BYU's Davies dismissed for sex

Perhaps they should have benched him for a game or two rather than kicking him off the team? But you're right, I'm sure he's learned not to have sex any more.

I don't associate myself with any religion/faith and i respect the believes of people who do. Whoever just because i respect a persons belief does not mean i cannot criticized it. The more conservative interpretations of religion does indeed have problems like this incident that deserve discussion. Secularism should not offend as long as you present your secularism in a respectful way that encourages civil debate. Some more uptight religous people will label respectful secular people secular zeolots just for making their point across yes the are some rude pricks in this discussion, but i can also think of many discussions on this forum were religous people were insulting people who's belief were different than theirs. Anyways the forums on letsrun are pathethic to discuss running related topics and even more pathetic to discuss other issues.

I heard that his girlfriend is pregnant, but I haven't verified that yet. That's probably why it can't be a suspension. My wife went to BYU and hearing of studentds getting temporarily suspended or kicked out for a semester happens sometimes, perhaps less than 1% of ~30,000 students?

for everyone who is struggling with leaving Mormonism, go to this website/forum.

Mormonism is a very oppressive cult.

oops, here it is

http://exmormon.org/phorum/list.php?2

Here is some perspective:

http://deadspin.com/#

!5775738/a-byu-grad-on-brandon-davies-sex-and-the-universitys-double-standard

A BYU Grad On Brandon Davies, Sex, And The University’s Double Standard

Anonymous BYU Alum (as told to Luke O'Brien)

The more I think about what happened to Brandon Davies, the more I think it's hypocrisy. I was listening to Jim Rome and he was praising BYU for sticking to its principles. Pat Forde on ESPN was doing the same thing. But it is a double standard. If you're a regular student and you have any sort of sexual interaction, it's private. I know one person — not an athlete — who was referred to the honor code office, and it was only because her roommate told on her. Even if you go to your bishop and announce, "I'm fooling around with a girl," it will rarely go to the honor code office. Most times, guys who are drinking, having sex, smoking pot are not going to confess it, but I have friends who talked to the bishop about that stuff — I did it, myself — and it never even wound up in the honor code office. My hunch would be that another player ratted him out. A married player.

To understand what happened to Davies, you have to understand the purpose of sports at BYU. They're a missionary tool. I think there are certain people in the administration who want to kill athletics altogether. After the 2004 gang rape case, there was talk of doing just that among the Quorum of the Twelve (the church's governing body). It hurt the ministry. That's why they make these guys shave and cover up their tattoos. Michael Loyd Jr. last year had a pretty good tournament run. He's a pretty decent player. But he had this little mohawk, and that's one of the reasons he was forced out of the school. (It came out later that he'd gotten popped for underage drinking.) Despite what Jim Rome and Pat Forde might think, the school wasn't making any kind of serious sacrifice here. This kind of politicking is so much more valuable than a Final Four run. BYU can say: "'Look at us. We're not like the rest of the world. We're not like other universities. We stand by our principles." It's all a part of spreading the faith, and Brandon Davies is being used to that end just like a kid at Kentucky is being used to win basketball games.

I graduated from BYU in 2001. When I was in school, I didn't know anyone who lived the honor code as it's written down. It's super strict. You can't have a girl in your apartment past midnight. I would guess that the majority of students there are trying to live it. But it self-segregates. There are two worlds. If you're the type of person who's going to break the honor code, you're probably going to live with other guys who are going to break the honor code. Things happen behind closed doors. You know what's going on. Every single place I lived, girls were always sleeping over. I had one roommate who was always smoking pot, always drinking cough syrup. My roommates were having sex with different girls all the time.

I don't know if anyone thought of mistakes they were making as honor code infractions. The honor code exists on the day you sign it, but for a lot of students, it doesn't exist after that. Let's say I'm fooling around with a girl and I feel bad about it. I'd go talk to my bishop the way someone would go to confession. You'd never think about the honor code office. You'd never interact with it. That girl I mentioned earlier, the one who ran afoul of the honor code? She had a guy stay over for the night after a long ski trip. Her roommates referred her to the honor code office. She had to write all these essays. She was put on probation. Four years of BYU and seeing all sorts of honor code violations happen every day — and hers was the only case I know about that got referred to the honor code office. I can't ever remember actually reading the honor code. I'm sure it was part of the packet with all my freshman orientation stuff. But it's just not that big a part of your student life. Maybe that's changed. There's some talk that the honor code office has become much more vigilant now. But that wasn't the case when I was there.

That's where the double standard lies. Lots of people break the honor code and nothing happens. What makes me angry about this is that this kid is wearing a scarlet letter now. If they're really interested in his personal well-being, why make it so public? It's so contrary to what Mormons believe about how you should work out your personal issues in privacy. In this case it's become this big public spectacle. It's one thing if it's criminal. But this should be a private spiritual matter. The other thing that's troubling to me is how quickly they moved on this. That one girl's case lasted months. But the school moved so quickly on this.

