Student Government, Social Clubs & Newspapers

A Tumultuous Beginning

Besides being a place of learning, a university is also a place of transition for young people emerging from the security of parents and home to the responsibilities of self-reliance. Some of the inevitable tension between students and administrators, especially at a church university, has been described previously in Chapter 3. The contest between educators and undergraduates is equally evident in the governance of organizations serving students' extracurricular activities. In student government, social organizations, and the direction of student newspapers, the need for autonomy is continually pitted against the institutional drive for administrative control.

After its creation in December 1902, student government existed only six years before undergraduates encountered their first major falling out with administrators over student affairs, culminating in the resignation of student body president John Reese. Finding student government in debt $250 when he assumed office, Reese had proposed that additional money be raised by charging admission to a dance, which was opposed by faculty advisors. When advisors refused to compromise, and Reese renounced his office in protest, the remaining officers drew up a student "bill of rights," which the student body endorsed in a mass meeting on campus. Administrators responded by revoking the students' constitution and by dismissing all other elected representatives from office. "A new method of appointing officers, based on the church system of organization, was accordingly proposed and adopted by the faculty," reported the 1 June 1908 student White and Blue. "A provision for a minority representation from the faculty on the student body executive committee" was also required. White and Blue editors added that "it was not at all strange that the change should be looked upon unfavorably by the students in general and, naturally enough, some little agitation resulted."¹

Following lengthy, heated debate, students agreed in early 1909 to a compromise allowing student government to operate as it had before the dispute except that resolutions by elected student officers had to be submitted for approval to a "Board of Control," a group composed of twelve students and four faculty, all appointed by administrators. Also, administrators retained minor control over student elections. According to the compromise, students wishing to run for office were required to gather student endorsements on petitions and submit them to the Board of Control, which selected two candidates to run for each office. These procedures were incorporated into a new constitution and accepted by the student body. Student elections were held in January 1909. Predictably, however, the issue of administrative supervision in an area thought to be a student prerogative continued to generate "heated discussions" for years to come.²

Before long, students realized that they could circumvent the Board of Control by agreeing among themselves which two students would submit petitions to the board. From the mid-1910s to the late 1920s, students formed political parties to nominate candidates and to adopt political platforms. Party organizations, limited to two per year, included the White party, the Blue party, the White Mule party, the Blue Bird party (school colors were white and blue), the Student party, the Hickory party, the We party, and the Collegiate party. Issues addressed in party platforms included "putting BYU on the accredited college list," encouraging the construction of a "science building on Temple Hill," promoting a "furlough system for faculty," and establishing a "school cafeteria."³

In 1937, during the administration of Franklin S. Harris, students drafted a new constitution giving them the right to hold primary elections and dissolving the Board of Control. When administrators agreed to the change, students understandably considered this a major victory. But eleven years later, in 1948, students complained that their constitution gave them "no more power than [that of] a hen pecked husband." Administrators objected to a proposed modification in the constitution because it "took too much for granted and did not tie the students close enough to the school." Administrative reserve was assuaged when an additional clause was added to the constitution, recognizing "the power delegated to us by the president of the university" and requiring that the budget be approved "by the administration of the university" (YN, 15, 29 April 1948). Actually, the revised constitution contained few substantive changes from the previous document and was criticized in 1957 for granting the student body president "no more power than [that of] a soggy dishrag."⁴

The responsibilities of early student leaders included running the intercollegiate athletic program, controlling the Student Loan Fund, operating the student bookstore, planning parties and social activities--notably, the annual painting of the block "Y" on an adjacent mountainside--and overseeing the initiation, or "hazing," of freshmen. The Student Loan Fund, created in 1884 and revived in 1930 after six years of neglect, disbursed approximately $1,000 per semester to students in need of help with living expenses. Capital was raised by charging admission to an annual Loan Fund Ball. A faculty committee was eventually assigned to help disburse the funds, however, and student control gradually waned.⁵

Since 1915, students managed the Student Supply Association, a cooperative store located in a small room in the Academy Building. The association provided students discount prices on school supplies, snacks, and books, and proceeds paid for the construction of the school's first football stadium, the first tennis courts, and the Joseph Smith Building organ, as well as much of the land on Temple Hill. A $15,000 savings fund eventually helped build the first student union, the Herald R. Clark Building, the eventual site of a new bookstore.⁶

There was, of course, more to early student government than supervising these and other student services. Like undergraduates elsewhere, early BYU students enjoyed boisterous--occasionally unruly--parties. With a Collegiate Department enrollment of only forty or fifty at the turn of the century, student activities were invariably informal and intimate. Pajama parties proved to be a favorite activity. One year, students participated in a "pajama parade," led by the homecoming queen and the school band. Other activities included Sadie Hawkins Day Dances for couples who had participated in a "girl-catch-guy" race the morning of the dance, and an annual "Smokeless Smoker," a boxing and wrestling tournament for men only.⁷

The Block "Y"

In 1906, a handful of juniors in the Collegiate Department inaugurated what would become one of the school's most enduring traditions by hiking 2,000 feet up the slope of what is now Y Mountain, east of campus, and painted a huge '07 on the mountainside to commemorate their upcoming graduation. Not to be outdone, representatives of the other classes were soon on the mountain trying to match the feat with numerals representing their own graduation years. To put an end to the potentially dangerous competition (which had made an eye-sore of the mountainside), student officers voted to replace the jumbled scrawlings with a common 300 foot "BYU;" the "B" and the "U" to be painted blue; the "Y," white. A professor of drafting and engineering was enlisted to help lay out the letters. Harvey Fletcher, a senior, later explained how the giant "Y" was whitewashed and the "B" and the "U" abandoned:

Students stood in a zig zag line about eight feet apart, stretching from the bottom of the hill to the site of the [letters]. The first man took the bag of lime, sand, or rocks, and carried it eight feet, and handed it to the second man. The second carried it another eight feet and handed it to the third man and thus the bag went up the hill, each man shuttling back and forth along his eight-foot portion of the trail. All the students started with enthusiasm . . . but it was a much bigger job than anyone expected. It was 4:00 p.m. before the Y was covered, and then by only a thin layer. . . . [Some of the boys] fainted and had to be helped down the hill.⁸

Although Fletcher reported that the students were "somewhat rewarded when they got back to the campus and looked at the beautiful white Y on the mountainside in just the right proportions," nothing more was done to complete the proposed "BYU" in white and blue, or to maintain the solitary white "Y," for the next three years. A 1910 White and Blue editorial charged that "the product of our great engineering and strenuous lime and rock carrying stands as a monument to our primitive taste, and also as a reminder of our present inaction." Student leaders finally decided that the "Y" should receive a fresh coat of paint, even if the other letters were not completed, and that participation would be mandatory for all BYU men. Whitewashers in subsequent years were accompanied by the school band playing pep songs and appropriate church hymns, including "High On a Mountain Top" and "Do Not Weary by the Way."⁹

Participation for all male students was enforced by student government's anonymous "Benevolent Order of Hair Removers From `Y' Day Sluffers," an ad hoc group which shaved heads and painted iodine "Y"s extending from "the top of the forehead" to "the tip of the nose" of victims' faces. The student newspaper claimed that this kind of "barbering" and branding with iodine "filled a man brimfull of `Y' patriotism for the rest of his natural life." But after city police responded in 1912 to a fracas that ensued when one student refused to have his hair cut, BYU president George H. Brimhall ordered that the haircuts be discontinued. Members of the Benevolent Order admitted that their conduct had not been ideal, but insisted that "the attitude of the [police] officers was not of a kind to demand respect," either.¹⁰

Students next began punishing "Y Day" absentees by "ducking" them in the school fountain; a few were publicly spanked after being convicted in student court. Sluffing freshmen were thrown into the school's botany pond and the school paper kept track of the number of freshmen caught, noting once that the "latest total [was] twenty-six on purpose and four accidental" (DU, 14 Oct. 1952). Freshmen were also expected to clear the block "Y" of weeds each year before it was painted. This task was so unpopular that freshmen themselves began enforcing compliance among classmates. "I remember the day we went up to the Y on the mountain and cleaned off all the brush," one student recalled; "The password was `Ginger's Passionate Lips,' and when we got down we hunted out all the frosh who didn't know it and gave it to them but good. . . . What the upperclassmen did to us was nothing compared to what we did to [the freshmen] who didn't make that trip."¹¹

Throughout the early 1940s, there were not enough men on campus to carry the required 110 bags of lime, 500 pounds of salt, and 3,000 gallons of water up the mountain for the whitewashing, so the "Y" went unpainted. But by 1954, coeds were also expected to show for duty. In 1956, for example, a party of "Y Day vigilantes" entered the women's dormitories when the coeds should have been on the mountainside and "doused [offenders] with ice cold water from a fire hose."¹²

As the student body grew, "Y Day" came to include more than whitewashing the block "Y." Beginning in the late 1950s, while many of the school's 12,000 students cleaned and painted the "Y," others were organized into work parties to clean up campus, or to assist in various community service projects--including painting buildings, planting trees and bushes, and installing park benches and sprinkling systems in local parks. When the work was complete, students gathered at Kiwanas Park for chariot races in one- and two-wheeled wheelbarrows and rickshaws, or for greased pig chases, tugs of war, pie fights, goldfish swallowing contests, and dancing. Towards evening, student "pages" rushing the Intercollegiate Knights social club would go on a torchlight parade up the mountain and ignite sticky balls of mattress stuffing, motor oil, and gasoline "gook" placed around the perimeter of the "Y." At least once, club hopefuls also unintentionally ignited the hillside and battled brush fires for two hours. The Intercollegiate Knights continue to light the block Y on special occasions. In 1978, after interest in "Y Day" had peaked, the BYU Physical Plant cemented and sealed the "Y" at a cost of $30,000, thereby eliminating any need for the annual whitewashing.¹³

Freshmen Hazing

One early activity that was popular among all but first-year undergraduates was freshmen hazing. At colleges across the United States, hazing involved such initiatory pranks as decorating freshmen with indelible ink, shaving heads, and throwing students into nearby rivers or lakes--sometimes in barrels. BYU freshmen were instructed in 1923 to avoid trouble with older students by obeying the following rules:

1. All freshmen shall refrain from using the front door of the [Academy] Building; they shall also refrain from using the Maeser Memorial front entrance . . . until the annual frosh entrance ceremony takes place [at the conclusion of fall quarter].

