[irinotecan]

I heard from a non-Mormon who went to BYU and said the intolerance there was so awful, that students would walk up to you and ask, "Are you a Mormon?" and if you said no, they would just walk away like you didn't even exist.

[sofal]

Disclaimer: I don't speak for BYU.

I went to BYU. I'm sorry to hear that your friend had that kind of experience. I believe that everyone I went to school with would have considered that very intolerant and rude indeed. I hope that's far from the experience of all students there who aren't LDS.

Some of the points in the blurb about BYU are accurate, but some are misleading and false. BYU is a private religious institution, and it therefore has stricter rules about conduct, appearance, and behavior. These rules, together called the "Honor Code", are accepted by every student before he/she attends. These standards are a big part of the reason for the students' desire to attend BYU. Abstaining from tea, coffee, tobacco, alcohol, and illicit drugs is already part of the LDS belief system. The idea that students are required to abstain from flirting is ludicrous, and reveals that the author(s) must either be ignorant or must have misinterpreted their information. There is no end to flirting at BYU, unless you define flirting to include crudity and lewdness. "Sexual comments" was an interesting addition to the list. As a student at BYU, you are expected to use clean language and adhere to high moral standards, and so I suppose if by "sexual comments" they mean "vulgar or crass sexual comments" then this is true. These are all things that may perhaps be labeled as "intolerant" by some, but which I agree with.

The facial hair rule I think is old-fashioned and unnecessary. I and a lot of others think that blocking YouTube on the campus network is disgusting and verging on communism (I can't stand forced web filtering of any kind). Tunneling worked though, and the CS network didn't block YouTube, so that was nice.

[KirinDave]

A cousin of mine explained the dietary restrictions to me. For the full effect, please indulge me as I enter a brief bit of real dialogue with the names stripped:

Me: "So how is BYU, _____? Enjoying your first semester away from home?"

Her: "It's great, I'm having a lot of fun. But I don't think you'd like it very much."

Me: "Why not? I went to college too, you know. Is it because I'm not mormon?"

Her: "There's that." pauses to open a can of Coke "But you're also required to abstain from things like tea and coffee. You'd have to give up caffeine, and I know you'd hate that."

Me: looking pointedly at her can of coke "You have to give up drinks with caffeine in it?"

Her: pausing again to drink her soda "Yes. The Honor Code says we can't drink tea, coffee or anything with alcohol in it."

Me: "But soda is okay?"

Her: "Yeah, unless it has, like, drugs in it or something."

I checked the BYU website. Coffee and tea are verboten, Soda is not. I even found pictures of people drinking coke on campus. Way to go, BYU. Your dietary restrictions are super-good.

[sofal]

It does get pretty silly sometimes. There are only a few things that are "outlawed", and therefore people think that as long as they abstain from those substances, they're in total compliance with what their religion expects of them. The root reason of the dietary restrictions is a principle of respecting the body and keeping it clean, but people misapply it by interpreting it verbatim and then gorging themselves on junk food, soda, or anything that isn't healthy but isn't technically "forbidden".

I think it's a good thing that the church doesn't forcefully regulate which sodas we can or cannot drink, because that would be controlling and ridiculous. However, these slightly arbitrary rules can end up encouraging a group of people who do the minimum required just to remain in good social status. That will be the case anywhere.

Another example of this is R-rated movies. There was a church leader a long time ago who at one time at a general conference warned against viewing R-rated movies. This seems perfectly acceptable, except that it ended up creating an unwritten rule of sorts among LDS members. The principle is that we should avoid movies that don't meet the standards we're expected to have, but it inevitably created a group of people who were perfectly okay with seeing any movie regardless of the content as long as the MPAA didn't put the magic 'R' on it.

It's hard to know where to draw the line when you know that some people are just going to get as close to that line as possible. You just hope that most people are listening to the underlying principles rather than the base requirements.

I occasionally drink caffeinated sodas if there isn't anything else available. I don't consider this to be especially damaging to my health. I think that whether or not I drink a caffeinated beverage has very little or nothing to do with what I consider to be my spiritual standing.

[KirinDave]

> I occasionally drink caffeinated sodas if there isn't anything else available. I don't consider this to be especially damaging to my health. I think that whether or not I drink a caffeinated beverage has very little or nothing to do with what I consider to be my spiritual standing.

