On Your Honor

What if BYU's Honor Code became an "on your honor" system and the Honor Code office was completely done away with?



I love the standards that the Church has but in the "real world" it's up to us to confess our sins and repent. My bishop doesn't have his counselors or any minions out tracking me to make sure that I live up to my covenants or to make sure that I'm following the Word of Wisdom correctly (or at least I hope not!! :bug: )



I get that at BYU the Honor Code should be an known thing that the students are signing up for, but what do you think? If it's an on your honor self-policed thing, is that good or bad in your opinion? Would too many student athletes (or any student) take advantage of it and give BYU a "bad name" or make the school look hypocritical? Would BYU still be the #1 stone cold sober school if the Honor Code became on your honor? It's not just that I don't want key players having to sit out a year. If they mess up and that's the consequence then I'm fine. Part of me just thinks that we should be able to govern ourselves.

Joseph Smith once said “I teach them correct principles, and they govern themselves.” The same should be said for BYU, but the HCO sure doesn't think so

It's worked wonders for Baylor.

Some quick thoughts. I had a personal experience at the BYU honor code office while I was a student. In addition, from both personal and professional perspectives I have recently been privy to the details of several honor code cases including cases for non-atheletes and for athletes. Some simple take home messages from my (somewhat limited) experiences.



1. The welfare of the student is of the highest priority throughout the process.

2.The honor code office is surprisingly lenient on athletes and non-athletes alike. They do try to give chances for improvement and "repentance".

3. Serious sanctions come when the student has used up several chances, or otherwise clearly demonstrates that they are uninterested in changing their behavior.

4. The story the student tells to people who aren't "in the know" about what led to their disciplinary outcome is not usually complete and is often not even close to what really happened.



The challenge with all of this is that for every student who is enrolled at BYU and repeatedly shows a lack of interest in following the standards there are 10-15 kids who want that spot and would follow the standards. Sometimes we forget how many people wish they could get a quality education at the BYU price. It is quite the deal.



Edit: I am not saying the honor code office is perfect, or even close to as good as they could be and doing what they are charged to do. Just providing some perspective from my experiences. And- athletes get fewer chances and stricter consequences due to public impact of their violations. Just a fact.

I've always thought that the Ecclesiastical Endorsement should be it for the "Honor Code"/moral behavior stuff. It's all between you and your ecclesiastical endorser.



You can deal with cheating and criminal acts through the Dean of Students, Title IX, and Campus Police offices.

snoscythe wrote:

I've always thought that the Ecclesiastical Endorsement should be it for the "Honor Code"/moral behavior stuff. It's all between you and your ecclesiastical endorser.



You can deal with cheating and criminal acts through the Dean of Students, Title IX, and Campus Police offices.

Agreed. Just have to figure out how to do that for non-LDS students.

pikoi wrote:

I've always thought that the Ecclesiastical Endorsement should be it for the "Honor Code"/moral behavior stuff. It's all between you and your ecclesiastical endorser.



You can deal with cheating and criminal acts through the Dean of Students, Title IX, and Campus Police offices.

Agreed. Just have to figure out how to do that for non-LDS students.

The same way they get their ecclesiastical endorsements now--from their local non-lds ecclesiastical leader, or from the BYU chaplain.

snoscythe wrote:

I've always thought that the Ecclesiastical Endorsement should be it for the "Honor Code"/moral behavior stuff. It's all between you and your ecclesiastical endorser.



You can deal with cheating and criminal acts through the Dean of Students, Title IX, and Campus Police offices.

Yes!!

byufan4ever wrote:

I've always thought that the Ecclesiastical Endorsement should be it for the "Honor Code"/moral behavior stuff. It's all between you and your ecclesiastical endorser.



You can deal with cheating and criminal acts through the Dean of Students, Title IX, and Campus Police offices.

Yes!!

