According to the article, she knowingly violated the school’s honor code:
Regardless of how conservative this code may sound, a code is a code, and she broke it.
I side with the school on this.
@fractalmstr There is a very real possibility that BYU has violated Federal law. If they have, I hope the Feds do not let BYU play the “religion” card. From the scandals affecting the Catholic Church, we know what happens when there is too much deference to religious organizations.
The positive news is that the student has been accepted to other universities. If I were her, I wouldn’t look back.
I doubt they broke federal law and I doubt they violated the intent of Title IX because it is a stretch to call it retaliation. The only issue here is theoretical…should BYU hold all students to the vows if they claim they have been victims of a crime and in addition these stories are about women who claim to have been sexually assaulted but may or may not have also broken the vows prior to or during their alleged assault.
“There is a very real possibility that BYU has violated Federal law.”
How do you think they did so? Retaliation theory maybe? Some kind of confidentiality breach?
In the case of Brooke, they suspended her four months after the rape incident on the basis of “continuing” violations of the student code relating to sex and drugs. Sounds like BYU is talking about multiple infractions. They also (although we don’t know from the press reports) probably expelled her perp from the school.
@momofthreeboys You may doubt it but two former US Attorney’s were on NPR today and they said they would encourage the DOJ to investigate whether BYU’s policies were having the effect of encouraging women not to report crimes. This itself is a violation of numerous statues (they mentioned a few) and they also said it could led to the “perversion of justice”.
Another major issue is if the university is in possession of material it shouldn’t have (and that it received by a sheriff’s deputy who is a LDS member). This would be a very serious matter. Even if it isn’t prosecutable, it is reprehensible to have police officers divulging highly privileged information to universities.
All this talk of vows also leaves me feeling very unsettled in view of the Catholic Church scandal. Vows didn’t prevent priests from molesting thousands of boys.
The key word here is “FORMER” US Attorney’s. At this point they just have political opinions.
Regarding the material that BYU shouldn’t have, that only matters if they solicited it. For example, if someone told you state secrets without you asking, you have committed no crime.
I don’t see a lot of grey area here to play politics… The girl agreed to the honor code upon enrolling to the university. She broke the honor code by choosing to go off campus and do drugs. She made bad choices. Case closed.
And for the record, I’m not saying I think what BYU did here is awesome, but technically speaking, the girl knowingly broke the honor code. The school has every right to hold her accountable for it… and future students have the right to say “you know what, you guys are jerks, I’m not attending BYU”.
“Would you also agree that such safety is, in part, related to BYU’s strict codes and strict enforcement thereof?”
Sure. I just think all of that is compatible with protecting students who allege they were violently assaulted. It’s possible to have a deeply conservative Christianity that incorporates mercy and proportionality. Mote, beam. I don’t think we’re talking about a ton of cases here, but they invoke critical questions of justice.
Nothing to dispute for me because it is frankly none of my business. People are free to follow their religion and if the parties involved are accepting of the conditions, not my business to name call them.
As far as I could tell when I lived there, the students were content with the school, and the practices sure seemed to be dutifully accepted as normal. For me to then call them bigoted and misogynistic when the practitioners accept and want to live that way seems way too paternalistic and ethnocentric for my tastes. I may disagree with the practices and beliefs for myself, but not my place to be mean to them and call them names etc. for something they want to do.
Interestingly, I had a Muslim female neighbor for three years in my apartment building in Washington D.C. and she touted the virtues of the school and wished her daughters and sons, when she had them, would go there. She was from Pakistan and was waiting on an arranged marriage for herself; she was fine with that too.
I think it would have been a bit silly of me to think of her as bigoted and misogynistic given she was a female making that choice for herself. Would make no sense for me to think that.
Posters on here seem to forget a large percentage of Muslim females agree with these practices, follow them, and it is mothers who enforce a lot of the practices and traditions, even the practices the West calls misogynistic. They simply do not have the same viewpoint.
What I was referring to, and I should have been more specific, is the Town Council and the State (VA) did not intrude on the school and did not call them bigoted and misogynistic and stood clear of the school practices. Both the Town and the State turned a blind eye to many of the practices and even set up exemptions to allow for these practices to be followed outside of the academy on field trips in public.
And, more importantly, there were no former Justice Department people calling for an investigation of the schools practices within its walls. And that goes for today as well - the Academy is left alone. I am pretty sure a bigger Academy was built too, as that was the plan some 20 years ago when Saudi Arabia bought some 100 acres in MD.
Furthermore, Western institutions in DC are adopting some of the practices. I recall American University and a couple other schools adopting Muslim female-only hours at the pool and other gym facilities so that Muslim females do not have to attend the pool and gym and be around males in their swimsuits and shorts. And males are not allowed anywhere near the facility during those hours.
I did not say they are worse; you say that. What I pointed out is they practice things that others, you included, call bigoted and misogynistic, but they are left alone.
It does beg the question, if such a Muslim school is left alone to practice its religion and morals as it pleases and even has exceptions carved out for them, why are not BYU, Liberty, and other Christian schools left alone to practice their religion and morals?
As I stated above, I do not see anyone going after said Academy, or any Muslim school for that matter, to change beliefs, practices and morals and see no former Justice people asking for an investigation into their religious beliefs and honor code. I bet it will never occur either. Hum…
And there are probably an equal number of prospective students who like the fact that the honor code is strongly enforced and their chances of being around such a student is low because such people get kicked out.
There are many more males and females, than some posters here want to acknowledge, who want this type of environment exactly the way it is . And those students are quite happy as well and are glad that students who break vows are either strongly dear with or kicked out.
