For Cinderella, the stroke of midnight turned her gown into rags and her carriage into a pumpkin. Some students feel the visiting hours outlined in BYU’s residential living standards often bring about a similar result — an abrupt ending to an enjoyable evening.
The living standards dictate that visiting hours may extend until midnight every day except Friday, when visiting hours may extend until 1:30 a.m.
To students like Jenny (not her real name), these rules occasionally seem too strict.
“Sometimes I love it, sometimes I hate it,” said Jenny, as she sat dressed and ready to work out to the pop music playing on the radio. “It keeps the roommates happy as far as kicking boys out at a certain time...but on the other hand, I like to have my friends over later.”
Jenny said there have been many times she resented the rules because she didn’t want to send her male friends home at midnight.
“You know nothing is going to happen and you want to spend more time with them and you don’t want to be judged on the clock and send them home.”
She said that while the rules can help prevent misconduct between males and females, in the end, the decision of how to behave is up to the individuals.
“I don’t think guys and girls should ever spend the night at each other’s houses, but I think it’s up to them to decide their boundaries, and if they make mistakes, it’s up to them to fix them.”
She also questioned the effectiveness using the visiting hours to protect chastity.
“You know, if they’re going to break it, they’re going to break it. And if you really want to break it, you can find ways to.”
But not all students feel the same way.
“The Honor Code and the whole chastity line thing — a lot of those are to protect us, and I think it actually saves a lot of people,” said David (not his real name).
In between bites of Kentucky Fried Chicken in the CougarEat, he laughed then continued, “Just helps them out, and just like the curfew rule — sometimes it gets annoying, but when you look at it probably helps a lot of people out and just keeps people out of situations that could lead to other things.”
David said, putting up with the annoyance the rules sometimes cause is “a small price to pay for a quality education at BYU.”
In fact, a quality education is exactly what the drafters of the honor code had in mind when they created the visiting hours rules.
The Honor Code Office Web site states that the office’s vision is “to be full partners in the educational aims of BYU and to be recognized by the university community as a vital contributor to the accomplishment of the educational imperatives of the university.”
But to some students, protecting their privacy may seem at least as important as creating a stable educational environment.
According to Bishop Steven Haderlie of the BYU 108th Ward, many students feel their privacy is being invaded when people fail to keep the living standards. He said a lot of students in his ward have been complaining recently that members of the opposite sex have been in their apartments past curfew.
He also said roommates tend to complain about engaged couples who practically live together — even if they don’t break curfew — because they spend every waking moment together.
Haderlie said students should remember they have a right to privacy in their own apartments, while the person who does not live in the apartment does not necessarily have a right to be there.
“You’re paying rent to have people follow the honor code, you’re entitled to that,” he said.
He said that students need to realize that because a major portion of their tuition is paid by sacred tithing funds, they are all the more obligated to obey the standards.
His advice for students who think the standards are too restrictive?
“I think they ought to find another university,” he said. “If they don’t want to live it, then they should move on.”
Copyright Brigham Young University 13 Mar 2002
