My mother told me that she went to Ricks College and she hated it, but she will not go into detail. I didn't even know that Ricks was renamed to BYU Idaho until recently.
Has anybody gone there that can shed some light on it? I don't know when she went there, and I don't want to ask any questions that will raise any questions, but I'm it was assuming 40-50 years ago.

If, as claimed, YBU was 'the Harvard of the West' (HA!)

Ricks -YBU -I was/is 'the kindergarten of Idaho'. btw, I was also there ~ 50 yrs ago, as was Ron of this board...



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/10/2018 07:30PM by GNPE.

The Harvard of the west? Never heard Harvard referred to as the YBU of the east.

I went to Ricks in September of 1966. I was not prepared for the Mormonism 24/7 environment and that most of the guys were laser focused on two things...1. their upcoming mission call 2. keeping their GPA up to avoid the draft with the prospect of going to 'Nam if they faltered.
I was most assuredly NOT going on a mission and was not concerned with the draft or my GPA (I'm Canadian). I just wasn't prepared for the oh so TBM environment that was pervasive and stifling. I endured 2 semesters and my lack of academic enthusiasm meant I was not invited to return for my sophomore year. That was good news to me. And then there were the honor council Nazi's.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/10/2018 11:01PM by Lethbridge Reprobate.

But then he is from Rexburg. He and all his high school friends are gay, though they didn't know that each other was until after high school. From what he tells me, the whole neighborhood was experimenting with sex when they were in high school.

He doesn't really say much about Ricks anymore. I think he went there as it was convenient. He was going to leave and move to CA, but of course, he had to end up here in Cache Valley so I could meet him.

I'll have to ask him his point of view when he gets home. We both live here.

Weird. I went to Ricks the same years and am also from Rexburg. And now I find out there were gay guys at Madison! My whole world as I knew it is a facade crumbling around me in in my pre dementia state! Say it ain't so Pres. Eyring (head of Ricks College at the time). ;)

I went there 1969 to 1971 and I loved every minute. Well, not every minute. I got stopped by the standards police for wearing culottes. It looked like a skirt in the front but looked like pants in the back. We went back and forth. He said, they look like pants. I would turn around and say, look at the pleat! It’s now a skirt!!! He finally gave up and walked away.

I met my ex-husband there too. That was nice. He actually helped to push me right outta that church.

childish.

I'm glad you said that. I went there in 74 and also loved my year (remember, I was very TBM). But I was also a good student and although my father sent me there for the express purpose of finding a husband (didn't happen there), for me, I was there for the education. At the time I was pursuing a biology track.

Yes, I had some classes--usually the very basic gen ed's that were packed with Mollies with no brain, I had some really excellent classes and some amazing professors. Luckily I only had to take one religion class because they counted my Institute credits from California. The Book of Mormon class sucked.

I had great roomies--most of whom were NOT Mollies, was just having fun being away from home and learning to live in snow, after having grown up in the desert. But I particularly remember one sociology class called "Modern Social Problems." This was at the end of Vietnam, right after Roe v. Wade and change of age for voting and alcohol consumption, etc. and all that was going on in the country at that time. I'll guarantee you they would never allow a class like that to be taught at BYU or BYU-I in 2018. We really delved into some things that were hard for me because I was so naive, but the discussions were even sometimes quite R-rated. I remember by the end of the semester there were only about 8 students left in the class. I also had a mythology class that was taught so well I remember so much of it today. The science and math classes I had to take were challenging.

I'm sure it's a whole different place now. I went to BYU for only a semester after Ricks, as it was a Jr. College at the time, and hated it. I'm sure I would probably have hated BYU-I as it is today even when I was TBM.

The primary on the hill. Went there 69-70. Escaped from Alberta moemon prison and had an absolute great time. Loved the American girls, they were so much fun to be around. Could not have cared less about an education. They only let me go for the one year. Screw them.

The American girls treated me like chopped liver when then asked where I wanted to go on my mission and I told them I wasn't going. Calgary was a lot more fun than Wrecksberg.

My Polly GF went to Ricks 69-71, family broke us up because I won't never be a RM.
She met her RM at Ricks, married in 72, had 5 kids, all boys went of missions.
Based on what has been written on RFM, if we had gotten married, we would have divorced within 5 years.
Still have fond memories of the good times.

Rexburg makes Provo seem like Las Vegas

maybe us 'veterans' of Ricks should have a Pity Party; anyone?

my email is public...

