Posted by:
mateo
(
)
Date: September 19, 2010 01:07PM
(I posted a similar thread at postmormon.org last week. I'm looking for all the support I can get.)
I'm one of many ex-mormons who started to have serious doubts about the church while attending BYU. I wasn't _really_ free to honestly evaluate and act on my doubts, however, because I knew that if I came to the conclusion that the church wasn't true and decided to leave the church, I would have been immediately dismissed from BYU. It's hard enough to deal with the emotional and social pressue associated with leaving the church. The additional threat of destroying your academic and professional life is one the church ought not to have.
Now that I am out of BYU and out of the church, I'm interested in organizing an advocacy effort aimed at changing BYU policy on this topic. Our goal is merely that BYU students who choose to disaffiliate themselves from the church be treated exactly like a non-member. BYU would still be able to force them to live the honor code, maintain an ecclesiastical endorsement, or even pay non-member tuition, but they would be unable to expell them from the university.
Unfortunately, being rasied as a compliant TBM I have precisely zero experience in advocacy. Does anyone have any experience or advice on this matter? (Will you give it to me?) And perhaps most important, is anyone interested in getting involved?
College years are frequently the time in which we challenge our worldview and become independent thinkers. Universities are supposed to be places of intellectual freedom. By requiring ideological conformity under threat of dismissal, BYU flagrantly tramples these principles. Will anyone help me fight?
Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/19/2010 01:08PM by mateo.