2. Freshmen boys shall . . . wear green caps of uniform shape and color [available at the student bookstore for eighty-five cents]. . . . Freshmen girls shall wear a green ribbon.

3. During the early part of the first quarter of school, freshmen men shall clean the Y on the mountainside.¹⁴

Over the next thirty years, the list of rules gradually expanded, requiring in 1926 that coeds wear "freshie caps" along with the men, and then requiring freshmen to have their names printed on the caps to "help them recognize classmates and to get acquainted with upperclassmen." In 1932, entering men were prohibited from wearing tan corduroy pants and from growing mustaches. Beards, as well, were later prohibited. For eight years, freshmen were not allowed to sit in the first ten rows at assemblies and lyceums. They were required to "learn the college song and yells," "repeat them at the request of sophomores and upperclassmen," and were expected to perform petty services for upperclassmen, such as carrying books, shining shoes, and manicuring fingernails.¹⁵

In 1930 the student newspaper announced that "the following rules have been drawn up in addition to those printed in the student handbook:"

1. Frosh men shall wear no socks while on campus.

2. Frosh men shall wear no ties while on campus.

3. Upon seeing any upperclassmen, the frosh man or woman shall step immediately off the sidewalk or path, raise [his or her] hat and look dumb until the upperclassman has passed.

4. Frosh women must wear odd stockings while on campus.

5. Frosh men may not cut in on upperclassmen at matinee dances.

Prohibitions eventually became so extensive that by 1950 entering coeds were not allowed to wear make-up or fingernail polish and boys were required to "comb their hair over their eyes."¹⁶

Freshmen usually cooperated with the older students for a week or two after arriving at school, but invariably tried to assert their independence before the three-month probation period had ended. Sophomores were expected to police freshmen for conformity and seniors conducted a monkey court at which freshmen were tried and punished. Freshmen guilty of minor offenses were assigned simple tasks such as raking leaves or scrubbing floors. For more serious infractions, offenders were publicly humiliated by having a green "F" painted on their faces. Resisting arrest was the most serious offense and resulted in such punishments as being drenched in, or forced to eat, "molasses, flour, onions, and eggs" (DU, 10 Oct. 1950). Other reports told of "egg shampoos," "molasses shampoos," raw oysters, and heavy doses of perfume. One freshman who tried to bribe a sophomore by offering to do his theology homework for a week was sentenced to perform half-time stunts at a football game. Freshman mustaches were shaved on the spot, and students who dared come to school in tan corduroys were sent home in a gunny sack. Those who failed to appear in court had their activity cards confiscated.¹⁷

Occasionally, the entire freshman class rebelled. In 1928, freshmen paraded capless through the front door of the Academy Building, resulting in a brawl with the sophomores. The next year, freshmen removed their caps during a student body dance and were ejected with "torn shirts" and "one broken nose." In an October 1930 pajama rally, defiant freshmen were "pinned and paddled." The editor of the student newspaper reported that "heads [had] been cracked, shirts riddled, and backs sprained. Proud possessors of scratches [strutted] along with arms akimbo sporting large and conspicuous patches of adhesive tape." Four months later, the newspaper announced that "Morris Gessler, freshman, whose collar bone was broken during the freshmen-sophomore brawl, will have the doctor bill taken care of by the freshman class." Once or twice freshmen disrupted the proceedings of the senior court by dousing the seniors with water and by throwing "freshly baked pies, . . . large over-ripe tomatoes, and eggs of questionable vintage" at the upperclassmen. During a 1956 melee, two students were hit by "flying buckets;" one suffered a broken clavicle.¹⁸

On the last day of "sophomore rule," known as "Frosh Day," freshmen would produce a student assembly, publish an issue of the school newspaper--usually filled with threats of retaliation against sophomores and Senior Court--and face sophomores in a flag rush. One year, when freshmen performed a song they had written for the occasion with the chorus, "And we will show them who is boss in College Hall," a "group of sophomores jumped up and hollered, `Are we going to let them get away with that?'" Angry sophomores attacked the platform and tried to oust the flippant freshmen. "There we were," one participant later recalled, "a group of freshmen and sophomores wrestling around on the platform in College Hall before a full house." During the brawl, students damaged a grand piano, then "hustled down the back stairs as fast as we could go and got away."¹⁹

In 1931, sophomores kidnapped the freshman class president on Frosh Day, holding him "a few hours in a basement and then . . . deposit[ing him] on the stage in College Hall, sans clothing, with an overcoat draped precariously around his middle." One year, when "tempers flared" between freshmen and sophomores, the two classes "gathered in the gym for a boxing match." When the fighting extended beyond the refereed matches, the rest of the day's activities were called off to "prevent further bad feelings." During the final event of Frosh Day every year, when freshmen were allowed to pass through the front doors of the Academy and Maeser buildings for the first time, sophomores would invariably try to hold the line "until the proper hour" while freshmen attempted to "crash their defense" prematurely (YN, 11 Dec. 1928).²⁰

While BYU administrators deplored the excesses of hazing, they welcomed the camaraderie and school spirit engendered by the more harmless elements of the tradition. President Franklin Harris, for example, spoke each year at the annual bonfire rally when new students were introduced to the rules, advising freshmen not to take themselves too seriously and to try to have a good time. But Harris also reminded students to keep in mind the high ideals of the school. In 1946, President Howard McDonald commended freshmen to a "spirit of friendliness and sportsmanship" during hazing ordeals. "Though there may be trying moments, hold high your respect for upperclassmen. Be sane, and have . . . fun," McDonald advised. Administrators occasionally intervened for the protection of the freshmen, such as in 1934, when students built wooden pillories for errant freshmen. Due to administrative displeasure the stocks were taken down. When they reappeared two years later, administrators again objected. Students then decided to detain freshmen in the cougar cage, the school mascot having long since been delivered to a zoo. Administrators acquiesced in this instance but otherwise vigorously opposed corporal punishment. After a 1929 disturbance on the front lawn of the Academy Building when a number of freshmen were severely spanked, administrators insisted that this not occur again. However, both the Student Body Council and the student Y News resisted the administrative order--"We say, on with the paddle"--and paddling went underground.²¹

After World War II, veterans nationwide "refused to wear freshmen beanies or to be subjected to hazing. . . . Class distinctions were [confused] by veterans returning from various classes," and many freshmen "posed as sophomores and were able to fool" upperclassmen. Hazing was consequently shortened to one week, while many of the rules were made more attractive to encourage cooperation. By 1954, participation had become strictly voluntary. Those wearing beanies or otherwise cooperating with freshmen rules were given ticket discounts and other perks. The last mention of hazing evidently dates from September 1964, when freshmen were informed that they could buy beanies in the bookstore for one dollar.²²

TURTLE RACES AND SKITS

As hazing, pajama parties, and the Smokeless Smoker were slowly phased out, they were replaced by less riotous but equally creative activities, such as turtle races, ice carving contests, mud football games, theatrical contests, impromptu concerts, and "ugly man" contests. Beginning in the early 1960s, turtle races were held each year in the George Albert Smith Fieldhouse with turtles provided by student government. Campus clubs, housing units, and academic departments painted designs and names on their turtles' shells, including "Ho Chi Minh," "LBJ," "Candy Spot," and "A. Theodore Turtle," after A. Theodore Tuttle of the church's First Council of Seventy. In 1967, the campus newspaper sponsored an unsuccessful "Save the Turtles" campaign to try to rescue the reptiles from their post-race laboratory fate. In addition to turtle races, students arranged in 1968 and 1970 to have trained ostriches brought to campus, which they rode in competitive races.²³

