By Lindsay Hinmon
*Hello readers. It's been a considerable amount of time since anything was published here at The Student Voice. I graduated last June and have been up to other shenanigans, but recently discovered this unpublished post sitting in my Google Docs, written sometime last year. It needs to be said, so, in characteristic form, I'm saying it. Enjoy! Or don't, but either way, read and share ; )
We all know people who attended one of the three BYUs and have since chosen to walk away from life as a faithful Latter-Day Saint. I have, at times, heard members of our faith gawk at such an event, wondering how someone so schooled in our religious ideals could choose to turn away. The truth is, while I am saddened each time one of my spiritual siblings leaves the life I love, I am not surprised when BYU grads go their own way. The reason? It’s complex for sure, but one key contributing factor, I believe, is the Honor Code.
*Hello readers. It's been a considerable amount of time since anything was published here at The Student Voice. I graduated last June and have been up to other shenanigans, but recently discovered this unpublished post sitting in my Google Docs, written sometime last year. It needs to be said, so, in characteristic form, I'm saying it. Enjoy! Or don't, but either way, read and share ; )
We all know people who attended one of the three BYUs and have since chosen to walk away from life as a faithful Latter-Day Saint. I have, at times, heard members of our faith gawk at such an event, wondering how someone so schooled in our religious ideals could choose to turn away. The truth is, while I am saddened each time one of my spiritual siblings leaves the life I love, I am not surprised when BYU grads go their own way. The reason? It’s complex for sure, but one key contributing factor, I believe, is the Honor Code.
This isn’t a rant about how parts of the Honor Code are antiquated. It’s not a lament about the great hardship it is to keep a curfew or live in a world of bald faced men, and this certainly is not an excuse for anyone to liberate him or herself from abiding by the contract we all read and signed. This is a discussion about the long term effects of accepting a package deal of rules to live by during formative years, if the goal is to ultimately cultivate morality and conviction. As President McKay famously said of students at this university, “We need men, real men who cannot be bought or sold. Men who scorn to violate truth. Genuine gold”. Here are three reasons I believe the Honor Code isn’t producing these much needed leaders of integrity.
1. The Honor Code limits the space wherein a moral compass is formed.
College is about making choices. In traditional American society, a boy becomes a man at the age of 18. The newly christened adult squares his shoulders after high school graduation and begins the experience of facing the world exactly as he chooses. He becomes his own person, and does so primarily by making decisions, seeing what happens, analyzing the data and using this new information to inform his future decisions. Choices that lie in the hands of 18 year old adults range from, Should I eat cookie dough for breakfast? to Should I____? (fill in your mother’s worst nightmare here). Having witnessed a wide variety of outcomes emerge from choices made by young adults, I understand why loving parents and leaders sometimes panic at the thought of this new found freedom. Some dangers are too real. Some decisions cannot be unmade, but what we forget is that limiting the potentially dangerous decisions available also limits opportunities to deliberately, independently, wholeheartedly choose the good in a real life choice between right and wrong.
University living is a fairly forgiving microcosm for what the next phases of life will bring. It is generally understood that young adults are still figuring it out, and most of the people in the university community have chosen as their life’s work the task of helping students figure it out in one way or another. It’s a place of learning, more than just Pythagorean’s theorem or the principles of chiaroscuro. It’s a place where, free from the ideals of parents, a person becomes who she’s going to be. Each decision she makes, she learns from. Every success and failure makes up real life experience--her real life experience. When, with one swooping signature a student opts out of a large bulk of decisions her peers are facing, she signs away critical experiences of moral development.
2. The Honor Code synonymizes sin and disobedience.
By my own personal favorite description, the Honor Code is the gospel on crack. By this I mean that the doctrinally sound standards we uphold as LDS people become merely a launching pad for stipulations measuring skirt lengths, fabric types and degrees of five o’clock shadow. In life outside the Honor Code, when I do wrong, I feel wrong. If I lie, am lazy, spiteful or rude, I feel remorse and regret, because these things are not good. Likewise when I choose to stop and help, to sacrifice time or attention, to listen to uplifting music or make inspiring art, I feel good, because these things are good.
