Race, Religion, And The "Honor Code" At BYU

[tishaLA]

Over the past month, BYU has been held up as a symbol of all that is decent in college sports for its unsparing treatment of Brandon Davies, the African-American basketball player who violated the school's honor code by reportedly having sex with his girlfriend. Davies was suspended shortly before the NCAA tournament, and a braying mainstream press lauded BYU for sticking to its principles. Sports Illustrated's website even wondered if a values-driven, "non-hypocritical" BYU was "on the verge of becoming America's team."

The reality isn't so appealing. While it's impossible to know how many students disobey BYU's honor code, which prohibits fornication and alcohol use, among other things, the honor code violations that come to light almost always involve student-athletes. And they almost always involve athletes of color. Since 1993, according to our research, at least 70 athletes have been suspended, dismissed, put on probation, or forced to withdraw from their teams or the school after running afoul of the honor code. Fifty-four of them, or nearly 80 percent, are minorities. Forty-one, or almost 60 percent, are black men. These are conservative numbers, compiled from media reports and interviews. In several cases, we could not confirm an honor code violation. In other cases, we could not establish the race or ethnicity of the athlete involved. We excluded those cases from our tally.

Clearly, though, something is amiss at BYU, where around 23 percent of the athletes are minorities, according to the university. Only .6 percent of the student body is black (176 out of the 32,947 students enrolled in 2010). Yet a majority of the honor code violations involve black athletes. Do these numbers mean these athletes "sin" more than everyone else? Hardly. Several former BYU football players told us that their white teammates routinely broke the honor code and got away with it, either because they didn't get caught or because their violations were covered up. (To a lesser extent, this holds true for Polynesian athletes, 14 of whom are included in our honor code tally. More on that later.) Mormon athletes can turn to bishops and church leaders from their own homogeneous communities — people who look like them and might even be related to them — to "repent" and avoid official punishment. Black athletes, who are typically non-Mormon, rarely have this option. <more at http://deadspin.com/#!5791461/the-truth-about-race-religion-and-the-honor-code-at-byu">Deadspin>

[Drale]

1. I'm sure if they could get away with it

They would just ban any non-white none Mormon people from going to their school.

[Rabrrrrrr]

3. You obviously misunderstand Mormons - they need the non-whites to prove white superiority.

It's a total win-win for the racist assholes - if they have colored folk on the team who are able to maintain a "white lifestyle", they get a better chance at winning at sports and thus earn a lot of money.

But, if the non-whites fail to live up to code, they get the awesome street cred for their racist church membership of saying "Look - we tried, in Christian charity, to civilize these colored folk, but it didn't work - but maybe if we had more money, we could train the tribalist Africa out of them and make them like us white folk".

It's racism in its most elegant and awesome capitalistic form.

[Rabrrrrrr]

2. Well, duh. Of course it only applies to colored folk. It reinfores the Mormon preference for whites

by implying "Wow, look, we're doing the best we can with non-white folk, but geez - they just can't quite handle the civilized world. We're really, really, really trying to teach the coloreds how to live morally, we really are - so give us some credit, please. Teaching the coloreds how to live morally is our life mission, so cut us some slack."

[stevedeshazer]

4. K&R

The Brandon Davies situation was always suspect to me.

My understanding is that all BYU students are required to sign off on this code.

He was singled out because of race in my opinion. You can't tell me that there aren't a whole lot of BYU students, the student body being overwhelmingly white, who violate "The Code" and don't have the same level of scrutiny as a guy like Davies.

[Kolesar]

5. If Ben Rothlesberger had been f**king, instead of biking, the Steelers would have been better off

And the coach would have been happy.

Ben crashed his motorcycle and had broken teeth and nasty head laceration, btw.

[Rage for Order]

7. Really? Ask that girl in Georgia what she thinks of your conclusion n/t

[nemo137]

6. Clicked through and bookmarked the article to read later, thanks.