Every year near Christmas, students sponsored an Ice and Snow Carnival, with competition in skating, skiing, tobogganing and ice sculpturing. As much as three tons of extra snow was often trucked to campus from nearby mountains to guarantee enough raw material for the elaborate, lifesize sculptures created by participating campus groups. In 1956, the winning sculpture portrayed a Canadian mountie pulling a pampered huskie on a dogsled. Four years later, the top award went to an intricate clock, with a cuckoo emerging from the window of an alpine house. In 1964, prizes went to ice statues of a toreador, a dodo bird, and church president David O. McKay. Two years later, the Delta Phis, a club for returned LDS missionaries, won first place for its caricature of BYU's cougar mascot, Cosmo, sprawled at the base of a tree with skiis entwined, leaning on one elbow, the epithet, "Damn," inscribed on the pedestal.²⁴

In 1963, the yearly frosh-soph flag rush was replaced by an annual freshmen-sophomore mud football game, which eventually evolved into a tournament with teams representing all four classes. Coed mud squads also competed. To prepare the empty field near the football stadium for the Mudbowl each year, students had the ground plowed by tractor and sprayed with a fire hose to "create about eight inches of oozing mud." The half-time entertainment during the annual championship game was the Mudbowl Queen contest, with fifteen or sixteen coeds sloshing the length of the field to claim the Mudbowl crown at the far end of the field.²⁵

Another popular event, beginning in the late 1940s, was the yearly Songfest, at which student groups performed original choral pieces. In addition, original dramatic sketches were presented nearly every Friday at all-school student assemblies. A 1957 skit, "Olympic Chaos," featured three comedians in bath towels carrying garbage cans on their shoulders. A highlight of the 1958 presentations was "Big Brother Is Watching You," a skit portraying the frustrations of six imaginary Soviet exchange students trying to adapt to BYU's closely-supervised environment. The next year, "When You Were a Tadpole" parodied organic evolution. A typical Christmas play was the 1959 skit, "O, Come All Ye Shoppers." Occasionally, students were criticized for staging plays which included vulgarity or lewdness. In 1941, for example, Omega Nu, the campus journalism club, had put together a collection of short pieces which included an impromptu shadow-play pantomime, "Beauty Takes a Bath," which evidently offended some of its patrons (YN, 24 Jan. 1941).²⁶

These and other occasional lapses in good taste on the part of undergraduate directors proved to be a source of perpetual concern to administrators. In 1951, a student, writing for the campus newspaper on "Idealism," noted, "A few assemblies at the Y have contained . . . routines that could easily be classified as `shady' or `[off-]colored.' Admittedly, these happenings [have been] funny, often extremely so, but on what level is this humor?" Seven years later, two social units presented "The College Game" and shocked their audience with "a crude song about birds' eliminatory functions." The play also included at least two ribald jokes. Another unforgettable student play was the one staged by a men's social club in the mid-1960s. Club members dressed as women and did a can-can, reportedly concluding with participants bending over and flipping up their skirts to expose bare buttocks, framed by athletic-supporter straps, to the faculty sitting in the front rows (in SEP, 15 Dec. 1981).²⁷

Since the early 1960s, student government has encouraged the production of student-directed motion pictures. In 1962, students filmed "The Great Grass Cutter" about a student who disregarded BYU's policy of not walking on campus lawns. The film included a surprise appearance by BYU president Ernest Wilkinson. More recently, an annual "Zoobie Film Festival," begun in the early 1980s, has awarded prizes to the best student films submitted. Another popular campus activity in recent times has been the weekly free "Concerts Impromptu," featuring student comedy routines, magic, and contemporary music. Since 1974, favorite student bands have included the Friends of Boo Radley; the Flake Sisters; Porter Rockwell Blitz; Gas, Food, and Lodging; Mahonri; the Elk Water Flea and Tick Jug Band; and the Mideastern Blues Brothers.²⁸

Among the most celebrated student activities since the mid-1940s has been the annual women's-choice "Preference Ball." Originally the student Social Office arranged dates for those attending the dance, based on requests submitted by coeds. The man requested as a date by the most number of women was honored as the "Most Preferred Man on Campus." Coeds later began arranging their own dates, although they continued to vote for the Most Preferred Man. In 1958, by submitting a petition with fifty signatures, BYU men could also become candidates for "Least Preferred Man on Campus." This, in turn, led in the mid-1970s to a yearly "Ugly Man Contest," with students voting for photographs of contestants pulling the most grotesque faces.²⁹

A final genre of student activity attracting considerable attention over the years is the long list of assorted beauty contests, including the "Belle of the Y" and "Miss BYU" pageants. Acting BYU president Christen Jensen complained in 1951 to Ernest L. Wilkinson, "There are so many parties, dances, elections, queen contests, athletic events, social units, and club functions that I sometimes wonder how our students find time to accomplish the fundamental purposes for which they came to this institution." Later that year, BYU coed Colleen Hutchins was named Miss America. In 1956, the school paper reported that Football Queen contestants "appeared before eight judges, both in street clothes and in bathing suits," and that "the winners received . . . gifts from Provo merchants. [The queen] receiv[ed] an impressive array [of] silver, china, jewelry and clothing, . . . [and] a modeling job for the summer with bathing suit designer Rose Marie Reid." But three years later, visiting apostle Spencer W. Kimball cautioned students that "it isn't good for any girl to be named a queen. . . . I shall look forward to the day when we have no queen contests. Such flattering honors give undue emphasis and are superficial." Although beauty and popularity contests have been deemphasized since Kimball's address, BYU basked in reflected glory in 1984 when former "Miss BYU" Sharlene Wells was named Miss America.³⁰

Fraternities, Sororities, and Social Clubs

Other student activities have persisted despite administrative edicts aimed at undermining their popularity. For example, the annual "rush" and "pledge" activities of campus social clubs have been repeatedly condemned by BYU officials as exclusive and degrading. Other club activities have also been criticized for being contrary to the ideals of the church. Yet today's clubs have continued the traditions established by BYU fraternities, which were banned in 1924, and of "social units," banned in 1961.

The earliest BYU social organization was apparently the College Club (1908), which sponsored banquets and formal "toasts," honoring outstanding student athletes. The first fraternity, Tau Sigma, was comprised almost exclusively of athletes. In 1918, a rival "Goldbricker" fraternity emerged. The initial membership consisted of students who had spent World War I in the BYU Student Army Training Corps. A "goldbricker," in military jargon, was a soldier who loafed while others worked.³¹

Early pledge activities involved such antics as dressing in hip boots and fishing hat and spending an afternoon casting into the old city fountain in the middle of the intersection of Center Street and University Avenue in downtown Provo. Occasionally, club hopefuls, called "goats," were required to perform stunts during half-time breaks at football games. When future church leader Henry D. Taylor rushed the Goldbrickers in 1922, he and another "goat" sparred from horseback, dressed in bathing suits and medieval helmets. Two other initiates completed the half-time show by engaging in a "bull fight" with a cow.³²

In March 1924, President Franklin Harris announced that, in order to maintain BYU's reputation as a "democratic" and "home-like" university, he was abolishing fraternities. He explained that fraternity leaders had "voiced themselves as being willing to forego the social life of exclusive groups for the good of the . . . entire student body." The Goldbrickers, following the announcement, staged a mock funeral at a local chapel with a gold-colored brick nestled in a borrowed casket.³³

Three years later, in 1927, administrators were forced to admit that fraternal organizations were flourishing off campus. In efforts to minimize again the exclusivity of these groups, officials created a campus "Social Unit System" to serve the entire student body. A faculty committee granted charters to groups of undergraduates wishing to be recognized as campus social organizations. "Unaffiliated" students were assigned to groups created by the committee itself. Of the initial forty-five groups chartered, only twenty-five ever met or held activities; others were barely functional. Students claimed the school was trying to "socialize those who did not care to be socialized, and . . . over-socializing those who were already inclined that way."³⁴

The first group chartered was the Nugget social unit, which subsequently acknowledged its true heritage when it changed its name to Bricker. The next group chartered was Nautilus, a women's group, followed by Tausig, previously Tau Sigma. Over the ensuing twenty years, BYU's ten most active social units were Bricker, Tausig, Brigadier, Val Hyric, and Viking (all men's units); and Nautilus, Cesta Tie, Fidelas, O. S. Trovata and Val Norn (women's units). Twenty or thirty less permanent groups competed for student membership, as well. All demonstrated fraternal characteristics. Even YDD (Young Doctors of Divinity), a social unit for returned LDS missionaries, sponsored bizarre initiation activities, as did its successor, the Friars--replaced in 1938 by Lambda Delta Sigma, and later by Delta Phi Kappa.³⁵

As soon as the first social units received their charters in 1927, they organized rush and pledge activities. The first "pledges" to join one unit were fed angleworms. Bricker "goats" were later required to wear gunny sack underpants for a week. Other groups required their "dodos," or "toads," to carry raw, unbroken eggs in their pants. Val Hyric "scruds" dredged the botany pond. Athenian hopefuls were "greased and feathered" with molasses and chicken feathers. Some units had students spend an evening in a bathtub or measure the block "Y" with a six-inch ruler. Women's units had their initiates color their hair green and purple and collect signatures on brassieres. Some of the men's units collected brassieres. Tausig dodos performed song and dance routines in women's underwear in dormitory cafeterias. Accusations were voiced one year that students had been required to make plaster molds of "sacred areas of the body" as part of their initiations. Periodically students were taken on "one-way rides" into nearby mountains and left to find their own way home. In retaliation, Val Norn pledges collaborated once and took Val Norn officers on a one-way ride. Some goats had to preach sermons in flowery biblical language on birth control or communism from over-turned fruit crates on Center Street, concluding their sermons by singing the children's Sunday school hymn, "Jesus Wants Me for a Sunbeam." Occasionally, prospective members were also asked to perform community services, but this was the exception rather than the rule. Most pledges were also vigorously spanked with paddles of their own making on the final "Hello Night," unofficially known as "Hell Night," when they were formally welcomed into the unit.³⁶

