So I'm writing for the Student Review here in BYU Provo, and I'm trying to figure out if the Honor Code Police are real or not.

Does anybody here have any evidence that they're real that they'd be willing to share?

Sure, kid, here's what you do, see.

You walk around with a friend of the same gender, see, all nice like. Hold hands. Give it a day. You'll see proof of the BYU Honor Code police real quick like, see.

Every member a snitch! Try smoking on campus, see what happens. Park in a car with a girl in the dark near campus and wait. A real cop will show up and ask who your bishop is so he can report you, This happened to me in 94, and I wasn't even a student at the Y.

Does anybody have any specific examples of meeting "Honor Code Police"?

I go to USGA, and homosexual BYU students hold hands and stuff without any reports that I know of.

My cousin works for the police department at BYU and speaks as if there are no attempts to enforce the honor code by the police department.

If anybody has any specific examples of "honor code police" I'd be interested in hearing them. Or if somebody was suspended from BYU because somebody snitched on them, I would also be interested in hearing more.

I've heard stories of honor code police writing down licence plate numbers at gay bars, and reporting the plates back to the honor code office.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/16/2013 07:45PM by waisted24years.

So you are saying that the BYU campus police don't report honor code violations to the school? So if they caught a couple having sexual relations on campus they would do what? Write a ticket for public indecency and that would never make its way to the honor code people? Or if you displayed public intoxication? I can't believe your cousin could say that with a straight face.

How a private institution has its own police department, I don't know, but they are a police department, which means they have to answer to whatever POST or standards board the state has, which in turn has to report to the Justice Department, which means they would have constitutional restrictions on what they could enforce.

My guess, and I have never been to BYU, is that the Honor Code is enforced by a separate organization then the BYU police department. They may work closely together, but if the BYU police took action against free speech, or a couple of dozen things that the honor code violates, they would probably get sued.

My university, with tens of thousands of students, had its own police department as well. I had to make a report once, and the university police ended up handing my complaint off to the local police because it turns out that the particular incident happened just slightly off campus.

It always struck me that the campus police were rather more tolerant than the community police might be under the same circumstances. The campus police overlooked a lot of shenanigans. I guess when you work mostly with college age kids you have to pick your battles.

I imagine that the BYU police are a whole 'nuther story.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/17/2013 08:57AM by summer.

I used to work for the campus police in a major southern university. I've also worked for a regular police department. For the most part, campus police are cut from the same cloth as regular cops, but you are right, in that the campus police are sometimes more tolerant of certain things that city police will crack down on. On the other hand, on the campus, there were state laws written specifically for college grounds that regular cops did not have to worry about. They both have their own unique cliche as a result.

Did you work for SUU ?

There was a thread recently about a guy suspended by the honor office a few days ago:

http://exmormon.org/phorum/read.php?2,795232,795577#msg-795577

I was called into the Standards (Honor) office while a student at BYU in 74. The reason- I had an overdue library fine. Actually the fine had been paid, but someone had not recorded it. I blew up and said I didn't appreciate the standards office becoming a collection agency. The standards person looked embarrassed.

The really hard part of this was I had been into see the branch president two weeks before for confession. This particular branch president was unusually harsh, and I heard through
the grapevine he convened more church courts than anyone else on campus. I was afraid of being kicked out of school.

No one should have to go through that. And yes BYU still plays those games.

What about the black basketball player who was suspended from the team during the March playoffs for having had sex with his white girlfriend? It was the last year that Jimmer was at BYU.

My roommate snitched on another roommate and I because she felt we were too flirty with the guys that came over to our apartment. Nothing inappropriate, no touching, just flirting. We still had to explain all of our behavior and they threatened us with probation.

I went to Ricks in '66-'67. I was called before the Honor Council head Nazi and told I was guilty of stealing. I did not steal anything. It never went any further but the attitude of this self righteous, self important power hungry prick was quite disturbing. I remember how angry I was at the accusation and the manner in which it was made. I should have laid the MF'er out. I'm 6'4"and weighed 250lbs.....he didn't quite measure up....
I don't recall armed campus police at Ricks...

Ron Burr



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/16/2013 09:29PM by Lethbridge Reprobate.

RB: I was there at same time;
the campus officer 'Deputy Dog' carried a .22 pistol, but had 'big impressive' .38 ammo on his old-style holster belt; how he c/would EVER fit those bullets into that gun? PRICELESS!

He cruised around campus in a '57 ford s.wagon!

where did U live? I was in Ensign Hall, 1st North.

These stories are just a prelude, especially if TSCC grew to 150 million active members, or "The Kingdom of Dog." They'd be honor code (honor code reserve, inc.) offices and tattle tales all over the place, in all types of businesses, grocery stores, movie theaters, street corners, etc., reporting to the strengthening the members committee, the overseer.

The stories in this thread make me want to go to Provo, pose as a BYU student, and troll the Standards Office. As I see it, if I keep their spies busy enough, maybe that can give just one BYU student a chance to goof off and not get caught.

I don't understand your question.

Are you asking if the BYU Police Department sends reports to the Honors Office?