In my experience there is no discernible goodness or badness in a mustache vs. a beard, an adventure that keeps me out past midnight, or a cap sleeved shirt. These things just are. They are not inherently good or bad. Wearing jeans with holes in them is not morally equivalent to cheating on a test. Walking across campus in swimwear is not the same as taking your date to third base. If any and all deviation from the Honor Code is met with punishment during an era where students are formulating for themselves what values they will carry into mature adulthood, it’s no wonder that some students lump all acts of defiance into the notion of sin, then drop kick the lot, forever rejecting the notion of the badness of beards after graduation.
Second, we champion obedience on this campus and as an LDS people, but obedience is not inherently good. In the worst and most dramatic cases, genocide is committed as soldiers obey orders. In a more relevant analogy, we have all been through a course where we “obey” the syllabus, mindlessly reading texts, heartlessly completing assignments only to emerge with no more knowledge than when we entered the class. It’s not enough to obey. We need to know why. We need to want it. We need to be invested and engaged. Such intrinsic motivation is born in the crucible of personal experience.
3. The Honor Code discourages repentance.
If there is one life lesson every young adult needs in these formative years of college, more than reading, writing, or teaching skills, more than networking, memorizing theorems, obtaining internships or developing talents, we need to know the Atonement of Jesus Christ is real. And how can we when we are terrified of living in a way that might necessitate it, or living in silent shame for needing it?
It is perhaps the most tragic and damaging flaw in the Honor Code that the process of repentance comes at the risk of scholastic discipline. When a student violates the honor code she is faced with a decision: confess to her bishop and/or the Office of Honor, or keep it to herself. If the sin is serious enough, confession could mean expulsion. In some very real cases students must choose between the atonement and their education.
But this is their own doing, isn’t it? They should have never made the mistake in the first place… right?
I worked three years as a nanny and during that time, I watched a lot of cartoons. The only one that ever successfully won me over was The Magic School Bus. Miss Frizzle’s fantastic hair and killer wardrobe make it irresistible enough, but she’s got a catch phrase I adore. Miss Frizzle loves to say, “Take chances! Make mistakes! Get Messy!” The mantra represents the polar opposite of the essence of the Honor Code. Is Miss Frizzle right? Do we need to make mistakes?
It’s a silly question because whether we need to or not, everyone knows that we will. But even with that inevitability looming, I still would give you this answer:
Only if we want to know God.
Speaking as a sinner myself, someone who has been wronged and done wrong, a person who is working her way through life in her own way--at times exquisitely tragic and in moments goofily sublime, I tell you this: I need God. I need His light and I need the way He scolds me. I need Him to reprove me "betimes with sharpness” and then show that increase of love. And when things get really, really hard, I need Him to help me understand how to make it good again. Call my radical, opinionated, obstinate or wrong, but I contest that anything that obstructs that sacred connection between sinner and Savior is doing more harm than good.
We need raw life experiences. If the Honor Code saves a student from disobedience, defiance or sin, does that make it successful? “We need men, real men, who cannot be bought or sold.” President McKay’s plea echoes. “Men who scorn to violate truth. Genuine gold.” Does the Honor Code allow that refiner’s fire to craft a conscience that will carry the graduate through the intensely challenging world we live in as more mature adults? Will this student know where to turn, how to cope, have the will to say no when given the opportunities avoided while young enough to recover from a less than perfect choice? And when he makes those less than perfect choices, sooner or later, will he have the courage to turn and face God? Will he feel like he can?
1. The Honor Code limits the space wherein a moral compass is formed.
College is about making choices. In traditional American society, a boy becomes a man at the age of 18. The newly christened adult squares his shoulders after high school graduation and begins the experience of facing the world exactly as he chooses. He becomes his own person, and does so primarily by making decisions, seeing what happens, analyzing the data and using this new information to inform his future decisions. Choices that lie in the hands of 18 year old adults range from, Should I eat cookie dough for breakfast? to Should I____? (fill in your mother’s worst nightmare here). Having witnessed a wide variety of outcomes emerge from choices made by young adults, I understand why loving parents and leaders sometimes panic at the thought of this new found freedom. Some dangers are too real. Some decisions cannot be unmade, but what we forget is that limiting the potentially dangerous decisions available also limits opportunities to deliberately, independently, wholeheartedly choose the good in a real life choice between right and wrong.