I disagree. I think it would lead to wildly inconsistent results. You'd have some push-over bishops who would let anything go because they are football players, and other super strict hardline guys who would revoke endorsements because they showed up with 5 day growth on Sunday.

hawkwing wrote:

snoscythe wrote:

I've always thought that the Ecclesiastical Endorsement should be it for the "Honor Code"/moral behavior stuff. It's all between you and your ecclesiastical endorser.



You can deal with cheating and criminal acts through the Dean of Students, Title IX, and Campus Police offices.

Yes!!

I disagree. I think it would lead to wildly inconsistent results. You'd have some push-over bishops who would let anything go because they are football players, and other super strict hardline guys who would revoke endorsements because they showed up with 5 day growth on Sunday.

Ugh. Yeah. That would be a mess for the students, for BYU and for the church.

snoscythe wrote:

I've always thought that the Ecclesiastical Endorsement should be it for the "Honor Code"/moral behavior stuff. It's all between you and your ecclesiastical endorser.



You can deal with cheating and criminal acts through the Dean of Students, Title IX, and Campus Police offices.

Yes, yes, yes!!!!

hawkwing wrote:

snoscythe wrote:

I've always thought that the Ecclesiastical Endorsement should be it for the "Honor Code"/moral behavior stuff. It's all between you and your ecclesiastical endorser.



You can deal with cheating and criminal acts through the Dean of Students, Title IX, and Campus Police offices.

Yes!!

I disagree. I think it would lead to wildly inconsistent results. You'd have some push-over bishops who would let anything go because they are football players, and other super strict hardline guys who would revoke endorsements because they showed up with 5 day growth on Sunday.

But my point is that it would be "on your honor" and self reported. You only need an annual endorsement from the bishop, right? It sounds like you have the bishop replacing the honor code and doing their "dirty" work. I want it 100% self policed which means no bishop is reporting any student for anything unless they came to him for a "confession."

byufan4ever wrote:

byufan4ever wrote:

I've always thought that the Ecclesiastical Endorsement should be it for the "Honor Code"/moral behavior stuff. It's all between you and your ecclesiastical endorser.



You can deal with cheating and criminal acts through the Dean of Students, Title IX, and Campus Police offices.

Yes!!

I disagree. I think it would lead to wildly inconsistent results. You'd have some push-over bishops who would let anything go because they are football players, and other super strict hardline guys who would revoke endorsements because they showed up with 5 day growth on Sunday.

But my point is that it would be "on your honor" and self reported. You only need an annual endorsement from the bishop, right? It sounds like you have the bishop replacing the honor code and doing their "dirty" work. I want it 100% self policed which means no bishop is reporting any student for anything unless they came to him for a "confession."

The bishop doesn't tell the school anything. They just revoke or decline to renew the EE....like they already do under the current system. The Honor Code Office is a layer on top of the EE system already in place.



All I want to do is take the school administrators out of the morals enforcement business.

byufan4ever wrote:

byufan4ever wrote:

I've always thought that the Ecclesiastical Endorsement should be it for the "Honor Code"/moral behavior stuff. It's all between you and your ecclesiastical endorser.



You can deal with cheating and criminal acts through the Dean of Students, Title IX, and Campus Police offices.

Yes!!

I disagree. I think it would lead to wildly inconsistent results. You'd have some push-over bishops who would let anything go because they are football players, and other super strict hardline guys who would revoke endorsements because they showed up with 5 day growth on Sunday.

But my point is that it would be "on your honor" and self reported. You only need an annual endorsement from the bishop, right? It sounds like you have the bishop replacing the honor code and doing their "dirty" work. I want it 100% self policed which means no bishop is reporting any student for anything unless they came to him for a "confession."

So in other words, no honor code commitment at all.

hawkwing wrote:

hawkwing wrote:

snoscythe wrote:

I've always thought that the Ecclesiastical Endorsement should be it for the "Honor Code"/moral behavior stuff. It's all between you and your ecclesiastical endorser.



You can deal with cheating and criminal acts through the Dean of Students, Title IX, and Campus Police offices.

Yes!!

