A friend recently had the BYU honor office contact him because they had heard he was doing things that break the law of chastity. He is no longer a student, so they put a hold on his account, whatever that entails. People are talking about how he needs to be careful that they don't revoke his degree. Something about the naked missionary calendar guy having his degree revoked.

Can the schools really revoke degrees? If a person has graduated and earned their degree, I assumed they were safe.

The calendar guy IIRC had problems after completely all coursework but before getting his degree. They refused to issue it at that point.

Graduates need to get documentation of their classes, honors, degrees, letters of recommendation, whatever they might need from the profs and records department. Do all of this before resignation or any kind of life change that would shut down BYU cooperation.

Revoking degrees, refusal to send transcripts, or refusing to issue a degree after credits are paid for and earned could result in the revocation or suspension of the school's accreditation. If anything like this were to happen, a complaint should be filed with the Northwest Commission on Colleges and Universities. The media would probably jump on the story as well. There's no way the school/church would risk that.

But haven't we already seen this happen multiple times?

They need to be sued and audited.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/03/2014 06:17PM by Cheryl.

They claim Honor Code violation and to date they have gotten away with it.

+1

I don't know about the actual revocation of a degree which was granted (and the word "granted" here may have a legal meaning which is much more precise than non-lawyers and laypeople may suspect), but there is settled case law on at least part of what is being discussed here:

After Vatican II (1960s), the Roman Catholic Church went through a period of often great upheaval within, and one of the aspects of this was that Catholic religious people (priests, nuns, brothers), many of whom had achieved numerous degrees and advanced degrees at Catholic institutions, left their religious callings and/or left the Church. One of the things many of these people did (and some were presidents of Catholic universities, long-time professors at Catholic universities, etc.) was to request copies of their academic credentials because--if they were in their religious functions when they achieved their degrees, and particularly if "the Church," or any part of "the Church" (like their own religious order) had paid/waived fees for those degrees--they often had never received any actual documents which proved their academic achievements---both as to the subjects they took with the grades they received, and also as to the degrees they had been "awarded" (but had never received in any kind of document form).

These former religious quickly learned that there would be no documents forthcoming, because the stance of the Roman Catholic Church, and the Catholic institutions involved, was that they had obtained those qualifications "free" (their orders had paid the fees...or the Church institution had waived those fees), therefore, the Church's position was that they retroactively had NOT earned them if they later chose to leave religious life.

There were numerous lawsuits filed, and (just like the much later determinations about the resignation process from the LDS Church) there were legal determinations made about how, and under what conditions, former religious could obtain their academic records and the credentials (such as proof that they had obtained such-and-such a degree) they had previously earned (often, many decades before).

I don't know the details of what case law on this subject is, just that former Catholic religious WERE granted the right to obtain documentation of their earned academic credits and degrees.

Any attorney could look up this case law in a couple of minutes and know exactly what provisions would apply to someone who had obtained academic credits and/or degrees from LDS institutions, and then left the LDS church. Whatever the legal determinations were in the post-Vatican II Roman Catholic Church would apply to all LDS institutions as well.



Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 09/03/2014 06:36PM by tevai.

This raises an interesting argument.

Schools, including state schools, have revoked degrees before if it comes to light afterwards that the person was not entitled to them. For example, if a school learns and can prove that a student had someone else do substantial work for an online course, credit can be removed and a degree revoked.

A church school can expell or deny a degree based on religious reasons.

Why then, couldn't a church school revoke a degree if it learned and could prove that a person was ineligible to receive a degree, even if it is years after the degree was awarded?

Note, this would only cover religious behavior or violations that happened before a degree were awarded and discovered after the degree was awarded.

First up, the facts:

1) BYU cannot and has not revoked degrees from people to whom they were granted due to religious reasons. Lots of ex-Mo's have BYU degrees. For some reasons, this gets speculated about, despite there not being a single case of a degree being revoked.

2) BYU cannot and has not refused to provide transcripts to people for religious reasons. In matter of fact, the transcript office doesn't link into any membership record system (the application system, on the other hand, does). Once again, nobody can provide a case of a transcript request being refused.

What *has* happened has been refusal to grant degrees or admissions to ex-Mormons. There have been two cases of refusal to grant degrees posted here on this board; in both cases, the individuals were ineligible to get an ecclesiastical endorsement. One completed his work at another school and wanted to transfer the credit back to BYU in order to complete graduation requirements. I can't recall the circumstances of the other one.

There wwere a couple well-documented cases of an ex-Mo being refused admission to BYU graduate programs; this resulted in clarification of BYU's admission requirements (namely, only current or never-been LDS can be admitted, no ex-LDS). These cases were mentioned here:
http://www.ksl.com/?sid=4867343&nid=

There is also the reform BYU movement, angling to support peoples' ability to leave the church while staying at the Y. I can't seem to find a link at the moment.

In any case, BYU doesn't revoke degrees or refuse to issue transcripts. Speculation that they do is largely unhelpful and ignores the much larger problem, namely, that of questioning students that are locked into remaining at BYU or taking a transfer (and attendant dollar and opportunity cost) to another school.

^^^^THIS^^^^ Thankyouthankyouthankyou

The FERPA act of 1974 requires that a university give a written explanation of why a transcript is being held, and what the student has to do to get it released. That usually involves paying off a debt to the university, though it could be a requirement to formally relinquish an athletic eligibility so the university can offer an athletic scholarship to another student and stay within NCAA limits. My point is that it is not always about the student owing money.

Also, going in and getting a bunch of copies of your transcript in case they remove courses from it is also just stupid. They don't remove courses from your transcript except in very unusual circumstances. If they did, and you tried to pass off your copy as your legitimate current transcript, you would be guilty of fraud and misrepresentation.

If a court suspends your drivers license, and you lie and told them you lost it, but it is in your wallet, you still have a suspended license. The card is not the license, the state DMV record is your license.

Similarly, the piece of paper is not your transcript. The record at the university is. If the paper differs from the university record, and you knowingly pass the paper off as accurate, you have committed a crime. And believe me, if they yank anything off your transcript, you will know. That same FERPA law has serious notification and due process requirements to protect students.

Once the degree is granted, BYU is not going to revoke it. Make sure that the degree is noted on your transcript before you resign from the church. That note on your transcript may take some time after your official graduation day -- up to several weeks. Once the degree is noted on your transcript, you are in the clear.

In mormonism, 'the lord commands & revokes as (he) pleases'; anyone who expects consistent interact(s) with-from such an org is truly demented.


OTOH, the church DEMANDS clear loyalty, obedience, conformance-compliance from its members.

does everyone have that straight?

This is the kind of nonsense that usually shows up in these transcript threads. There are laws with serious teeth in them that regulate what universities can do with transcripts. These laws apply to church owned schools.

The way I see it, claiming to have graduated from BYU in a situation like this has a very low chance of detection. Who would doubt such an embarrassing claim?

"Boss, we have two applicants. One claims to have graduated Harvard, the other from Brigham Young University."

"Verify the Harvard degree and toss the BYU grad in the round file."

And even if an employer did check, they'd laugh when BYU said, "Yes, he/she graduated with honors, but we revoked the degree because he/she fornicated." It's stupid prudery. Besides, it's not like they can remove the knowledge from your brain.

Actually a lot of companies check check. I know Microsoft does. They hire plenty of programmers without degrees, but if you claim you have one and the university disagrees, you're fired period.

Sadly for most people in the REAL world, graduation from BYU is proof that you believe some pretty strange things and are incapable of actual academic thought.