I was there in 86-87. While Ricks had the same rules as BYU, since it was so much smaller, they were very strictly enforced. Girls were still not allowed to wear jeans because it was considered crossdressing. One of my classmates was sent to the standards office because she had a bi-level haircut. I was in the theatre department and there was a Joe McCarthy style effort to round up gay men. Our summer production of They're Playing Our Song was closed after a few performances because President Eyring thought it was obscene. I lived in the dorms and curfew was very strictly enforced. With late night rehearsals and performances, this got me into trouble more than once. It was not unusual for the Elders quorum president or Relief Society president to walk right into your room, unannounced, to check up on you. After that, I found BYU to be much more free, and had a sense that I was trusted to keep the rules, not that everyone was hovering over me. Although, at BYU, President Holland gave a devotional speech about us keeping an eye on each other in just that kind of way, and my roommate absolutely took that to heart. But that's a whole 'nother story.

Yet there were endless covers and stories in the LDS propaganda magazine New Era in the 1980s that displayed normal looking teenage girls wearing bright colored shirts and jeans in every edition. I never would have associated wearing jeans as cross-dressing.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/12/2018 02:07PM by messygoop.

I have a friend who is pretty TBM who attended Ricks in, I believe, the early 2000s, and even she found it stifling. She ended up transferring to UC Davis here in CA.

Maybe they changed the name after Humphrey Bogart left.

LOL!

Ha! They finished 'rounding up the usual suspects'...

My daughter went to Ricks right out of high school, 2 weeks after graduation in the year 2000. Which was the year before they renamed it, if I have my facts correct. She was there 4 years plus some because her then husband was in the military and got assigned to some active duty which took them to the Portland area for 6 months so he could make up some of his missing service time.(long story). She learned lots of things that she'd never heard of from her California roommates the first year at Ricks.

She graduated from there with her teacher’s degree. A little later, she got her Masters here in Utah and is in her 14th year of teaching middle school English, although she’s deciding if she wants to move onto something else. A couple of weeks ago, she came back to her classroom and there was a piece of paper on her desk with a 7th grade drawing of a penis.

Her mom (my ex) also went to Ricks and graduated after 2 years and then went on the Weber State for her nursing degree. I’ve mentioned her more than once but she’s just retired last month after 45 years of working for the local formerly church owned children’s hospital. She has told her daughter that she wonders how she ever worked and was a ward YW president, more than once, a girls camp director for several years, the stake Relief Society president for a couple of years (which started the year after we were divorced). Now, she has her 89 year old mother to worry about, who has all of the things wrong that an 89 year old woman could have. She’s finally given up driving.

They both have OK memories of living in Rexburg, except for winter. A couple of summers ago, the 2 of them took her 2 kids to Yellowstone and spent some time looking around Rexburg and both were glad they don’t live there now.

Ah yes, the Rexburg WINTERS...

before the Manwaring (?) was built, dormies had to walk from 'the hill' to downtown for the cafeteria, freeze your (whatever you had)'s off.

Living in-around Seattle is much easier climate & weather-wise!

I'm used to winter...BUT...there were a couple mornings I woke up at 6:30 am to make it to an 8am Old Testament class, saw that a blizzard was howling outside and said fk it and went back to sleep. Another reason I did not return for a second year.

I went there for fall 1990 semester and never returned. It was isolated, boring and and total white bread. A missionary to my home state had invited me to room with him and he seemed pretty cool, so I gave it a shot. A few months later, I told my parents I was out of there and went home for good. The church influence easily drowned out the education I went there for and it appeared to just be a matchmaker camp. I heard bizarre references to having sex through garments, snakes having feet like those of a chicken during the garden of Eden times, and other crazy tangents stapled to flimsy doctrine from my professors — even in classes that were not on religion. Socially, everything revolved around family home evening groups, dances and devotionals, which is fine if you want to have a 24/7 stake conference, I guess. Things felt very restrictive and mundane for me (yes, I was aware of the honor code and all that before I went but still) and there seemed to be a premium put on conformity. I went to the sand dunes, messed with dry ice bombs, pelted the apartments opposite me with butter sticks launched with surgical tubing, flinging tortillas into the football crowd, etc all in an attempt to break with monotony and zombie state of mind that was there. My best times were watching people slip and fall on the way to class. It was difficult to find people that were chill and not looking for garment lines or preparing talks every Sunday. They may have been there but they were largely underground. I met a few but they really didn't stick around either, so my crystal ball showed a dark future for me if I stayed there and joined the throngs. That being said, there was an undercurrent of sinning that went on despite the whole Handmaiden's Tale reputation. Ex: One day I walked in on my roommate buried inside his girlfriend while The Doors was playing ("Light My Fire" was apropos) and I just got what I needed, apologized for ruining the rhythm and left. It was beautiful in summer and early fall months but colder than shizz as time went on. Dark, cold, bored and annoyed by the whole culture, I went to another university and took it from there.

