Recently, Brandon Davies, a sophomore at Brigham Young University, was suspended from his spot on the NCAA basketball team.
His crime? Having premarital sex with his girlfriend.
BYU, a school owned and operated by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, has a strict honor code that they require all students, teachers and faculty to live by, a set of rules regarding chastity, dress, grooming, drugs and alcohol. Men are not permitted to have long hair and must be clean-shaven; there is no sexual activities outside of marriage, no expression of homosexual feelings and abstinence from drugs and alcohol.
Davies, a starting forward on the basketball team, which was ranked third in the nation in Associated Press Top 25 and Coaches Poll, was suspended for the rest of the season after he confessed to having premarital sex with his girlfriend.
Officials from BYU say that they are treating Davies as they would any other student and that the honor code is not something they shy away from and applies equally to all students.
But how far should honor codes be allowed to go?
We all owe our alma maters respect and we should represent ourselves in a way that reflects positively on our university. However, I do not believe that honor codes should intrude on what goes on behind the bedroom doors.
And while this would not happen at WVU, the fact that it happened anywhere in this country is distressing and extremely disappointing.
BYU defends their decision by saying that they are not a public university and therefore can operate by its strict honor standards. But in a country where 95% of adults have premarital sex, this seems to be a little outrageous. Davies’ romp in the bedroom is not destroying his basketball game and it is likely that it is not affecting his personality in a negative way. The likelihood of premarital sex causing fans to turn its back on BYU is 1 in a million.
Brandon, a sophomore from WVU, says that his views on basketball are not affected by what a player does behind closed bedroom doors. “I have sex, so I’m not surprised that they have sex. I don’t think it’s anybody’s business when students decide to have sex.”
Laura, a junior, agrees. “Our university doesn’t have the right to dictate what we do in our own home. I could understand if he had been caught with cocaine or drunk in public. But it wasn’t. It was just sex.”
Morality and Religion
I have friends that attend Christian colleges and even they are not forbidden from having premarital sex. Granted, they are not encouraged to go out and bed down with every person they see, but even these strict colleges, where boys are not allowed in girls’ dorms past 5:00 p.m. do not attempt to control what goes on in their students’ private lives.
Whether or not you believe in premarital sex is beside the point. As Americans, we have the freedom to conduct our lives however we want. If that means premarital sex, then so be it. And no university has the right to tell us when we can and cannot have sex.