*

If you go to BYU, whether you're Mormon or not, you have to have what's called an ecclesiastical endorsement. If you're not Mormon, your priest or whoever could sign it. So everyone is in what's called a student ward. There are probably, like, 200 to 300 wards on campus. You'll have regular church services there. But everyone in your congregation is from BYU. People in the community are called to be bishops. These are your confessors, not the honor code office.

The honor code office is like the Kremlin of BYU. They're super-secret. You don't know where their office is. As a student, I didn't know who it was. They're part of the administration, but that's their full-time job. And there are honor code investigators. It's like a secret police. Sometimes we'd talk about that. When you're first there you think, "I could get in trouble for this and for that." But you never do. Eventually, you start to wonder if anyone lives or enforces the honor code.

A BYU Grad On Brandon Davies, Sex, And The University's Double Standard / brandon daviesThe only way stuff gets to the honor code office is if some kid rats. Bishops don't refer it. It's rare. We just never gave it a second thought because we knew it'd never end up in the honor code office. I'm not talking about any sort of craziness at all. But you have this list of rules, and they're regularly broken. It's a little different for freshmen or anyone still living in the dorms. When I was there, if you were in a dorm, you could have girls over only on Wednesday night from 6 to 8. It was called open house, and even then you couldn't close the doors to your room. Every dorm has a resident assistant, and his job is to enforce the honor code. But even then, most of the time your RA is an upperclassman, and he probably doesn't feel like ratting you out. And he would try to work things out just between you and him. In a way, you're sort of forced to live the honor code. The dorm rooms are tiny. You've got a roommate. It's virtually impossible for a freshman to screw around, even if he wants to. After your freshman year, though, it's a lot easier because most people don't live in the dorms.

All housing has to be what's called BYU-approved. Theoretically, that's their way of enforcing the honor code. For example, you can't have mixed housing. If they find out that a certain house is really problematic they'll strip it of its BYU-approved status. But the honor code office wasn't proactive when I was there. It's not like they have a spy apparatus. If they did, they could walk out every weekend and in every other door and find a girl in a guy's bed. If I'm Brandon Davies, I'm going, "This is a joke." The public narrative is that you knew what you were signing up for. But there's another side to it. The reality is that regular students get away with it just as much as — if not more than — athletes, simply because when they do run afoul of the honor code, it never goes public.

From what I've heard, they found out about Davies on Monday and made their decision on Tuesday. For them to move this quickly suggests a callous disregard for this kid. Typically, they might study this for two weeks, three weeks, a month, while they investigate and consider punishment. It makes me think — and this is all just speculation — that another player knew what was going on and got so upset about it and so self-righteous about it that either he reported it to his coach and forced his hand, or he reported it himself. It's possible that it was Davies's girlfriend's friend. If the rumors are true that he got her pregnant, perhaps that forced everyone's hand. I wonder how the conversation played out with his coach and the honor code office. They're sitting there thinking, "If we don't do something now, and this comes out later in the tournament, how's this going to look?" They had to think about how to manage their image, about how it would look if it came out that BYU knew about this on March 1 and didn't act on it for three weeks.

I can respect standing by your principles. The part of this that makes me angry is that what happened to Davies isn't what the church is supposed to be about. Like I said, a spiritual indiscretion is supposed to be a private matter. It's one thing if you go to your ecclesiastical leader and say, "I smoke too much pot and I want to quit." It's another thing if the leader of your congregations turns around and tells everyone you're smoking pot. I'd guess there are a lot of people in BYU's leadership feeling very smug and self-satisfied today. This has played out exactly the way they wanted it to.

Anonymous is a journalist who attended BYU from 1997 to 2001.

misinformed wrote:

No one forced me to either do something or not do something. Everything I did or didn't do was my choice.

I enjoy the lifestyle that I signed up to live. Posts like this make it sound like people who choose to live the way they do are forced to. Nothing is further than the truth.

A basic tenant of Mormonism is that everyone is free to choose to do whatever they want. I don't control you and you don't control me. We all make our own decisions.

If I want to leave the church or become an atheist, that's my decision. Who's going to stop me? If I want to continue to believe what I believe, that's also my decision.

You can't honestly tell me you can actually go and leave the church without any consequences whatsoever. You can find countless examples of ex-mormons who say "I don't believe anymore because of these hard facts" get ex-com'd because the church doesn't want them to spread the facts around. Not to mention the complete cut off of social, emotional and financial interaction that is involved.

[/quote]

He probably admitted it, my buddy who played at BYU left the team for the same reason years ago. He knew the code, broke the code and admitted it and paid the price. He may be back next year if he handles everything rightThey will love and support him more then ever.[/quote]

Exactly! The church is on an earn it and deeds based system. The people enforcing the rules can be just as guilty as the person they are kicking out of the school. It's a big do as we say, not as we do type of thing. They refuse to embrace the fact people make mistakes and make them stick to some form of perfection they themselves have not 100% upheld.

