohol use/abuse drives a huge number of bad outcomes on American college campuses, particularly where sex and consent are concerned.
At the risk of saying something nice/positive about the Y, if the administration could see its way to welcoming student input and acting on the best suggestions, the school’s well-positioned to do better than most at keeping students safe from situations that plague too many of our campuses. Achieving a campus that’s (largely) stone cold sober is a much more daunting task (and laudable achievement) in the world of higher education than the policy tweaks that are needed at BYU to make it stone cold fair to all students.
Brian—I’m talking perceptions, not what would necessarily happen, just why those things are believed.
Chino—I included the links and counterpoints/comments because I agree with you that the implementation could be improved.
The good news is that it looks like they are working on improvements.
The bad thing is that by not highlighting the improvements as dramatic changes Toad is right that the changes are not being communicated.
Good is often the enemy of better and failure to acknowledge improvements often hides them.
I wish them courage and success in protecting and nourishing the students in their care.
“dorm orientation guide told her that if you report sexual assault”
Possibly, but hard to Imagine if this was the case a photo would of the guide would have made it to national news
We should remember that today’s HCO is not what most of us have had experience with, 10 or 20 or 30 years ago. It certainly seems to have become more like the Gestapo and less like … well, whatever it was like 20 or 30 years ago. As always, there was no inclination among BYU executives or the Board of Directors to change anything until there was a bunch of negative publicity. Followed by a few cosmetic changes.
In sports, if the team loses consistently, they fire the coach. In business, if a company loses money consistently, the CEO gets fired. Generals get demoted and replaced. Incompetent doctors can lose their privileges and even their license. But in the Church, pretty much no leader is ever replaced, no matter how bad their management record is and how many problems they cause. Accountability seems like a foreign concept (or maybe accountability was part of Satan’s plan way back when). Why not clean house and make a new start at HCO with some student input, some peer review from other institutions, and a new leader and staff in the office to restore some credibility to the office?
“ But in the Church, pretty much no leader is ever replaced, no matter how bad their management record is and how many problems they cause. ”
Case in point: Joseph Bishop, who still hasn’t been disciplined.
But I’m with you, Dave B.. Scrap the HCO and replace it from the ground up with someone simple, accountable, reasonable and effective.
BYU’s Honor Code is more about “code” than “honor”. The fact that it is enforced the way it is demonstrates this difference. I would love for BYU students to be asked to live in an “honorable” way by adhering to a code of principles (modesty, chastity, etc.). But to tell them what they have to do, and to kick them out for not doing it, takes away any element of honor. I guess BYU doesn’t really trust its students to be honorable.
Jpv – the guide was a person not a document. . I heard it myself with my daughter, my wife, and about 15 others leaving their daughters at BYU. Dear wife, daughter, and I all looked at each other thinking “did she really just say that??” She had basically just said try your best not be be sexually assaulted. In her defense the guide was only trying to be helpful by saying that you never know how things will end up if you report sexual assault to your Bishop.
Toad, sexual assault should be reported to the police. I’ve no idea if this is still true but when I was at BYU the Fitness for Life required class had a full class on sexual assault, sexual harassment and what to do. Reporting it to the police was discussed.
Joshua, an honor code that’s all “on my honor” and no enforcement is no honor code at all. Look how many people are already breaking it under the current system. I think the current honor code office is a mess. From the stories perhaps more of a mess than it was in the 90’s when it was also a mess. (And unfortunately filled with double standards as anyone at a party with a lot of football players from the Lavell era knows) But more or less trusting all students to be honorable is just plain…I’m not even sure a good word. Naive doesn’t go far enough.
Since making my comment above, I went and read the Q&A with the new HCO Director (see link below). He was previously dean of students at another university, he has TItle IX experience, and he came to BYU just a year or so ago as the assistant HCO Director, then quickly moved up to become the Director. So BYU appears to have quietly done what I suggested above: They brought in an outside person with experience running a similar office at another university (so they have best practices experience, not BYU practices experience) to run the place. I hope they gave him a mandate to clean it up and a promise of support to see the reforms through. And I hope he is serious about changing how the office operates rather than just doing PR damage control.
https://news.byu.edu/news/q-kevin-utt-director-byus-honor-code-office
Joshua, it’s an honor code because you can easily violate it without ever being caught. If you’re flagrant about it, or such a repeat offender that you do eventually get caught, or inconveniencing others with your dishonorable behavior, you ought to be disciplined.
Ji, the suggestion that I call the police on my roommate sounds like such a great idea from a disinterested third party. Think about it. You think they’re going to haul him away for me? Hardly. And I have to sleep in the same room with the guy afterwards. I didn’t report him to the Honor Code Office either, because his appointments with them seemed pretty regular already and they didn’t seem in any hurry to kick him out (he said they were “working with him”). The fistfight happened just before Christmas break, so I managed to find another room before winter semester.
Actually, let me double down on my response to Ji. Criminal law and honor code enforcement are not equivalent. If this weren’t true, why would you need a Title X office? Sexual harassment, rape, — those are all illegal. And very hard to prove in a criminal court. But the standard of proof isn’t as high for a university to expel a student, so even if you can’t put the rapist in jail, you can at least get him off campus. If I had called the cops after my roommate struck me, he could easily accuse me of initiating the first assault (I pulled him away from my computer). The cops would literally have done nothing, unless we pissed them off in which case we might both have spent a night in jail.
Criminal law is no substitute for an enforced honor code, and an unenforced honor code is utterly irrelevant.
Ji, yes I agree that the police should be contacted in cases of sexual assault. Bishops are sometimes consulted in cases of sexual assault as a trusted conselor / ecclesiastical leader.
There is also the ugly fight between BYU and the state of Utah regarding the decertification of the BYU police, which I haven’t seen discussed much in this thread, perhaps it’s not the direct topic of interest. My understanding is that one reason for decertification is that the BYU police inappropriately share information with the Honor Code Office. Maybe that practice has ended. If the perception is that police aren’t trusted, bishops aren’t trusted, and the Honor Code Office isn’t trusted, then sexual assault victims are without much recourse.
Martin,
What you seem to be advocating for is not an honor code. You’re advocating for a code of conduct and institutional enforcement of penalties for transgressors. By definition, an honor code is based on the honor of the students, such as at a military academy where honor code allegations are heard by peer or fellow student juries. The BYU honor code is really a code of conduct, not an honor code. You want it to remain a code of conduct.
But your story is out of place here. You didn’t report anything to anyone, and no code (honor code or code of conduct) was enforced (or not enforced).
JI, that’s not true by definition. Some may deal with it that way such as a military academy like West Point, not all do. Further most academies require you turn people in you know are breaking the code. Violators are sometimes expelled. It is interesting since many of the reforms to the honor code office at BYU sound like what the Air Force Academy did with their honor code. This rehabilitation strategy was first implemented in 1992 although that linked to report notes, “the program has no impact on cadets’ respect for the honor code.” Although preventing violations probably isn’t the measure most relevant – rather violations after being reported is. Anyways that story is worth reading as it is quite relevant to BYU I think.