Although such initiations repelled some students--intentionally so--social units proved generally popular because of the active social life they provided, including weekend retreats to mountain cabins, sleigh rides, costume parties, toga parties, dinner dances, sports events, and pranks. Tausigs, for example, threw an annual "Deer Bust" at Timp Haven in the north fork of Provo Canyon, while Brickers spent weekends at their own Bricker Haven Country Club in Provo Canyon, a fifteen-and-one-half acre spread purchased in 1928 with pooled funds. Social units cultivated a repertoire of songs and poetic doggerel. Men's and women's units often cooperated as partners in sponsoring dances and formal dinners.³⁷

Tausigs, like their predecessor Tau Sigma, were predominantly athletes. Every year, beginning in the late 1930s, members challenged rival Brickers to a "Bury-the-Hatchet" week-long tournament of football, basketball, and tug-of-war across an uncapped fire hydrant, which Tausigs usually won. Later, according to Tausigs, tennis, golf, horse shoes, and ping pong were added "to give Brickers an advantage." (Brickers were often accused of being academic "long hairs," while Tausigs were labeled academic oafs.) In the 1950s, the Bricker/Tausig rivalry was intensified by inflammatory, four-page newsletters, the Bricker Expositer and the Tausig Defender, and by posters portraying members of the opposing social unit as peeping toms and other deviants. Tausigs repeatedly planted an outhouse on campus in front of the Carl F. Eyring Science Center with "Bricker Castle" painted across the front. Brickers typically responded with raids on the Tausigs' frat house. Other units had similar rivalries, but none were as legendary as the Bricker/Tausig feud.³⁸

In September 1961, unit officers participated in a student leadership seminar at Jackson Hole, Wyoming, where Apostle Howard W. Hunter read a statement from the Board of Trustees that "social units on the campus of Brigham Young University should be discontinued at the conclusion of the school year 1961-62." No specific reason was given. After some discussion, social unit officers unanimously agreed to support the ruling, and although the general student body was less supportive, most felt impotent in challenging a board decision (Merrell). But the following year, former social unit members regrouped and applied for recognition as campus clubs under different names. Brickers were chartered as the Samuel Hall Society, after a character in one of their songs. Val Hyric registered as Norsemen, Val Norn became Vakhnom, Knights Templar emerged as Intercollegiate Knights, and Tausigs resurfaced as the Campus Athletic Association. Other new groups included Y Calcares, Chi Triellas, and Thea Alexis. In subsequent years, many more social clubs were added to the roster.³⁹

The new clubs continued their rush and pledge traditions. Club hopefuls were sent on scavenger hunts to collect such things as a giraffe chip from a Salt Lake City zoo or 300 used beer cans. Chi Triellas pledges walked the length of Center Street with sanitary napkins taped over their eyes. Rushees have had to play "dead cockroach" in the library, lying on their backs and thrashing their arms and legs in the air; or shout their allegiance to the campus statue of Brigham Young. One-way rides, head shaving, paddling, duck-walks, dressing in bizarre underwear, eating objectionable food, and other pledge rites have continued to the present.⁴⁰

For activities, social clubs have sponsored formal dances, progressive dinners, an occasional mud football game, and popular weekend retreats to mountain cabins. In 1970, social clubs held races in home-made chariots. Eight years later, they dominated a student body ice cream eating contest, a member of Sigma Epsilon devouring forty-two scoops of ice cream in twenty minutes. Some clubs have been accused of encouraging alcohol consumption or of sponsoring "stag" movies, but the most persistent complaint continues to be rowdiness. The Collegiate Development Union (CDU) was placed on probation in 1981 when its members, performing at an inter-club party, dropped their pants at the end of a comical burlesque to reveal CDU-emblazoned boxer shorts. Other clubs, by contrast, have tended to emphasize community service. Vahknom, for example, raised $15,000 in 1981 for the Easter Seals charity drive.⁴¹

Administrators have struggled with various means of supervising student social organizations. Beginning in 1928, social units were governed by an unpopular Faculty Social Committee, which eventually tried to court student approval by including a representative from each social unit on the committee. Expanded membership proved divisive and meetings were interrupted by emotional outbursts. Student representatives were all eventually released (YN, 24 Jan. 1933). In 1937, presidents of the social units were organized into a Social Unit Council, with the understanding that they would both establish and enforce club rules. But the presidents soon discovered that they were intended only as administrative "messengers [to] take the bad news back to the unit members" (see DU, 27 Jan. 1949). In January 1949, for example, dean of students Wesley P. Lloyd ordered a moratorium on freshman rushing, over the protest of the council. When rushing was allowed the following semester, social units were required to "widely publicize" the times and places of their rushing activities and to allow all who came to sign a membership list. The complete lists were then submitted to the student coordinator's office, from where invitations to all subsequent activities were mailed (DU, 18 Oct. 1949). Predictably, social units soon found inventive ways of circumventing the new procedures. Some chose inconvenient times and places for initial parties. Others allowed all interested students to sign one membership list but kept a second list for a few, pre-selected students. Later, sign-up lists were made available in the student coordinator's office, but so many students sought membership in a limited number of clubs that control reverted back to social unit officers.⁴²

Following the emergence in the early 1960s of social clubs, replacing social units, a student Inter-Organization Council (IOC) was created, with the same responsibilities as its predecessor, the Social Unit Council. Still, major decisions affecting social organizations continued to be made at administrative levels. For example, the faculty advisor to the IOC ordered the Collegiate Athletic Association dissolved in 1967 without discussing the matter with council members. Again, in 1975, the student coordinator suspended the Sportsmen Club for a semester without consulting the council. When students protested that their constitution allowed a trial before an Organizations Hearing Board before such action could be taken, dean of students Elliot J. Cameron responded that the school would "convene an administrative hearing board any time he had reason to believe there had been a violation of university standards," and that this superceded student privilege. Accordingly, administrators suspended seven clubs at once in 1979 without consulting students. The suspended clubs were allowed to return the next semester. In 1982, a group of students, including two student body officers, decided to avoid confrontations with administrators by creating an off-campus fraternity, Delta Phi Omega, and a sister sorority, Kappa Phi Omega. One of the founders explained, "Our reason for forming off campus was that we did not want to be babysat. It's not that we're radical, but we don't want the jurisdiction that exists when you are an on-campus club." If the popularity of these two organizations continues, they may set a precedent for the re-emergence at BYU of traditional fraternities and sororities.⁴³

ASBYU Student Government

Besides social activities, student leaders have supported a number of academic programs and student services. Since the early 1960s, student government, through its Academics Office, has brought to BYU an impressive array of guest speakers, rivaling the university's own bi-weekly forum speaker program. The Academics Office has sponsored lectures by conservative National Review editor William F. Buckley, Pulitzer Prize winning reporter Carl Bernstein, Pulitzer Prize winning political columnist Jack Anderson, noted criminal defense lawyer F. Lee Bailey, Soviet dissident Mikhail Stern, and popular Jewish novelist Chaim Potok. Academics also sponsored BYU historian Richard D. Poll's 1969 presentation in which he suggested that students contribute to the mythologizing of Utah and Mormon history by their "amazing lack of curiosity" about the past. Poll charged that the concept of "Happy Valley," as Utah Valley has often been called, was a stereotype existing only in students' and others' minds. Poll's theme was later expanded when Academics asked religion professor Hugh Nibley to speak in mid-1975. Entitling his address, "Zeal Without Knowledge," Nibley accused students of becoming a "race of insufferable, self-righteous prigs and barren minds." He admonished students to concentrate less on converting others to cherished convictions and to tap the resources of knowledge available to those who do not believe they have all the answers.⁴⁴

During the late 1960s, student leaders succeeded in establishing an entirely student-organized and -operated "Free University," or "Academy," offering open, noncredit classes in contemporary issues, taught by BYU faculty. Courses included "Student Protest as a Positive Form of Deviancy," "Insights into Russian Life and Politics," "Afro-American History," and "Personality Theory." Although there were no fees for these extra-curricular classes, students were required to register in advance and were asked to treat their courses like any other class. The first year of the program, 700 students participated, followed by nearly 1,000 the next year. When the program's organizers graduated in 1970, the Free University was forced to shut down.⁴⁵

When student body officers drafted the 1971 student budget, they reserved $23,000 for unspecified projects in academic areas, creating a Student Academic Council to determine specific allocations of these funds. After considering various proposals, the council decided to underwrite student research projects. "Pheromone Monitoring of Coddling Moth Populations in Provo Valley" was one of the first projects to receive assistance. Known currently as the Research Fund Committee, the student group has continued to underwrite substantive student research, with an annual Research Fund allocation from student government.⁴⁶