I attended two semesters in 1981/82 and loved a few of my classes (biology, drawing, first aid/EMT prep). On the first day during orientation, a student who sat in front of me had a braided strand of hair, which ended with a glass bead, hanging off of the left side of an otherwise short missionary haircut. Straight-leg jeans, Vans, and a Val Surf t-shirt. Yep, California skater kid. I overheard someone ask him to come with them. In a few minutes the student came back and started gathering his things. He'd been told he couldn't attend Ricks because of his braided bead hair strand. I never saw him again so I don't know if he stayed or left.

A few months later, I had asked a girl to a dance up on campus. She and I had dinner and went to the dance. As we were dancing, some fellow student came up to us and placed a BOM between us. "You have to stay apart THIS much when you dance at Ricks", he growled. My fists tightened and I moved toward him while the girl grabbed my arm and pulled me out of the dance hall. We got married a year later and are still together.

In the years since, we have a son who graduated from BYU-I. We attended his graduation recently. I stupidly believed that it would be like any other school graduation. Wrong. After an opening prayer that was so long it should have been called a 'talk', there were hymns sang by a choir and then by the audience. Next, some long-winded speeches telling the students that they were to look for careers "...Where they can teach the gospel." I was shocked to find out later from my son that no one was allowed into the meeting once it started. So, there were numerous people outside who were waiting because they were late. And, if you got up from your seat, you couldn't come back into the meeting. What?

When we went to gather his things from his apartment, his mother noticed a line on the carpeting leading back to the bedrooms. He told her that it is called a 'chastity line' and that no one of the opposite sex was allowed past that line. I pondered about this on the drive home and I couldn't seem to understand why students, most all of whom are over the age of 18, couldn't be trusted to live with the opposite sex.

I mean, I'm sorry but a line of paint or tape on the floor or carpet didn't stop me or my room-mates from having company over. It was just so bizarre to have the memories of attending Ricks and being part of Mormonism and now. Being out of TSCC and seeing with fresh eyes the absurdity of how church schools operate.

Cake

cakeordeath Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> In the years since, we have a son who graduated
> from BYU-I. We attended his graduation recently. I
> stupidly believed that it would be like any other
> school graduation. Wrong. After an opening prayer
> that was so long it should have been called a
> 'talk', there were hymns sang by a choir and then
> by the audience. Next, some long-winded speeches
> telling the students that they were to look for
> careers "...Where they can teach the gospel." I
> was shocked to find out later from my son that no
> one was allowed into the meeting once it started.
> So, there were numerous people outside who were
> waiting because they were late. And, if you got up
> from your seat, you couldn't come back into the
> meeting. What?
> Cake

This is the same as a temple endowment session. If you leave the session to use the restroom, then your participation is over. Likewise, if you fail to meet in that little room-chapel area before the session, then they won't let you join the procession (walking in a single line) into the endowment room. Maybe, they've relaxed that rule, but they were super-anal about it when I attended in the 90s. I had to either wait an hour for the next session or return to the men's locker room. I chose to dress out in street clothes and wait in the lobby.

I grew up in the Rexburg area. I started dating college girls when i was 16. They seemed to like the local long haired bad boys.I had a very good time! That is all i have to say about that.

rexrabble Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I grew up in the Rexburg area. I started dating
> college girls when i was 16. They seemed to like
> the local long haired bad boys.I had a very good
> time! That is all i have to say about that.

Haha! I went there for a youth conference and we were smoking pot and blowing the smoke out the window of the dorm and some cute girls happened to be out and about and smelled our smoke and came up to the window and started talking to us. Haha! So yeah. I had a good time in Rexburg as well.

Someone here formerly affiliated with Ricks must remember the
picture of a joint that made it into the 1969 or 1970 yearbook.
It may have been 1971. Priceless.

BcE