Jeffrey Holland gave a talk in the early nineties at BYU, where he was president. He told the students at the university that they were staying at BYU too long; they were taking too long to graduate. He urged them to leave BYU quickly by graduating quickly. He used the example of monarch butterflies in his talk at the Marriot Center. In a certain part of the world, millions of monarch butterflies gather together. They change the direction of the wind. One butterfly by itself cannot change the direction of the wind, but millions flapping their wings in concert can. Holland said that each BYU student was like one monarch butterfly. If all the students work together by graduating quickly, they can have a cumulative effect on the university: they will give more people a chance to attend BYU.

The message that Holland conveyed was simply wrong. It is wrong to try to get students to graduate quickly, at any university. A university is a place to figure out what you want to major in, and it takes extra years for some people to discover a major that really fits. Students should not feel pressured during this time of exploration; pressure can be counterproductive. Besides this, students are paying for their education, so they ought to get their money's worth.

There is no good religious reason for doing what Holland wanted. The Church does not make BYU attendance a requirement for salvation.

Holland should have thought about building more Mormon universities. That idea makes a lot more sense than his "monarch butterfly" idea.

I was attending BYU at that time, and my bishop would not let me attend BYU any longer because of the "sin of masturbation". Maybe Holland gave a special talk to all the BYU bishops, telling them to find any excuse at all to throw students out. Because of this "witch burning" I missed out on finding a major that fit. That has affected my life and my ability to earn.

Holland's most recent talk this general conference again reflected his selfish outlook. He was trying to get inactive men to become active, and he was acting like there was no good reason why they would want to be inactive. He was trying to guilt them into coming back to Church just like he was trying to guilt BYU students into leaving BYU. Holland does not demonstrate any humanitarian feeling in these talks; all he shows is a very selfish and ignorant attitude.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/02/2012 06:16PM by behindcurtain.

That attitude was pervasive at BYU - I was not there when Holland was president.

I suspect it has a lot to do with the LDS church subsidizing BYU.

I still can't believe a university can kick students out for masturbating!!! WTF!!!???

I still can't believe students feel the need to share their masturbation habits with adult men, especially knowing it could get them kicked out.

The way it happens is that each year you have to get an ecclesiastical endorsement from your bishop. If you don't get it, you can't continue to attend.

Most bishops probably wouldn't refuse to sign an ecclesiastical endorsement because of masturbation. One of the problems of the church is that every bishop does something different - and viola this now gets applied unfairly to inconsistent rules to attend BYU.

He gave a brilliant talk on sexual sin where he compared it to a serial killer on a tower at BYU shooting students. Somehow in the talk he says that it is just as grevious of a sin to have sex.

Dude's gonna explode from all the tension.

One could argue that is true of of a serial killer shooting only BYU students ;)

I graduated while Holland was president. I've always regretted not spending more time in college to learn something besides just my major, but...

...it wasn't Holland that kept me from staying or encouraged me to hurry up and graduate.

It was the fact that I was married, had a 1 year old child and another on the way. Economically, I just couldn't stay in school any longer. I had to get out there and get a job.

Just another way that the church's influence on me screwed up my youth and young adulthood.

They want the men to get out of school, get married and start paying the big bucks in tithing. Not necessarily in that order.

I don't remember the talk, but I remember the debate on campus about whether a university ought to be giving its students the bum's rush like that. Some felt that this sort of thinking revealed the university's lack of commitment to serious academics. I don't remember how it came to this, but my department offered a few students money in the form of a scholarship if it would help them to graduate sooner. They sent me a letter since I had something like six credit hours left to graduate and offered me a scholarship. It was enough to pay for my tuition.

Good points here, but one question. Do we really need any more Mormon universities?