How Much Freedom Must You Give Up to Attend a Religious College?

In a country where original purpose was religious freedom, and tolerance, why is there a story on Ars Technica this week, detailing the encroachment of freedom that many religious colleges make on their students.

The story there begins with the telling of how BYU, notable Mormon college, blocks the students from accessing YouTube, but that the policy might be changing.

Of course, the main reason given is one of bandwidth, but then also stated is that the college is protecting its students from inappropriate content.  The reasoning might appear plausible until one realizes that the students, by and large, have reached the age of majority, thereby enjoying the rights of adults, and that Utah still remains under the jurisdiction of the United States.

People at this school are not going to be ‘protected for their own good’ for the rest of their lives, so why not allow students the freedom to exercise discretion on their own. This is not day care.

Another campus noted is Moody Bible Institute, in Chicago, where students are asked to not attend rock concerts, alternative concerts, or secular concerts. Does this also mean that all  non-religious music is banned as well? Is the music of Woody Guthrie, for example, what is taking this country to the brink of destruction? I think not. With this standard, Rachmaninoff and Beethoven were tools of the devil as well.

Tight behavior codes are nothing new on the campuses of religious colleges. The venerable Moody Bible Institute in Chicago, for instance, asks (PDF) that students living on campus not attend “rock concerts,” “alternative concerts,” or “secular concerts,” not attend comedy clubs, and not work on Sunday—but only before 6pm.

As for Internet restrictions, they are ubiquitous and usually designed to keep students from easily accessing pornography while on campus. Few schools go as far as Brigham Young, though, which even blocks YouTube out of a desire to help its students live a “chaste and virtuous life.” But the YouTube ban might be coming to an end.

In early 2007, a school spokesperson explained the ban to the Associated Press. “We use the filtering process for two reasons,” said BYU spokeswoman Carri Jenkins at the time. “First, to protect students from inappropriate material. The other is because of our limited bandwidth. That bandwidth is used for academic purposes.”

The school wasn’t satisfied with YouTube’s content filtering, though it did allow access to other streaming services that it thought better handled the issue.

The school wasn’t satisfied with YouTube’s content filtering, though it did allow access to other streaming services that it thought better handled the issue.

I can imagine that the Big Brother mentality doesn’t play well with college age students, no mater how pious they might be.

According to the Chronicle of Higher Education, the school is now reviewing that policy as it sees more use for YouTube. Carri Jenkins, still a BYU spokesperson, told the publication, “The amount of educational material on YouTube is increasing. What we’re looking at is the opportunities that are there for material that might be useful on campus and in the classroom.”

BYU is run by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, which now runs its own YouTube channel called “MormonMessages.” With the church running a channel since August 2008, it was probably a matter of time before the school reconsidered its ban on YouTube content.

University administrators will make a decision sometime this summer; if the ban is lifted, students will have the opportunity to see people eat for the Internet this fall.

Thank goodness, someone needs to view those videos. Otherwise, the space on the Google hard drives is wasted.

Whatever happens with YouTube, the school’s honor code remains quite strict. For instance, obtaining a “beard waiver” requires a student to “visit a BYU Student Health Center doctor by appointment. The doctor will fax his recommendation. The student then needs to come to the Honor Code Office to fill out some paperwork and receive the letter allowing the growth of the beard, if approved. If a yearly beard waiver is granted, a new Student ID will be issued after the beard has been fully grown, and must be renewed every year by repeating the process.”

(I find this ‘beard waiver’ to be total nonsense, considering that all through Mormon literature and culture, the leaders of the church more often than not sported facial hair, and I’m not talking about the Miami Vice 2-day growth type.)

These people who govern the course of these institutes of learning apparently want to disallow any of the freedoms that would give the students the ability to realize the possible problems with the content and eschew it on their own. (Then again, perhaps they read my column last week, where I pointed out that Utah is the online porn capital of the U.S.) There is beauty and ugliness all over the world, and no one is capable of sheltering, or prohibiting, others from the bad aspects of life over their entire stay on the planet. Nor should they try. If the seamy side of life is not able to be seen, how can one know what needs to change?

This is not the Middle Ages; the Pope is no longer the absolute authority on anything for the entire world. Nor should anyone else be, or try to be. Knowledge is power. Power to do the right thing, and power to influence change for the better in all parts of life. Denying knowledge, and choice, stunts, or totally stops the process.

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