I disagree. I think it would lead to wildly inconsistent results. You'd have some push-over bishops who would let anything go because they are football players, and other super strict hardline guys who would revoke endorsements because they showed up with 5 day growth on Sunday.

But my point is that it would be "on your honor" and self reported. You only need an annual endorsement from the bishop, right? It sounds like you have the bishop replacing the honor code and doing their "dirty" work. I want it 100% self policed which means no bishop is reporting any student for anything unless they came to him for a "confession."

So in other words, no honor code commitment at all.

You commit with your word. Shouldn't an Honor Code be an on-your-honor thing?

byufan4ever wrote:

byufan4ever wrote:

byufan4ever wrote:

I've always thought that the Ecclesiastical Endorsement should be it for the "Honor Code"/moral behavior stuff. It's all between you and your ecclesiastical endorser.



You can deal with cheating and criminal acts through the Dean of Students, Title IX, and Campus Police offices.

Yes!!

I disagree. I think it would lead to wildly inconsistent results. You'd have some push-over bishops who would let anything go because they are football players, and other super strict hardline guys who would revoke endorsements because they showed up with 5 day growth on Sunday.

But my point is that it would be "on your honor" and self reported. You only need an annual endorsement from the bishop, right? It sounds like you have the bishop replacing the honor code and doing their "dirty" work. I want it 100% self policed which means no bishop is reporting any student for anything unless they came to him for a "confession."

So in other words, no honor code commitment at all.

You commit with your word. Shouldn't an Honor Code be an on-your-honor thing?

No, I don't think that's the best idea.

byufan4ever wrote:

byufan4ever wrote:

byufan4ever wrote:

I've always thought that the Ecclesiastical Endorsement should be it for the "Honor Code"/moral behavior stuff. It's all between you and your ecclesiastical endorser.



You can deal with cheating and criminal acts through the Dean of Students, Title IX, and Campus Police offices.

Yes!!

I disagree. I think it would lead to wildly inconsistent results. You'd have some push-over bishops who would let anything go because they are football players, and other super strict hardline guys who would revoke endorsements because they showed up with 5 day growth on Sunday.

But my point is that it would be "on your honor" and self reported. You only need an annual endorsement from the bishop, right? It sounds like you have the bishop replacing the honor code and doing their "dirty" work. I want it 100% self policed which means no bishop is reporting any student for anything unless they came to him for a "confession."

So in other words, no honor code commitment at all.

You commit with your word. Shouldn't an Honor Code be an on-your-honor thing?

I'm having a hard time understanding what the result of this change would be. A student's word is already "on their honor" and many students already show all too well how much their word is worth. Do folks think that BYU will be a better place if there was no enforcement arm for the honor code? I get that Joseph Smith says that he teaches them correct principals and lets them govern themselves.. but I don't believe that such a comment could be construed as an argument against the honor code office. I'm pretty sure the there were excommunications from the church even back then. I agree with hawkwing - BYU becomes just any other University then. Lots of schools have honor codes that are more like guidelines, actually.

byufan4ever wrote:
You commit with your word. Shouldn't an Honor Code be an on-your-honor thing?

There was a time when that may have worked, but in today's "lie to get ahead" culture it would be set up to fail and as was said produce wildly inconsistent results. There are students who even can be exempted from the ecclesiastical endorsement in certain situations so it just isn't a perfect solution.

trom2foot3 wrote:

Joseph Smith once said “I teach them correct principles, and they govern themselves.” The same should be said for BYU, but the HCO sure doesn't think so

This is always a problematic quote for me--not so much the quote, but its usage. Generally it's brought up by people saying we should leave other people alone and not impose consequences on them for their choices or actions.



The problem with that usage is that Joseph Smith also excommunicated at least 40 people from the Church of Christ--actions that indicate he wasn't as laissez faire in his governing as his statement reads facially.

I haven't fully formed my opinion on this issue yet. But, I do know that the Honor Code enforcement culture at BYU suppresses the repentance process - doesn't help it.