[/quote]please refer to how much the Church donates to foreign aid[/quote]

How? The church keeps all their financials secret, and has for many many years.

Aren't all religions about subjegation of the people?

trollometerometer wrote:

Pre-marital sex does not have any more health risks than sex when married. Seriously. The health risks would come from things like promiscuous sex or unprotected sex.

O.K.-- fair enough.

Completely monogamous pre-marital sex, coupled with:

-joint understanding by both parties toward any pregnancies that result from the sex; and

-state and societal recognition of the understanding between the parties so that, in the case children should be born, suitable social insurance is provided for the children,

is just as safe as completely monogamous marital sex.

ehhhh wrote:

Not sure, but haven't unbiased statistics shown that Mormons divorce rate is just about the same as the rest of America?

And like the rest of America they should let their parents choose their spouses...

All of America-- including the Mormons-- has a repressive code of conduct that mandates bizarre mating practices that have been proven ineffective over generations. No one is allowed to escape-- conformity is demanded!!!

No.

If you want to throw in those qualifiers for pre-marital you have to throw them in for marital too. Married people can and do disagree about keeping unplanned children. Just because two people are married doesn't mean they automatically agree about everything.

The idea which many people hold that pre-marital sex is somehow inherently unhealthy is disgusting and says a lot about our society.

Also, it pains me that I won't be alive to see most of the major religions crumble. I can only hope that if I have children, they or their children will live to see them fall.

Marriage is a legally-recognized status relationship. It qualifies the offspring for certain legal treatment.

For example, a parent who abandons his/her child is committing a crime. When the parent of a minor child dies, that child gets life insurance through Social Security. If a parent dies without a will, their children are eligible to inherit from them.

Since marriage provides a legal framework for the recognition of parenthood of children who are only wanted by one parent, it is healthier for such children than for children born outside of marriage.

How is being concerned for the consequences of your actions "disgusting?" Like it or not-- having sex is not just about two people. Offspring are potentially involved. It would seem like not considering the consequences of sex on those potential offspring is more offensive (or "disgusting") than considering it.

I'm not sure who hurt you, but religion seems to be a pretty fundamental part of complex human societies. Its prevalence ranks up their with not eating human flesh, monogamous marital relationships, and the like. I don't think that religion is going to go away anytime soon...

I wonder how many of the BYU players are really virgins???

I bet they could lose their entire team except the kid who used to be a distance runner in high school.

What a bunch of white uncle toms you guys are.

The school should have no power over a student's sex life.

Whenever a team punishes a player for normal behavior like sex, smoking weed, accepting an airline ticket to go home, etc., every player in D I should go on strike. Let's see how wedded these clowns are to their morals when they are losing billions of dollars.

This is not about doing the right thing, this is about having power over the individual.

What is interesting to me is how the NCAAs would treat his eligibility.

If he;s a senior, no question, he's done.

But if he still has eligibility, how would they handle it? He has committed no NCAA infraction, and even if he broke the rules of BYU, they aren't riules that would stand up in a court of law vs NCAA.

BYU would have to show that they treat everyone the same, and that no fornicators are on their team. His issue seems to be his potency.

this is the 21st century? wrote:

lube wrote:

Provo must be the whack-off capitol of the world.

Actually, I'm pretty sure that's forbidden too.

Wet dream capitol of the world?

Why all the hate? wrote:

As someone who believes in a higher power, I do not care for the tone of this thread.

So don't read it then.

Problem solved.

""What a bunch of white uncle toms you guys are.

The school should have no power over a student's sex life.

Whenever a team punishes a player for normal behavior like sex, smoking weed, accepting an airline ticket to go home, etc., every player in D I should go on strike. Let's see how wedded these clowns are to their morals when they are losing billions of dollars.

This is not about doing the right thing, this is about having power over the individual..............""

Lets be perfectly clear here. BYU has an honor code and Davies broke that honor code. How did BYU find out that Davies broke the code? Answer, he turned himself in.

Now, you may not like this code, or this code may not be for your liking. But Mr. Davies signed to go to BYU. And BYU has rules and codes that are important to follow. So, while you didn't sign up to go to BYU. And you may not like these codes and rules. You need to respect them as the codes and rules for BYU.

Your example of everyone going on strike whenever someone gets suspended, is laughable. Rules and codes are needed more in today's world, not less. And if you don't want to abide by these rules and codes, then don't sign up to attend BYU.

I applaud BYU for sticking by their principles and suspending Davies from the team. While I wouldn't have suspended him for the entire season, its not my code or my call to make.

The Devil made him do it:

http://itourpro.com/danica-mendivil.html