Not much surprises me anymore with changes in the Church. I’m very pragmatic, and with my engineering mind there has to be a reason to do something a certain way. This mindset got me in trouble at home and school more times than I’d like to remember.

When the Church makes a change, in my mind it’s a “what took you so long” attitude I have. For example

  1. Get rid of all the redundancy in the Endowment ceremony (we will go down), it was a waste of time to begin with.
  2. Let Sister Missionaries wear pants? They are much more modest (less revealing) in almost all circumstances., and more comfortable.
  3. Men and women’s missionary age the same? Why not? What was the big deal to begin with?
  4. Get rid of home teaching? In our modern connected society it had out lived its usefulness and was a waste of time
  5. Let missionaries call home every week? I never called once in two years, but why not? What was the reason in the first place except maybe cost (in my case from Chile), which has disappeared completely years ago.
  6. Two hour Church. Three trips to Church in the 1970’s to one two hour visit was long over due.
  7. Sleeveless garments. About time. I started with the old one piece on my mission.

There are many more I could list. None surprised me. When tea and coffee are removed from the Word of Wisdom (it was a “temporary commandment” don’t you know?), I won’t be surprised.

But this last week I was surprised with the lessening of a Church related dress code. I spent last week in Laie Hawaii with my elderly parents and my siblings (we are old but not quite “elderly”). We had all lived there a long time ago, and in fact my sister was born there. One morning I was on a walk with my dad and we were in front of the temple when my dad recognized the granddaughter of a close friend of his walking the opposite direction of us towards school (BYU-H). They exchanged greeting with a hug, and talked a little. She said she was on her way to class and needed to hurry, so we said goodbye and off she went.

This was my surprise; she was wearing a crop top showing a clear three inches of her stomach. She was wearing cut off jean shorts that came several inches above her knee, with the normal stings hanging from typical cut offs. She was wearing flipflops (called slippers or “slippahs” in Hawaii). Now I knew BYU-H had a little laxer dress code, but I was not prepared for this. Now, she did not look at all immodest or out out of place with kids on most high school or collage campuses (excepting BYU-I and BYU-P). It seems more practical people are making decisions at BYU-H.

I take this as a positive step of the Church stepping out of the 19th century and moving into the 21st. (they skipped right over the 20th!). I also believe that they need to do this to keep the current generation of youth.

Did any of you know this about BYU-H dress code? If not does it surprise you?

What are your thoughts?