The third-ranked men’s basketball program at Brigham Young University has dismissed its third-leading scorer from the team after he admitted to having sex with his girlfriend. The school confirmed that sophomore Brandon Davies will sit out the rest of the year–while he watches his team’s potential one-seed in the national tournament slip away–and could be kicked out of school entirely.
Much is being made of the fact that Davies has not been charged with a crime, which is totally beside the point when we’re talking about Mormons.
A source told The Tribune that Davies is “extremely remorseful, heartbroken” but has accepted the punishment doled out by the school.
Wednesday afternoon, the school confirmed that Davies’ dismissal was not due to something that is criminal in nature, but would not acknowledge the specific portion of the honor code that he violated, per school policy.
Among other things, the honor code forbids students from engaging in premarital sex, and admonishes them to “live a chaste and virtuous life.”
BYU’s honor code, conceived by the Mormons’ Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, is pretty explicit: don’t drink, don’t do drugs (that includes caffeine), don’t lie, don’t break the law, don’t skip church, don’t dress like a d:ckhead, don’t bring guns to campus…
And don’t have sex. But it used to be worse; before 1981, students couldn’t even wear jeans.This is not a school where any sane 18-year-old American would want to play college basketball.
Here’s a pro tip: if you want to have sex with girls in college, don’t go to a college where you can’t have sex with girls. Whether you agree with the policy or not is irrelevant; BYU’s honor code couldn’t be easier to understand, and unlike a lot of honor codes at other schools [coughcoughwestpointcough], they actually enforce theirs. If Davies agreed to live his life by the BYU standard, and he failed to meet that standard, what exactly is unfair about him being disciplined for it?