Are you asking if the Honors Office has its own investigative staff?

I assumed the latter.

Honors Office has no staff dedicated to out of office investigations. (Why would they, all BYU employees and students, landlords of BYU approved apartments, are to report Honor Code violations, bishops can revoke ecclesiastical endorsments.)

Might the Honors Office send someone to USGA to take a look, entirely possible.

Might a crazed homophobe attend and rat just to cause problems? Yes.

cf Laura Ingraham at Dartmouth, but that was awhile ago http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laura_Ingraham

Do I know of any such at BYU in the last ~25 years. No.

OP, sounds like a good story idea but work on being a more clear.

And gay students are holding hands in "public" at BYU, whoopee! You go guys, young love is beautiful.

That you have to worry that this might cause a problem is a crying shame.



Edited 6 time(s). Last edit at 02/17/2013 12:05PM by lulu.

In 1971, I went down to BYU from SLC, while attending the UofU, to meet up with some coeds that we had met. I had shoulder length hair. We tried to go to a BYU social, but were met at the door by the Nazis and not admitted. I was a tithe payer and all that nonsense at the time. We left campus and went to a bar instead and my buddies drank beer. The Nazis sent a bunch of 18 year olds to a much friendlier place.

It did not stop the cult from sending south for two years of indentured servitude or taking my tithing money.

Sort of. They mostly rely on students to turn each other in, or bishops to turn in people who have confessed of a sin. However, once a case has been reported to them, they do call in witnesses and evidence and have a whole investigation sort of like a police agency.

I can back up that statement. I was living in Provo in BYU approved housing, but I myself was not going to BYU. Two of my roommates were. Those two roommates would throw parties almost every night that would last most the night. I worked early in the morning and would get no sleep. They also got a cat (pets weren't allowed) which I wouldn't have minded if they took care of it. They never fed it. Never cleaned out the litter box, so the cat started going pee and poo throughout the apartment. The entire apartment smelled like a barn. It was disgusting.

After a few months of this, I reported them to the apartment management. My only goal was to have a clean apartment and to be able to get some sleep. A few days later I was called by BYU and asked to come in and testify against them. I never reported anything to BYU but they found out soon enough. I assume the apartment management reported them to the school. How sad is it that even apartments have to bow down to BYU and report honor code violations? Yet, if they don't, they'll lose BYU approved status and will lose their entire clientele.

Mormonism claims 'standards' are well understood (white shirts, earrings/tattoos, etc) but Poorly / unevenly applied IRL.

at YBU, the population is more easily monitored & controlled, so the results are more predictable;

that's the biggest difference, IMHO

they don't need actual police because many of the students will turn in their fellow students, or tell someone else who will. The whole Mormon system encourages the members to monitor and snitch on one another.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/17/2013 11:10AM by munchybotaz.

My roommate and I were threatened my senior year that if we didn't sign a statement that our other roommate was having sex with his girlfriend, which he was, that we would be considered an "accomplice" and that we might also be subject to suspension. We signed, and they didn't kick him out of school, but they told him that we signed. Then we had to live with that guy for the rest of the semester. Fuck you, BYU.

It would be a lot funnier if it wasn't so disgusting.

Dowanna get me started about my experiences at the institution now known as BYU Idaho. I was kicked out of my dorm room for letting my friend who lived next door sneak out my bedroom window to meet her boyfriend after curfew, and moved to an upstairs room where I guess they thought the girls would do a better job of keeping me in line. They didn't, and I ended up with my BFFFRBCHS who lived next door, so it turned out OK, but at the time it was really humiliating.

The friend who had sneaked out my window was suspended for a couple of weeks, and she and I were forbidden to hang around together after she came back.

A year or so later, when I was living in Salt Lake, I wrote her a letter and got a reply including a matter-of-fact, unexplained statement that her parents--who had met me once, briefly--still thought I was gay. I had no idea what she was talking about and, even though I was no longer involved with the church, I was only 20 or 21 and the whole pretend-o Mormon experience and programming were still fresh in my mind. I was shocked and humiliated all over again. I never wrote back.

This is the first time I've talked about that part.

And I could go on with the stories. Ugh!



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/17/2013 11:50AM by munchybotaz.

Well, I feel really bad about the whole statement thing. I wish I had been more courageous about it, but they really had me over a barrel.

Yeah, being an "accomplice" to fornication is pretty hilarious though.

but to me the whole spying, snitching culture seemed normal(ish), and I bought into the idea that I was the problem, so it would have taken a lot for me to stand up to it.

Did the responses to her / his question not confirm her / his bias, as she / he was hoping?

Shocking!

And tangentially, can anyone imagine what the morg would do if it had actual political power, on a broad scale. Taking their behavior exhibited at their little police-state fiefdom that is BYU, and extrapolating to the populace at large...

Makes me shudder.

(Or alternately, take a look at the politics in Utah, and magnify that to a national level.)

Yikes!

I can't imagine living under the theocracy of Nauvoo or Early Utah. Sounds like hell.

Why don't you call up the standards department ( or whatever they call it) and ask them? I would love to hear the official answer.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/17/2013 11:28AM by ladell.