One of the most practical student government services has been the consumer and legal counseling offered by student government's community and administrative "watchdog," the Ombudsman. Inaugurated as the Office of Student Relations in 1969, the Ombudsman has provided advice and representation for students involved in disputes with local merchants or entangled in BYU's bureaucracy. Staffed mostly by volunteers, it typically renders judgements based on depositions from involved parties and often negotiates settlements by telephone. However, a local attorney is held on retainer for difficult cases. One of the office's first successes was a negotiated rebate for a BYU student from a local car dealer. Shortly thereafter, eight student employees, unintentionally excluded from the university's payroll during a regular check-run, asked for help when the finance office refused to do more than "loan" them 80 percent of their pay until the next pay period, two weeks away. The Ombudsman managed to have the students paid immediately, in full. In 1971, an undergraduate informed the Ombudsman that his "dorm mother" had allowed an unidentified visitor to enter his room and steal his stereo sound system. The visitor had claimed permission from the student to borrow the system. Housing officials refused to take responsibility for the theft until the Ombudsman intervened, convincing them to buy the student a new stereo system. Five years later, the Ombudsman's Office sponsored a survey of student wages in the Provo area and reported the results to the regional director of the Wage and Hour Division of the U.S. Department of Labor. A field office of the Department of Labor was consequently established in Provo. The Ombudsman also offers tax consultation for students, including professional tax form preparation in cases involving complicated returns. An overly aggressive Ombudsman's Office fell out of favor with BYU administrators in 1981 when it became involved in a controversy regarding surcharges on deposits for student telephone service. "I think it is important for . . . the Ombudsman's Office . . . to know of the damage that has been done to the integrity of BYU and its governing Board of Trustees in recent hearings of the state Public Service Commission," President Jeffrey Holland wrote to a subordinate. Issues raised by the Ombudsman during the hearings "called into question an entire church-state issue unrelated to the matters at hand," according to Holland. Still, the Ombudsman's Office has continued its vocal advocacy of student rights.⁴⁷

Student government operates within a budget that has grown from $10,000 in 1922 to $600,000 in 1985. Fifty-nine percent of the total revenue comes from a thirteen dollar per student allocation from general university funds. The remainder is generated largely from ticket sales. Expectedly, student officers are supervised in preparing their annual budget, a frequent source of contention between students and university officials. In 1927, for instance, administrators insisted, over the Student Body Council's protest, that 15 percent of the student budget be allocated to the art department to pay for student art materials. The Y News reported that "since the last Student Body Council [meeting] the members of the council have been wondering whether or not they have any power, or if they are merely a body which the `powers that be' permit the students to elect to kid them into the belief that they have [some] say in things." Student officers found it "quite humiliating to be of college standing as students and yet have no ultimate powers." Administrators later required a $40,000 to $50,000 subsidy from student body funds to support the school newspaper, until the paper was eventually acquired by the communications department.⁴⁸

The senior class currently receives a budgetary allowance of between $10,000 and $12,000 for the purchase of an annual senior class "gift" to the university--a tradition since 1897, although initial gifts cost nearer to $1,000 and were financed solely by student contributions. Gifts have included the hillside road to upper campus (1907), the Focault Pendulum in the Carl F. Eyring Science Center (1949), a bronze cougar that stands guard over the football stadium (1965), the marquee at the west entrance to campus (1967), and a computer check-out system for the library (1978). In 1979, senior officers considered three class gift suggestions: a permanent, electrical lighting system for the block "Y;" a religious mural; and a $10,000 donation to a Cambodian refugee fund. The Cambodian proposal proved to be the most popular choice among students, but not among administrators. The senior class gift committee arranged to have seniors voice their preference in a special election, to which administrators also objected. According to the student financial vice-president, school officials "were afraid students might choose a gift which [officials] would not consider the best for the university and, because of the election, would be forced to approve it." Dean of students David Sorensen warned students that "the philosophy in the past has been that church funds for BYU be spent at BYU. Therefore, any proposal suggesting that the money be spent off campus would have to be approved by . . . the Board [of Trustees]." Instead of canceling the election, the class gift committee altered terminology to refer to the scheduled election as an "opinion poll." When the poll showed seniors to favor predominately the refugee fund, administrators charged that the poll had been skewed by students campaigning for the refugee fund with sandwich signs outside the polling area. In the face of growing support for the drive among ranking church authorities, however, university officials eventually allowed students to send the money to Cambodia, along with $9,000 in student contributions that was raised during the controversy. Three years later, students discovered that $66,000 in unspent gift funds had accumulated over the years and suggested that $40,000 be donated to a Food for Poland charity. They were quickly advised that student jurisdiction over residual funds is forfeited at the end of each school year. A bylaw was then added to the student constitution precluding off-campus projects as class gifts.⁴⁹

Of all student government responsibilities, few have been as controversial as the distribution and sale of tickets for athletic events and popular music concerts. In 1923, a large crowd of students gathered four hours before the ticket office opened and, at the appointed hour, rushed the office, disrupting lines and resulting in what the campus newspaper described as a general "rough-house." Disorderly lines and hours of waiting proved to be the pattern in ticket sales for years to come. Student body officers tried year after year to improve the situation by devising a better method of distributing tickets, but were unsuccessful. Experiments included random drawings, pre-dawn sales, computer selections, distribution of tickets by activity card number, and mail orders. In late 1980, student body officers decided to withhold the ticket sale location until one hour before the ticket office opened. Students were told only that the location would be announced over a local radio station at nine o'clock on a Saturday morning. When the prescribed day arrived and the announcement was made, the result was pandemonium. Students stormed the George Albert Smith Fieldhouse to be first in line; a BYU security officer remembered: "We had people driving on both sides of the street and on the sidewalk." Three accidents and many "near misses" were reported. Cars were abandoned; ticket hopefuls were pushed, shoved, and knocked down amid the general scramble (DU, 27 Oct. 1980). The scene subsequently elicited a strong rebuke from President Holland in an open letter to the student body. Other problems, besides those associated with crowds, have also surfaced. Twice, student government representatives sold more tickets than available seats. On three occasions, tickets reserved for students were sold to a better paying public. Shortly after one such incident, the director of the ticket office was found to have embezzled $35,000 and was dismissed (see DU, 10 Oct. 1973).⁵⁰

An important innovation of the 1948 student body constitution was the creation of a thirty-three member Legislative Council, comprised of student body officers, class presidents, two elected representatives from each class, a representative of the Social Unit Council, and other student leaders. Legislative Council meetings were held in the Karl G. Maeser Memorial auditorium, where interested bystanders were able to observe events from the gallery. A Daily Universe reporter covering a session in 1951 related that she was "alternately proud, angry, amused, and sleepy" during the proceedings.⁵¹

By 1956, the Legislative Council had been trimmed to twenty-four members, most student body officers having been relieved of legislative duties. The council was renamed the ASBYU Senate. (Since May 1930, the student body had been referred to as the Associated Students of Brigham Young University.) Like its predecessor, the senate served not only as a legislative body, but also as a forum for student opinion. One example was the 1960 attempt to adopt a resolution condemning the loyalty oath requirement of the National Defense Education Act (NDEA) of 1958. The federal statute provided educational loans through cooperating universities to students who signed a statement that they did "not believe in, and [were] not . . . member[s] of, and [would] not support, any organization that believe[d] in or [taught] the overthrow of the United States Government by force or violence or by any illegal or unconstitutional methods." A number of major, private universities refused to participate in the program, including Harvard, Princeton, Yale, Amherst, Reed, and BYU. Though sympathetic to the intent of the NDEA, BYU announced in 1959 that, rather than accept federal aid, it would establish its own comprehensive loan program, making 500 loans of between $100 and $500 available to students beginning the following semester.⁵²

In January 1960, the Greater Community Affairs Committee of the ASBYU Senate drafted a resolution expressing support for the Board of Trustees' decision. After discussion by the senate, the resolution was sent back to the committee to "water down the wording which attack[ed] federal aid to education and to attach a rider slamming loyalty oaths." This drew a response from BYU president Ernest L. Wilkinson, who assured students, "Speaking for the Board of Trustees and myself, I [would be] happy and proud at any time to take the loyalty oath." He further explained that the law was intended to weed out subversives, who, if they perjured themselves, would be liable for prosecution (DU, 16 Feb. 1960). ASBYU Senate president Diane Hatch answered Wilkinson by listing twenty major schools which had opposed the statute, and by citing U.S. president Dwight Eisenhower's State of the Union address in which he called for the law's repeal. She also quoted, "The loyalty of free men must be freely given--which is to say that those who give it must be genuinely free to withhold it." She concluded, "I firmly believe that [this represents] a form of coercion" (DU, 19 Feb. 1960).⁵³

University administrators supplied four arguments in defense of the trustees' position. These were that federal loans represented forced exchanges of funds between citizens, that federal aid to education could lead to federal control of education, that the liberal terms of the NDEA would encourage students to go into debt, and that the cost of education should be provided by families, churches, and existing financial institutions. The senate labeled the first three arguments "ridiculous" and included only the last in its statement opposing NDEA loans. As the committee revised the wording of its resolution, lobbying by some administrators and students resulted in a senate-sponsored survey of the student body. When the poll showed students generally in favor of loyalty oaths, senators reluctantly added a word of support for the oaths to their statement opposing federal loans and sent it to the U. S. Congress.⁵⁴

