Oh the wiles of angst-ridden liberal anti-mormon mormon byu goers....

The recent banning of the singing of one called "cloak boy" at byu has inspired many. Of course, a letter to the Daily Universe by "cloak boy" himself was written and even a group on facebook has been formed called "Revive Cloak Boy!". Here's the link to the letter in the Daily Universe, it's about halfway down the page and entitled "Chill Out". (http://nn.byu.edu/story.cfm/67591) Please notice the wonderful scripture references too, ha. Rachel and Jeff joined the group and it showed up on my news feed on facebook so I checked it out. There were many people who were showing their support and love for "cloak boy", who would stand outside in a full cloak and sing until he was finally silenced by a police officer when a student called them up (it was actually his second reporting). But my post isn't really about cloak boy, it's about something much different. What inspired this post was what someone wrote on the wall in the facebook group:

"leave it to byu to further crush free thought.

YBU?"

Um, Y don't U BU at UVSC? No one's forcing you to go to BYU. This has been bothering me so much lately. If you hate it and what BYU stands for then go somewhere else. Don't complain that you're getting a great education for a fraction of the cost of any other college, and one that has a great campus, and provides a spiritual environment. GRRR!!! It just gets me so angry when people complain about BYU.

Elder Holland perfectly sums up the moral of this post in a talk he gave while he was the president of BYU. It's a long quote but well worth reading.

"I hope we all understand that this is a university for which you have spent good money--yours and other people's--to attend. It is not a young adult conference nor a missionary reunion nor a dating bureau nor an intramural athletic depot, though it may incidentally bless us with elements of all those activities and many more. But it is first, and foremost, and forever a university which has taken the very pursuit of godly knowledge and divine intelligence as its motto. We can have the fun and the football and the firesides and the Frisbees if we don't forget that a century of human life and hundreds of millions of dollars have been devoted to us--to you and to me--so that we could learn everything we can learn in this ideal but fleeting moment, which moment, like a mission, will never ever quite be ours again. I ask you the way the mission presidents plead with their missionaries: Don't miss this opportunity. It won't come again. It is here, we reach for it, and all too soon it will be gone...The part I don't love about this job is that it appears I will be the first president in the 106-year history of this institution to tell an increasingly larger number of prospective students that they cannot come to BYU. I had been in office only a matter of hours late last summer when I began to understand what real personal pain it would mean to families, friends, alumni, and high school graduates throughout this Church to be told that there was no available space remaining at Brigham Young University. The frustration and disappointment and anger many feel over this has been the most difficult part of my year; and without going into that detail, I do need to say to you that it is in every way a privilege and not a right to be at BYU. I say that of myself, I say it of Sister Holland, I say it of colleagues in the administration, faculty, and staff. But certainly it must also be said of you. What I am sure you don't need to be told in light of the pain of so many parents and prospective students is that I'm going to be pretty unsympathetic with a student who comes to BYU in this decade to play, to goof off, to loaf in and out of class, to defy our standards and our expectations and our values, whether those be moral values, whether those be moral or academic or otherwise. By the same token, we never wish to be cold or unkind. We certainly will not be unfair. Where honest help is needed, honest help will be given. But a carelessness--and I use that word specifically and literally--on your part about what BYU intends to stand for will not be impressive to me at a time when 4,500 students every year are being turned away. We are going to be as fair and as equitable in our retention policy. But it will be with the assumption that students who come to BYU and who stay at BYU will be those who love learning, who love Christian living, and who want to make a constructive contribution to their world."

So anyway, I appreciate and support you BYU and I'm so grateful that the church provides us with such great schools. It's a true blessing.