The point of my story wasn't to say, "Haha. Here are these goofy mormonians." I think you can pick out goofballs from any religion. My point was, "Here is someone going to college that doesn't seem to be able to read the ingredients on their soda can." Or more directly, "BYU is a school that seems to be failing at teaching students how to think and reason."

[LogicHoleFlaw]

My point was, "Here is someone going to college that doesn't seem to be able to read the ingredients on their soda can."

Ahahahahahahaha. I knew several folks at BYU who could recite, in milligrams, the caffeine content of various soft drinks. Caffeinated sodas are left to the discretion of each individual.

I went to both the University of Wisconsin and BYU, and honestly I much more prefer the atmosphere of "Dr. Pepper as excess" to "Alcohol to excess."

[litewulf]

Huh, I thought she just thought the rules were stupid, but was abiding with them out of respect. That is, the rules required her abstaining from tea and coffee, but since they didn't mention Coke she drank it without guilt.

And the bit of "abstaining from caffeine" sounds like she thinks your caffeine intake is purely from tea and coffee. But I don't know you at all, so I'm probably misinterpreting her. :)

[ewanmcteagle]

That's a common mistake. Most Mormon's aren't bothered by sodas, caffeinated or not. They are specifically opposed to tea and coffee which gets interpreted as caffeine. No, it doesn't make sense and a caffeine prohibition would at least seem to have some type of logic behind it (some of them do that)... but it's religion it's meant to make you at least a little stupid.

[noonespecial]

The rules are the first derivative of the intent. This haunts all religions. You will always get a special group of people who follow the rules without considering the intent, usually with the goal of feeling superior to everyone else.

Its called "legalism", and it leads to all kinds of nonsense.

[biohacker42]

Dum dum dum.

[blasdel]

blocking YouTube on the campus network is disgusting and verging on communism

Blocking access to information is counter-revolutionary.

I think the word you are looking for is totalitarianism.

[sofal]

Yes, that is what I meant. Thanks.

[indiejade]

-1

This is like saying: "I heard from somebody who has never been to Tonga that Tongans are dumb."

Second-hand tales ala "I heard from . . ." rarely relay facts.

(creative downmodding from someone who doesn't post enough to have a downmodding arrow)

p.s. how many points is it these days?

[byrneseyeview]

For what it's worth, I've heard the same thing from a Mormon who went there and didn't like how some of the other Mormons behaved.

[pchristensen]

I'm Mormon, I went there, and there were lots of people whose behavior I didn't like. There were also a lot more whose behavior I did like.

Mormons make up 95% of the 30K student body, so if there's anyone there you don't like, they're probably a Mormon. Mormons are a big enough group (especially at BYU) that standard statistical rules apply - some are jerks, some are racist, some are angels, some and the nicest people in the world, and most are decent people with the usual character flaws. There are over 5 million Mormons in America and 12 million in the world, so they're too big to stereotype as individuals, any more than Americans, Mexicans, Catholics, Muslims, left handers, computer programmers, etc.

[byrneseyeview]

I'm not claiming that the single distinguishing feature of Mormons is that they're universally unkind to outsiders, but when you deal with an unusual group, it's the outliers who can really show you that there's something unusual going on. Just for example, it would completely blow my mind if I found out that there was an auto mechanic who had the same curiosity, panache, explanatory talent, etc. as Richard Feynman. This isn't because I think mechanics are all dumber than physicists, or that there aren't some smart mechanics or some dumb physicists (I know one person who I believe was a mechanic before becoming a physicist). But hearing about another Feynman-style physicist would not be such a big deal.

Similarly, the average Mormon is probably fairly indistinguishable from the average American, or the average resident of whatever country that Mormon lives in. But when you look at the outliers -- the ones with really nasty in-group hostility, the ones who work eighty hours a week and do volunteer work on weekends, the ones to whom seven kids would be a 'good start' -- you figure Mormons might be half a standard deviation more in-group centered, industrious, and fertile. And at that point, it's just Bayesian inference: you find out someone is a Mormon, you change your estimates of the chance that they have other characteristics, too.

they're too big to stereotype as individuals, any more than Americans, Mexicans, Catholics, Muslims, left handers, computer programmers, etc.

I stereotype all of these groups in the same ways. It may be misguided, but it's a good way to experience your surprises in bulk and in advance. Always efficient.