University living is a fairly forgiving microcosm for what the next phases of life will bring. It is generally understood that young adults are still figuring it out, and most of the people in the university community have chosen as their life’s work the task of helping students figure it out in one way or another. It’s a place of learning, more than just Pythagorean’s theorem or the principles of chiaroscuro. It’s a place where, free from the ideals of parents, a person becomes who she’s going to be. Each decision she makes, she learns from. Every success and failure makes up real life experience--her real life experience. When, with one swooping signature a student opts out of a large bulk of decisions her peers are facing, she signs away critical experiences of moral development.
2. The Honor Code synonymizes sin and disobedience.
By my own personal favorite description, the Honor Code is the gospel on crack. By this I mean that the doctrinally sound standards we uphold as LDS people become merely a launching pad for stipulations measuring skirt lengths, fabric types and degrees of five o’clock shadow. In life outside the Honor Code, when I do wrong, I feel wrong. If I lie, am lazy, spiteful or rude, I feel remorse and regret, because these things are not good. Likewise when I choose to stop and help, to sacrifice time or attention, to listen to uplifting music or make inspiring art, I feel good, because these things are good.
In my experience there is no discernible goodness or badness in a mustache vs. a beard, an adventure that keeps me out past midnight, or a cap sleeved shirt. These things just are. They are not inherently good or bad. Wearing jeans with holes in them is not morally equivalent to cheating on a test. Walking across campus in swimwear is not the same as taking your date to third base. If any and all deviation from the Honor Code is met with punishment during an era where students are formulating for themselves what values they will carry into mature adulthood, it’s no wonder that some students lump all acts of defiance into the notion of sin, then drop kick the lot, forever rejecting the notion of the badness of beards after graduation.
Second, we champion obedience on this campus and as an LDS people, but obedience is not inherently good. In the worst and most dramatic cases, genocide is committed as soldiers obey orders. In a more relevant analogy, we have all been through a course where we “obey” the syllabus, mindlessly reading texts, heartlessly completing assignments only to emerge with no more knowledge than when we entered the class. It’s not enough to obey. We need to know why. We need to want it. We need to be invested and engaged. Such intrinsic motivation is born in the crucible of personal experience.
3. The Honor Code discourages repentance.
If there is one life lesson every young adult needs in these formative years of college, more than reading, writing, or teaching skills, more than networking, memorizing theorems, obtaining internships or developing talents, we need to know the Atonement of Jesus Christ is real. And how can we when we are terrified of living in a way that might necessitate it, or living in silent shame for needing it?
It is perhaps the most tragic and damaging flaw in the Honor Code that the process of repentance comes at the risk of scholastic discipline. When a student violates the honor code she is faced with a decision: confess to her bishop and/or the Office of Honor, or keep it to herself. If the sin is serious enough, confession could mean expulsion. In some very real cases students must choose between the atonement and their education.
But this is their own doing, isn’t it? They should have never made the mistake in the first place… right?
I worked three years as a nanny and during that time, I watched a lot of cartoons. The only one that ever successfully won me over was The Magic School Bus. Miss Frizzle’s fantastic hair and killer wardrobe make it irresistible enough, but she’s got a catch phrase I adore. Miss Frizzle loves to say, “Take chances! Make mistakes! Get Messy!” The mantra represents the polar opposite of the essence of the Honor Code. Is Miss Frizzle right? Do we need to make mistakes?
It’s a silly question because whether we need to or not, everyone knows that we will. But even with that inevitability looming, I still would give you this answer:
Only if we want to know God.
Speaking as a sinner myself, someone who has been wronged and done wrong, a person who is working her way through life in her own way--at times exquisitely tragic and in moments goofily sublime, I tell you this: I need God. I need His light and I need the way He scolds me. I need Him to reprove me "betimes with sharpness” and then show that increase of love. And when things get really, really hard, I need Him to help me understand how to make it good again. Call my radical, opinionated, obstinate or wrong, but I contest that anything that obstructs that sacred connection between sinner and Savior is doing more harm than good.
We need raw life experiences. If the Honor Code saves a student from disobedience, defiance or sin, does that make it successful? “We need men, real men, who cannot be bought or sold.” President McKay’s plea echoes. “Men who scorn to violate truth. Genuine gold.” Does the Honor Code allow that refiner’s fire to craft a conscience that will carry the graduate through the intensely challenging world we live in as more mature adults? Will this student know where to turn, how to cope, have the will to say no when given the opportunities avoided while young enough to recover from a less than perfect choice? And when he makes those less than perfect choices, sooner or later, will he have the courage to turn and face God? Will he feel like he can?