Although the ASBYU Senate was more outspoken than other branches of student government, it was not more immune to administrative censorship. For example, senators voted in 1958 to establish a "dead week" before final examinations, during which there would be no student body activities. They were overruled by Student Coordinator Paul Felt, who issued a statement in behalf of school officials: "As a university, we feel an obligation to provide activities for our students on campus so they don't go seeking less desirable recreation off campus." Although faculty spoke in favor of the senate proposal, ASBYU officers were compelled by administrators to schedule activities for the last week of school. Less than three years later, the senate created a student traffic court. When administrators insisted that students pay their fines before appealing them, the senate protested, although senators finally conceded. Issues such as these provoked accusations by students of administrative meddling. Such criticisms, in turn, brought reminders from school officials of the student's place in the BYU hierarchy. In 1965, officials reminded students that Brigham Young University was a "private institution, not a republic," and that student government existed only at the will of the Board of Trustees (DU, 15 Mar. 1965). President Wilkinson asserted that it was "ludicrous" to think that students could dictate university policy. He suggested that those who felt so should "put up the $500,000" semi-monthly payroll. He added that the tuition students paid covered only about one-fourth of the university's operating expenses, church and other sources making up the remainder.⁵⁵

Constant reminders that they are "guests," "sojourners," or "transients" have sensitized many BYU students to their standing as less than full participants during their four years in the academic community. Four years after Wilkinson's stinging attack on student initiative, church leader Boyd K. Packer told undergraduates during a 1969 devotional address, "You do not own the university; it was here long before you came or cared. You did not contribute to it. It was unimportant to you until your time had come." Packer stressed that BYU would survive long after students had left to seek their fortunes elsewhere. Following a similar address by President Dallin H. Oaks ten years later, an unimpressed Daily Universe editorialist wrote that what administrators really meant was that students were "second class citizens."⁵⁶

When a new student body constitution was adopted in 1965, an ASBYU Assembly replaced the student senate. The assembly consisted of two elected representatives from each class, the general student body officers, a representative of the Inter-Organization Council, two dormitory representatives, and two students appointed by the student body president. The constitution granted students the right to "present any grievances against administrative action before the assembly, which may take such action as it deems proper." Two years later, another constitution, written by the student body president and vice-presidents, replaced the assembly with a small Executive Council. Students approved the document in a contested election during which only 4 percent of the student body voted. Students unsuccessfully attempted to resurrect the assembly, or senate, in 1974, 1981, and 1984.⁵⁷

In 1957, the ASBYU Supreme Court was created to interpret the student body constitution. One of the court's most problematic and recurring frustrations has been determining the amount of independence from administrative rule allowed students by their constitution. A 1980 majority decision in an election dispute read more like a religious creed than a legal decision: "The power and role of student government at BYU is unique. Power for this government comes not from the students but from the administration of a private university. This administration in turn receives its authority from the BYU Board of Trustees." According to the justices, "The Board of Trustees represents God's will on earth, embodied in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints." On a similar level, a 1978 student editorial read, "Since we represent the Lord's university, our constitution should be on a higher level. . . . The old constitution was on a junior college level." A new preamble added to the constitution identified the purpose of student government as "promot[ing] spiritual and scholastic excellence."⁵⁸

Student Elections

Whatever the aims and authority of student government, there has not been a shortage of candidates to run for its offices. Every spring, campus is inundated with as many posters, flyers, and other campaign propaganda as in previous years, including once a 900 cubic-foot blimp trailing campaign banners. Nearly every year candidates accuse opponents of election violations, or of being the puppet of some special interest group. As early as 1910, voters were warned, "Don't you know that the only reason the political machine even considered [David] Mitchell was that they knew he would get a solid vote from the choir?" Throughout the 1940s and 1950s, candidates accused social units of manipulating the elections. Accompanying the annual political fanfare have been promotional campaigns sponsored by incumbent student body officers encouraging voter participation. In 1956, student leaders agreed that the two class presidents with the least number of class members voting should appear in diapers at a student assembly as targets for the other two class presidents armed with cream pies. In 1977, the incumbent student body president sponsored a full-page election advertisement in the Daily Universe which portrayed King Kong atop the BYU Carillon Bell Tower, with the caption, "Who Will be the New King of the Zoo?"⁵⁹

In the early 1950s, presidential candidate Mark Benson was one of the first student politicians to include in his qualifications mention that he was "active in church work" and had an "enviable record as a priesthood leader." His promotional literature continued, "He is presently a Sunday school [teacher and has] . . . demonstrated executive, scholastic, and spiritual ability." Some students were outraged at this mixing of religion and politics. "I believe it only common decency to those who . . . hold religion and `spirituality' . . . dear, to not cheapen and practically make a burlesque of these things by misusing them in campaign literature or propaganda in order to achieve what I would consider an empty victory," wrote one undergraduate. Although Benson lost the election, the inclusion in campaign propaganda of religious accomplishments continued. Eight years later, a group of students sponsored a protest campaign to elect Mad Magazine mascot Alfred E. Newman for ASBYU president, giving as his qualification that he had served as president of a children's Sunday school organization for many years.⁶⁰

Periodically, the elections have been brightened by similar satire. In 1923, one candidate announced that he was "a radical conservative, a Bolshevik but not dangerous, a student of journalism, and an athlete." Six years later, a student nominated himself for every available student body post. A candidate in 1942 promised "beer in the fountains," while a 1977 student politician vowed to "overcome alienation of the intellect, abolish the grading system, . . . end administrative fascist activities, [force] administrative financial disclosure, . . . abolish ROTC, and support peaceful dissidence." The most successful humorous campaign was launched the following year by Douglas T. Erekson and Randall K. Edwards. Wearing a red, white, and blue Uncle Sam hat and a Burger King paper crown, Erekson and Edwards promised at impromptu political speeches delivered between the Harold B. Lee Library and the Abraham O. Smoot Administration Building that they would "raise student government to new heights of glory" by allowing students to finally "have it their way." The two candidates promised to give students parking areas reserved for administrators, drop tickets to student functions from an airplane, and establish a four-day school week. In the primary election, Erekson and Edwards received 59 percent more votes than any other presidential team. When the results were announced, Edwards stated that the election indicated students' frustration with suit-and-tie candidates brandishing letters of recommendation from church leaders. "They are tired of candidates who talk about student government in hallowed tones, placing the emphasis on what the administration wants rather than on what the students need." He concluded that a joke carried too far can become "stale and meaningless," and thus withdrew his and Erekson's names as candidates in the final election.⁶¹

The success of the Erekson-Edwards campaign encouraged other would-be comedians to run for office, although none have matched their spontaneity and stage presence. One 1981 group promised to "give tuition rebates to single female graduates." Another pair promised in 1982 to help students invest their student loan money in money market certificates. Two University of Utah students entered the BYU campaign in 1981 with life-size pictures of themselves in undershorts and managed to pull twenty-five write-in votes.⁶²

Of the more serious campaigns, perhaps the most straightforward was Ken Kartchner's 1969 bid for student body president. Kartchner charged that because "the policies of student `government' are essentially decided by the administration," the only campaign promise he could make was that he would "not spend the ten thousand dollars allocated to [the student president's] office." "I submit," he ventured, "that the colossal expenditure of student government could be more effectively spent by providing scholarships, . . . better research facilities, and more support for the fine arts." He proposed that "a mere skeletal structure, minus all the political aspirants, . . . could ably handle the few significant student activities. This would eliminate the year-long circus, the wild promises, and the frivolous spending." After easily winning the primary, Kartchner went on to win the presidency, pulling 1,000 votes more than his opponent. One of his first acts as president was to eliminate the traditional three-day leadership seminar for student government officers held at a local resort. Kartchner also refused the scholarship student body officers otherwise received. He pushed to eliminate the seventy reserved seats alloted student government personnel at athletic events and concerts, but when his proposal came before the student executive council, he was only able to produce two other supporting votes. Four voted against the resolution and two abstained. At the end of the school year, the staff of the Daily Universe rated the performance of the elected officers, giving one D, three Cs, two Bs, and one A--Kartchner receiving the A.⁶³

The following year, Kartchner's academics vice-president, Brian Walton, ran for student body president, with Jon Ferguson as his running mate. (This was the first year presidential and executive vice-presidential candidates ran as teams.) Expanding on Kartchner's precedent, Walton and Ferguson promised to make student government more relevant, "mov[ing it] out of the games center and into more imminent human affairs." Their candidacy quickly became a source of irritation to then President Wilkinson. A month before the primary election, Wilkinson wrote to an administrative assistant, asking about Walton's political persuasion. "I am told that Brian Walton [is] very far to the left," Wilkinson wrote. He had been informed that Walton was an assistant to BYU political scientist Keith Melville and that the students in his classes were "for the most part pretty bedraggled. . . . Check on this and see what truth there is in it," Wilkinson ordered.⁶⁴