@awcntdb “…if such a Muslim school is left alone to practice its religion and morals as it pleases and even has exceptions carved out for them, why are not BYU, Liberty, and other Christian schools left alone to practice their religion and morals?”
Again, from my perspective, the real issue here is that the school still wants government support. It can be ended by agreeing that the none of my tax money can go to research, tuition or any other form of funding or tax breaks for schools who do not afford equal rights to students, regardless of gender, race, sexual preference or religion. No public schools should participate in sports or other activities with these organizations either. If they are private, not government supported, and following the law, they can be as bigoted and misogynistic as they wish to be.
@awcntdb “For me to then call them bigoted and misogynistic when the practitioners accept and want to live that way seems way too paternalistic and ethnocentric for my tastes.”
When I accurately label bigotry and misogyny, it bothers you, and you refer to this accurate identification as name calling. Is calling a racist a racist name calling too? Do you think that maybe the slaves like it? Is calling an atheist and atheist or a Jew a Jew name-calling? What do you prefer for bigot to be called in polite society? and what should a misogynist be called?
Actually I believe that BYU meets that standard.
But if you simply want to stop funding causes you don’t believe in, are Mormons then allowed to say that all of their taxes go only to causes they support? They would be much better off financially if that were the case.
Please explain why you think the school is being misogynistic here because I just don’t see it…
You live life through an extremely ethnocentric lens and a very limited one at that.
However, not everyone believes like you do, and your pontifications of what is bigoted and misogynistic are only your opinions. No fact involved anywhere. And that is what you are missing, Your opinion and beliefs are not facts and certainly do not set the standards for the rest of the world.
Specifically, it is only bigoted and misogynistic if a set(s) of the parties involved are against the practices and feel demeaned by the practices. If all parties, females included, are not only accepting, but want that to be their way of life, then it is not up to me to demean their choices. I may think it crazy, nutty, and not something I would do, but not my place to belittle them, as they are making conscious, informed choices of how to live their lives.
You need to accept the fact that not everyone holds your beliefs and values. And trying to instill your values and beliefs onto BYU or another’s religious practices is, in my view, out-of-bounds.
Incorrect analogy, as slaves would rather leave their conditions.
The religious people I am talking about do not want to leave their conditions and believe in what they are practicing and accept those beliefs, as strongly as you accept yours.
And where you are totally wrong is that these people do like what they are doing; it is only you pontificating that they do not like their lives because of your ethnocentric worldview. Ironically, they seem a lot more content and happy than you do.
Better analogies, but actually proves my point.
Atheists want to be atheists and Jews want to be Jews; they like and accept their existence and who they are. You seem not to understand that BYU students who dutifully choose to attend and Muslims who practice their beliefs want to be BYU students and Muslims who follow their beliefs.
They like who they are. It is only you thinking you can speak for them is saying they do not like who they are. You are simply way off base telling people you do not know that they do not like their lives, when you have not a clue, have never met them, and especially when they are making conscious decisions for themselves. You really need to stick to your own life and beliefs and stay out of others, especially religious beliefs.
EDIT: And to give proper context, if I personally practiced many of the things mentioned on my wife, kids and other family members, I could be called bigoted and misogynistic because the other parties involved would be doing soagainst their will, would feel demeaned, and would want out. In such a case, I would agree that they would not like their lives.
They should be allowed to say where their money goes then. And they would be infintely better off and their money would not be going to prop up people who call them bigots and misogynists and who try to disrupt their religion.
Well, I would suspect that the safety is primarily due to cultural and religious homogeneity, but who knows?
Look, I’m a lawyer, and I’m interested in issues of legal process. The way a college handles complaints of sexual assault (or any other kind of complaint) is inherently a form of legal process. And it’s just bad process to inflict punishment for lesser offenses on people entirely as a result of their having reported more serious offenses. If we heard that this was happening in some totalitarian overseas regime, we would all think it’s terrible. We would think–probably rightly–that the policy was in place to discourage reporting and to protect the bigger wrongdoers. I don’t think it’s likely that BYU has such a bad motive, and I therefore think it’s likely that they’ll probably ultimately issue a policy that they won’t punish reporters in this situation.
Then what good is the honor code? Should they change it to the “honor guideline” instead?
I am an atheist. Some people find it ironic that I support freedom of religion, but I do so because it is a positive influence on most people’s lives.
In my interactions with Mormons, including some quite high up in the hierarchy, I have found them to be some of the kindest and most giving people I know. Perhaps you could use some Mormon influence in your life.
The honor code should be administered intelligently. The policy we are discussing allows it to be used as a shield by people committing serious offenses.
Nobody is suggesting that the honor code should be altered to allow people to take LSD. However, it is simply bad administration of a code to expel a person for using LSD when you only learned of that infraction when she reported a rape. (Let’s leave aside whether that’s actually what happened, and just discuss the principle.) It creates incentives that work directly against what the honor code is presumably trying to achieve.
Let me put it this way: even if you want to have a very strict honor code that is based on strong religious beliefs, you still have to figure out how the code will be applied in real situations. Here, what we are talking about is how you will answer the following question: “What is more important: making sure that we punish every infraction that we learn about, or that the most serious infractions get reported?” The answer seems pretty obvious to me; certainly, people might disagree, but I think, to put it as kindly as possible, they would be misguided.
There are three BYU cases beyond Brooke’s that are mentioned in the CNN report, linked by the OP. I regard the fact that CNN led with Brooke’s case as sensational journalism. A number of the people posting on this thread have discussed that case, and not the others in their posts. That does not cover the full scope of the issue at BYU.