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J. Whitebread

Feb 20 • 52 tweets • 11 min read

Okay, here it is, the beginning of the epic "What's going on at BYU?" thread.

First off, let's start with the tedious but unavoidable airing of credentials. I am LDS and I have a PHD. I have been in academia in one capacity or the other, grad student, lecturer, professor, adjunct, etc. for the last 30 years. I have seen some stuff. /1

I have worked in institutions all over the country in some of the most liberal enclaves and I have also worked in the Utah Valley for the last decade, and yep, that includes BYU. So let's get the BYU credentials out of the way. /2

I love BYU. It's my school. Got my undergrad there. My mom went there, painted the Y when they still painted it. I met my wife there, and her dad was a prof there for 30 yrs. I have known literally dozens of teachers and admin there over the decades. My blood bleeds blue.

So it is not without some trepidation that I begin this dialogue, but I will have a kid going there next Fall, so I have skin in the game, and I have a lot of thoughts because like you, I have seen some stuff that worries me.

Let's start with a few vignettes to set the stage. In 2013 I got the chance to be a visiting prof at BYU and I jumped at the opportunity, but from the very beginning it was clear things were not quite all right.

At the beginning of every semester there are a series of meetings, departmental meetings, college level meetings, and university meetings. Most of these are perfunctory boilerplate, a chance to get a free lunch, a motivational message, some announcements, etc.

We were at one of these for the college I was working for, when the speaker said something utterly milquetoast and banal about truth and our mission at BYU. And that's when someone, in the audience, took that statement as an attack on Postmodernism.

He then stood up and basically began arguing with the speaker, about how there are many truths, our truth, their truth, and how this was just dandy with the Gospel and mission of BYU and the college.

Now I was floored. I want to stress, you can get some pretty hot staff meetings, but usually not above the dept. level. This was one of those utterly formal, utterly staged university rituals, get your free meal, maybe a mug and move on with your life.

This was not the venue to open up an intellectual debate. I have never seen anything like this at any other school in my life, not matter how liberal. Usually, people want these convocations over as soon as possible so we can get back to work.

It was just bizarre. It certainly showed me that things were different at BYU. At the time, I thought, well, maybe this is a good thing. You have to understand, the relationship between faculty and admin is inherently adversarial. We both regard the other with a mild contempt

But this was different, and showed that the adversarial relationship was on another level. Well that awkwardly passed and I moved on but it wasn't the only time.

Much later at a staff meeting, we had the dean of the college come in to talk to us. Mostly boring admin stuff until we got to a post grad survey. The admin was polling students about their undergrad experience.

This is pretty common these days to see if what we are teaching was actually prepping these kids for their intended career. No biggie. Well this one had students saying that they thought the program focused too much on theory and not enough on technical skills.

The objections from the faculty were instantaneous and heated to the point the speaker could hardly continue.

When he did continue he mentioned that many of our grads were actually going to UVU to get two year degree to get the technical skills they weren't getting here. Well, that's when people came out of their chairs. It was unreal.

I want to state, I think the Dean and his staff shared this info in the most considerate and mild mannered way imaginable. It was a very mild rebuke, that maybe we should focus a bit more on technical skills, but the faculty were having NONE of it.

It went on for another 30 minutes and it was basically a replay of the principal Skinner meme. No, it was the students and the survey who were wrong, the faculty were right. The dean and his staff more or less let it go. I don't think anything came of this mild correction.

So these two episodes taught me that the relationship between the faculty was exceptionally adversarial. Again, admins and faculty are always at odds, but this was unusual. One more vignette and then I'll quit for today.

Final story for today. In the fall of 2014 and into the spring of 2015 we had a series of meetings at all all levels. The subject? The changing law regarding gay marriage in Utah and how it was going to impact BYU.

So people don't realize this but long before Obergefell, Utah was struggling with gay marriage, first it was legal, then a court stopped it, then another court overturned that, it was a mess and this had been happening since 2013.

By 2014 it was clear gay marriage was going to be legal in Utah eventually. In fact, the church began taking a big lead it what would eventually be called the "Utah Compromise" which legalized gay marriage, but offered religious protections in March of 2015.

These meetings were basically "briefings" to help us negotiate the new landscape. Why they decided to inform us, I have no idea, the faculty literally had no power in this case, but they did.