Although unsuccessful in the primaries, Walton and Ferguson emerged as serious write-in contenders in the final election. On the second day of voting, however, they were disqualified by the student Election Committee for alleged campaign violations. An appeal to the ASBYU Supreme Court resulted not only in a ruling in their favor, but a public chastisement of the Elections Committee for "discriminatory enforcement of rules." A new election was ordered. Two days later, Wilkinson announced that the election would be indefinitely postponed while he personally conducted a "special investigation" regarding the "eligibility of candidates and violations of university standards." During the election it had been disclosed that Walton had been apprehended four months earlier by a BYU Bookstore security guard for attempting to leave the store with six dollars worth of unpurchased merchandise, including "one felt pennant, one BYU mug, and three BYU plaques." Walton, who was carrying over $100 in his wallet at the time of the incident, claimed he had been distracted by friends and had simply forgotten to pay for the items. He had been given an "official reprimand" by the Office of University Standards but had had no further action taken against him. Wilkinson presented the situation to the executive committee of the Board of Trustees, asking whether he should place Walton on probation and disqualify him as a candidate. Trustees instructed Wilkinson to "work through the student organizations to encourage Brother Walton to withdraw." Wilkinson subsequently announced that he was turning the investigation over to the ASBYU Supreme Court, because "it is best that students handle their own election." Privately, he instructed the university's legal counsel to assist the Supreme Court in reaching a decision.⁶⁵

Two weeks later, the student court issued a twenty-page majority opinion. The text quoted, among others, an official of the Office of University Standards who testified that he was "convinced [Walton] did not have intent in the fullest sense of the word to steal the items" from the Bookstore. The justices found Walton "not guilty" and stated that no one would be disqualified from the election. When finally allowed to vote the following week, students chose Walton and Ferguson as their president and executive vice-president by 350 votes. In a letter of congratulations to Walton, Wilkinson regretted "that there were only 7,048 votes cast, or about 30 percent of the student body, and that [Walton] received only 38 percent of the votes cast, or [the support of only] about 13 percent of the student body."⁶⁶

Wilkinson's letter initiated an exchange between the two presidents that continued throughout Walton's term of office. When Wilkinson introduced an unscheduled political speaker at a student assembly, preempting other arrangements, Walton complained in behalf of the ASBYU Executive Council, "We feel that the political presentation at the end of the assembly was extremely inappropriate in view of the Homecoming setting. As representatives of the student body we hope a similar situation will not be allowed to occur in the future." When Wilkinson announced his intent to begin holding students to explicit dress and grooming standards, Walton sent him a note, "If the introduction of these arbitrary specifics is an attempt to remove `radical' elements from campus, I think that it is ill-founded." Walton added that the university should "treat students with due respect."⁶⁷

In October 1970, Walton created a President's Commission on Student Affairs with three subcommittees on the "Role of Student Government," "Student Rights," and "Legal Research." The Student Rights Subcommittee was charged with reviewing "alleged inconsistencies or arbitrary application of university policy to the detriment of students" and was asked to make recommendations on "explicit due process for disciplinary procedures." Committee members distributed 1,500 questionnaires to students who had been "referred" to the Office of University Standards. The Legal Research Subcommittee investigated student rights in contractual agreements with the university, concentrating on student housing contracts. Wilkinson made it known that faculty were not to participate on any of these committees. However, when Walton delivered an address to students toward the end of October calling for increased sensitivity on racial issues, he announced the creation of a committee of professors who had agreed to draft a proposal for recruiting black students at BYU. Walton hosted representatives of black student unions at universities where students had staged protest demonstrations against BYU (see Chapter 7) in an attempt to convince them that BYU was not overtly racist. Walton also participated in the publication of an anti-war pamphlet distributed on campus in October (see Chapter 5).⁶⁸

Walton's activism prompted a response among some campus conservatives. Professor of church history Rodney Turner wrote to the editor of the Daily Universe on 7 October, "The Negro issue is a most sensitive one; it should be dealt with by the inspired servants of God; it should not be the subject of a campus-wide forum." Turner felt that the suggestions of "more Negro students [and] black studies programs" were "uncalled for." "Let's stay out of the prophet's kitchen," Turner pleaded, "and let the head do the thinking for the body; that's where the brains are." The day after Turner's letter appeared, religion colleague Reid Bankhead addressed the Delta Phi Kappa club of former Mormon missionaries, claiming it was a tragedy that club members did not "name the student body president and officers, [and] editor of the newspaper." Bankhead urged members to increase their numbers so that it could be "hissed abroad that returned missionaries run the BYU campus, and not intellectuals, disciples of Plato and Rousseau, eggheads, whiz kids, rationalistic sharpies, et cetera."⁶⁹

The following week, a group of concerned students circulated a petition calling for Walton's resignation. They asserted that Walton had encouraged students to "go against the council of [the church's] prophets" and claimed his committees had misrepresented "the mutual love and appreciation which characterize the administration, faculty, and students at BYU." Students defending Walton suggested, tongue-in-cheek, "If you don't like it here, leave." Walton responded that "no one should have [thought] that this year's student body presidency was going to stick its head in the sand. We promised a year dedicated to meaningful action and an administration which would recognize issues [over] complimentary tickets." Although Walton served to the end of his term, the success of many of his programs was dampened by what one professor labeled the "shameful harassment of the student body president" (DU, 6 Nov. 1970).⁷⁰

Six years later, in 1976, a group of four students calling themselves the "People's Centennial Party," in reference to BYU's centennial celebration, announced their candidacies with campaign posters of the four in togas, standing before a backdrop of a Roman coliseum. Their campaign news sheet, the Iconoclast, blended bombastic prose with dry wit, partially camouflaging their serious intent. The Peoples' candidate for ASBYU Social Office, Dan Peterson, expressed the sentiment of the entire group by writing, "Academics is the essential function of a university--even a Mormon one. Mediocrity . . . represents a kind of treason on the part of the BYU community against the . . . tithe-payers who support us." The People's Party promised that if elected they would minimize student programs which did not have an academic justification. Only Peterson survived the primaries, and was defeated in the finals.⁷¹

A second group attracting considerable attention but few votes was the 1980 Open Door Party. Open Door ran three coeds and five men for nearly every available office. The group promised to "schedule speakers in order of student preference by vote," "sell tickets to concerts and athletic events by Dutch Auction," and create a "legal defense fund for students entrapped or harassed by Security." In a half-page advertisement in the campus newspaper, Open Door listed several speakers, as well as a popular musical group, they claimed had been approved for campus appearances by the Board of Trustees on appeal, after being rejected by school administrators. They claimed that trustees were more reasonable than mid-level school officials about such issues and that persistence on the part of student officers could make a difference in speaker selection. "Open Door candidates are not . . . just another bunch of yes-men," the advertisement closed. A front-page headline in the next day's Universe read, "Cameron Rebuts Campaign Ad." The article reported that "J. Elliot Cameron, vice-president of student life, lashed out against the Open Door Party for [its] advertisement," saying that "it is untrue that the Board of Trustees is involved in approving or disapproving the appearances of speakers or concert groups at BYU." The following month, the Daily Universe published the results of an in-depth investigation into the conflicting claims. Student reporters Larry Werner and David Heylen quoted from the university general handbook that speakers addressing large university gatherings "must have prior clearance by the Board of Trustees." Many of Open Door's claims were sustantiated. One student close to the speaker clearance process was quoted as saying that there had been too much administrative "lying for the Lord." Open Door attempted to have the ASBYU Supreme Court schedule a reelection because of administrative interference in the outcome of the voting, but was unsuccessful. Open Door subsequently regrouped as a campus club and published an unofficial guide to faculty and classes.⁷²

The following year, administrators again intervened in student elections by requesting that a presidential team disqualify itself from the final election when it was discovered that the presidential candidate had been involved in financial and legal entanglements. The Elections Committee chair explained, "The administration didn't want [the candidate] representing the university with an unresolved court case against him. You can have an outstanding court case if you're a student. That's a different matter." The team was consequently forced to withdraw from the finals.⁷³

Periodically, school officials have also forced the resignation of student officers involved in moral or legal violations. In 1977, for example, a student officer used a university car to take a girlfriend sight-seeing in the mountains and was involved in an accident. The dean of students suspended the student from office for unauthorized use of the vehicle, provoking a minor protest from students who felt that the dean had no right to interfere in what was essentially a student concern. Also in the late 1970s, administrators forced three students to resign from office: one for embezzling petty cash, another for public "lewdness," and the third for making homosexual advances to an undercover police officer. In 1984, two student body officers were told to resign for "mooning" (i.e., exposing their buttocks to unsuspecting observers) during a pre-school student government workshop. Distressed by these and other immature, if not illegal, actions, some students have argued that student government leaders should be appointed by local ecclesiastical authorities, not elected. Student leaders endorsed this approach in 1971, as did the editor of the student newspaper, but President Dallin Oaks felt that experience in the democratic system was important for students and advised against the change. In the early 1970s, the Church College of Hawaii experimented with church-appointed student leaders for a short time, but eventually returned to traditional elections.⁷⁴