The meetings were just bizarre. Basically, BYU takes in a lot of federal money. If you take federal money, you accept fed rules, particularly as regards Civil Rights, Title II, Title IX, etc.

Now, religious universities get exemptions under these rules, very narrow exemptions, but no one had quite teased out what that meant for BYU and its hiring practices.

For example, most religious universities can enforce a morality clause, where a hire or student has to conform, BUT as written, those rules really couldn't deal with the new reality of gay marriage.

IOW we could say that you had to be celibate or married, but did that include gay marriage? If it didn't, would that jeopardize federal funds? It was mass confusion, and the people running these meetings were absolutely clueless.

In the past, if there was an applicant who was gay, we would require them to be celibate, but now? No one knew. If a gay applicant was married, could we refuse him? If we did, could he sue the university for discrimination?

What about students? There are lots of married students. What if a gay student got married? Could he be expelled? If he was, could he sue? The answer to all these questions, time and time again, was "I don't know"

I want to stress, these were not some ad hoc meetings held by the faculty, these were meetings organized and run by HR and the university lawyers, and the best they could give us was "we don't know."

It was unbelievable. First, we were utterly helpless so I have no idea why were were informed. Second, it was totally worthless, so it wouldn't matter if we had any power to do anything, which we didn't. I guess they felt compared to warn us, but why? It was pointless.

The entire episode gave me an impression of an admin that was completely caught flat-footed without a plan. BUT HOW?! The court cases had been happening for years. The church was leading the negotiation on the compromise, had NONE of that trickled down to the Admin?

Anyone could have seen this coming a mile away, this was months before Obergefell, and no one had thought, hey, maybe we should have a plan, a contingency? ANYTHING? But NOPE. It was chaos.

So again, I have no idea why they felt the need to inform us, and it was utterly pointless that they did, but it did give the definite impression that BYU was a place where the admin and faculty were at loggerheads, and the admin did not have a steady hand on the tiller.

Now the reaction of the faculty was equally amusing. Most of us were like, "What the heck?" Why were even told? It would be just darkly amusing it was so absurd if it hadn't been so disconcerting. We just shrugged and went back to teaching.

A few, and I want to stress this, it was VERY few, were delighted over it and were spinning this into some kinda coming LGBTQ utopia at BYU where the church would be forced to accept all lifestyles fully.

Again, and I have to stress this, they were an extreme minority. Rather what worried me more was a kind of muted acceptance, people who just thought that full LGBT acceptance was inevitable so we should rip the bandaid off and just do it.

I want to stress, most of these people were faithful LDS, heck many were more conservative than I was, but at the same time, they didn't see the reason for the objection especially if it risked BYU's accreditation, its federal funds or status as a tier one institution.

Let me say that again in another way so it's perfectly clear, these were faithful saints, but at the end of the day, they felt that BYU should be just like any other institution of higher learning. Period.

I was kinda stunned by this attitude. Certainly there was a place for a religious institution with a specific religious charter? Nope, not if it got in the way of funding, accreditation, etc.

After all, Notre Dame, SMU, all the private religious universities had gone that route, and we should do the same. BYU could keep its historical LDS affiliation, but the university should run just like any other university.

I remember this specifically because I suggested, well what if BYU gave up fed funds like say Hillsdale. No. In their opinion that would make BYU irrelevant.

And I want to give the best case for their argument because it deserves hearing, in their opinion, a school that was like SMU or Notre Dame, would be better for the church and its mission, in the long run, then what we currently had.

This was by far the prevailing opinion. BYU had to remain in the world to do its mission and if that means it loses some of that unique religious flavor, that would be the best, for BYU and the church.

Again, this was not the opinion of radicals, but people I would call moderates and even conservatives, some even much more conservative than me. It was an academic focused worldview.

Now whether that is true or not is another debate, but it showed me that the academic clique or groupthink of BYU was very strong. People who were academics were at least as loyal to their role as academics as they were to being members of the church.

And I will admit, I have some sympathy to this view, because, I taught a very difficult subject that came against the honor code constantly, but was required for the discipline, and yet we had no guidance.

And so every day was like stepping into a minefield. I never knew if or when I would cross the line. And I stepped on a LOT of mines. Things were much easier at other institutions.

So that will do for today. In a few days I'll start again, explaining how I think BYU got where it is. I did my undergrad at BYU, right at the time the big changes were happening and I've seen it from both sides. Until then, Ciao!