Student Newspapers

An important vehicle for student expression has been the student newspaper. Like student government, a newspaper affords students an organization and forum to express opinions that do not always reflect those of school administrators, sometimes engendering controversy. The first student newspaper affiliated with the school, the BYA Student, was launched in January 1891, with the explanation, "The BYA Student will be managed exclusively by the students, for the benefit of [the academy] . . . and young people in general." The editors promised to take personal responsibility for anything appearing in their publication, then added, "We realize that the BYA Student is an infant, yet it can . . . talk, and if necessary `holler.'" A six-page tabloid, the publication was supported by seventy-five cent subscriptions from students. Among the issues tackled by the "infant" press were the irregularity of the Provo City Rail Road Company's street car--claimed to be the cause of student tardiness--and the inadequacy of the school's physical facilities for the growing student body. The paper appeared weekly for five months before being replaced by the faculty-supervised Business Journal and Normal. After three years, the Normal was replaced by the Journal of Pedagogy, written as much for alumni as for students, and lasting only two years.⁷⁵

A strictly student newspaper was reintroduced to campus in 1897. The White and Blue had the same flavor as the former BYA Student and featured both campus news and student fiction. Articles included such headliners as "Autobiography of a Pencil" and "Confessions of a Lunkhead." Student editorials were equally creative. One suggested in 1903 that coeds' grandmothers would be shocked to hear the slang their granddaughters used, such as "dog gone," "Oh Lord," "rubber neck," and "hot time." A 1913 editorial read, "We have nothing to say regarding animals of conveyance being left [on the south side of the school grounds] between class periods. We object, however, to the same being fed there. It creates not only filth and disease, but it is also very unsightly." In 1900, editors urged students to boycott local retailers who refused to support the paper. When the publisher of the Salt Lake Tribune declined a regular column written by the editors of the White and Blue, student editors wrote, "We understand [the publisher] is a good financier, but if he saves his own soul it will be the smallest thing he ever saved in his life" (WB, 15 Nov. 1900). At the end of one school year, reviewing the successes and failures of the year, the editor of the White and Blue wrote, "The [subject] matter was not always high class, but it was true to the psychic condition of the school--the paper proved to be a mirror of our school life. This latter circumstance was no doubt the secret of its popularity and resulted in a subscription of nearly five hundred names." The White and Blue cost fifty cents per semester, later seventy-five cents when the paper changed from a bi-monthly to a weekly. Students picked up copies of the paper at the newspaper office. For years, the paper's motto read "Character is Power." It then changed briefly to "Everyone Goes to Church on Sunday," followed by "Think, Act, Appreciate," and later "Move On." In 1921 the White and Blue changed its masthead to Y News.⁷⁶

"We will criticize wherever and whenever we deem it to be the most expedient policy, regardless of whose toes we might step on," read a 1928 Y News policy statement. "In so doing we will always keep in mind the best good of the institution we represent." The policy established that "whenever there is a difference of opinion [we will give] both sides. We want this paper to be free for all." One reader commented in 1948 that he had "long been an admirer of the forthright liberal stand taken by the editors of the Y News," who, he felt, had "spoken boldly and well against what they conceived to be wrong whether it [was] of the right or the left." Other readers were not as complimentary, accusing the paper of "endorsing communist propaganda . . . in a dyed-in-the-wool Russian manner," especially when the paper printed a favorable review of George Selde's 1,000 Americans, and when an editorial claimed that "capitalists . . . are cutting their own throats by failing to consider the average man." Editors had suggested that the United States "carefully and intelligently modify [its] system to meet the twin goals of personal freedom and security."⁷⁷

In the long run, it was the introduction of pithy student feature columns that helped to undermine the paper's relationship with university administrators. "Taylored Topics," by undergraduate Sam Taylor, was an early 1930s column frequently branded as objectionable. Rambling from one subject to another, Taylor once touched on the sensitive issue of student bootlegging, providing all the details of the operation except the names of the students involved. Administrators demanded to know more, but Taylor refused to reveal his sources and was temporarily suspended from school. In November 1930, he wrote a column describing a typical BYU student: "In high school he was the . . . goddamist tough guy of the institution. He was the terror of the boys [and] the idol of the girls. He stayed out of school several years," Taylor wrote, "apparently bent straight for perdition, [and] . . . bobbed up suddenly [at] BYU sporting a flowing mane of blonde wavy hair and affecting a far-flung Byronic collar and dreamy, aesthetic eyes looking afar at Elysian fields. Sure," Taylor concluded, "hard work made a poet out of me, too." As a result of this article, which the school's Attendance, Scholarship, and Personnel Committee condemned as blasphemous, the editor of the Y News was ordered to remove Taylor from his staff. He demurred, but the committee insisted. The young editor then announced that "under [the existing] situation, the only thing for me to do is resign, thus automatically removing the entire staff which I selected to work on the publication" (YN, 17 Dec. 1930). The staff supported the editor's decision and all resigned. For the remainder of the year, the paper was produced by the ASBYU president, members of the faculty committee on student publications, and members of the previous year's staff. Taylor left school and began a career as a professional writer. He had already published five articles in nationally-distributed magazines at the time of the incident.⁷⁸

As a result of the "Taylored Topics" impasse, the faculty publications committee began screening candidates for the editorships of the newspaper and yearbook. Before a student's name could be placed on the ballot for either position, he or she was required to obtain committee endorsement. Still, irreverent feature columns and occasionally shady student humor continued to plague administrators. Limericks and advertisements for adult movies, such as "Naughty Marietta," also made their appearance.⁷⁹

In 1948, the staff of the Y News decided to change the name of the paper to "B. Y. Universe." The Y News had begun to sound to students like a publication of the Young Men's Christian Association (YMCA). With a Wye literary magazine and a short-lived Y's Guy humor sheet, nearly every possible use of the letter "Y" had been exhausted, so the editors turned to the school's other initials for inspiration. Readers wanted to know if they could later expect "B. Y. Ubiquitous," "B. Y. Useful," or "B. Y. Uoomph" (DU 7 Oct. 1948). To forestall future changes, the new title was written into the ASBYU Constitution as Brigham Young Universe.⁸⁰

With important exceptions, students were left largely to themselves during the 1950s and 1960s to determine the content of their newspaper. In 1952, the paper ran an editorial entitled, "Riders of the White Horse Told Where to Get Off:"

The returned missionary can be seen at any hour treading with pious mien the halls of our venerable institution as he compassionately ponders the transgressions of others. . . . A veritable fountain of truth, he graciously confers the manifold blessings of his advice on high and low alike. Neither bishop nor stake president is beyond the kind chastening of this sage as he goes about his noble task of reforming everyone but himself.

The editorial proved so popular, among student editors at least, that it was reprinted the next year and again three years later. In the 1960s, students printed editorials calling for an end to capital punishment, balanced by conservative editorials referring to income tax as "treason." Students criticized the university's parking policies, revealing that 500 faculty were allotted 600 parking spaces, while 4,000 students were left to compete for a mere 1,000 "dirt spaces." Christian ecumenicalism and the historiography of the life of Abraham Lincoln also figured on the docket of student opinion. When Wilkinson returned to campus after his unsuccessful 1964 bid for the U.S. Senate, the Universe printed what acting president Earl C. Crockett termed a disturbingly "uncomplimentary" editorial:

The news of the return of Ernest L. Wilkinson as president of Brigham Young University . . . was met with mixed emotions. It was thought by many at the university that President Wilkinson would carry out his statement to the press in which he indicated his plans to return to his law practice in the East. Apparently his plans have changed. . . . It appears that President Wilkinson's aspirations were first the U.S. Senate, then law, and then Brigham Young University.⁸¹

Another indication of the absence of pervasive administrative influence in the management of the newspaper until the late 1960s was the printing of special humor editions, in keeping with a tradition begun by the Y News of occasionally publishing parodies of campus life--sometimes on lurid, yellow newsprint. The Universe's 1950 "Buffoon Issue" speculated that BYU's next president would hold a bachelor's degree from "Carbon County Junior College." A photograph of a rhinocerous carried the caption, "Horniest Guy on Campus." In the early 1960s, an April Fool's issue told of a "lightning raid by seventeen Security officers" on a dormitory room where Coca Cola had been secretly stashed. One humor edition reported that Student Coordinator LaVar Rockwood had been kidnapped by Walt Disney and "whisked away to take the job of a giant Mickey Mouse at Disneyland." "Y Bans Topless Swimsuits" read the headline of an article reporting that the university's "Obscenity Chairman" was requiring men to wear two-piece bathing suits. The same issue contained a "Stiff Box" listing Kevan Smut, Hugh Hefner, and Trixie and Bubbles as editors. Such sophomoric license was not representative of the regular issues of the newspaper, although the parodies were exceptionally popular among readers. Student editors otherwise succeeded in maintaining a cautious and fairly professional editorial stance. In 1948, the school began subscribing to a syndicated news service, joined the Associated Press organization in 1952, and became a daily in 1956.⁸²

In 1949, the publications committee, which had been expanded to include the ASBYU president and the editors and business managers of the student newspaper and yearbook, began appointing editors for school publications instead of simply screening candidates for elections. Whether this was an intentional political maneuver or a policy which evolved naturally over time, when an amendment to the ASBYU Constitution was proposed in 1954 to "legalize a practice which has been common in past years," that of appointing the editors, the measure was soundly defeated by the student body. A similar proposal was submitted the following year to recognize what was admitted to have been "going on for years anyway and will continue." This time the student body acquiesced. Several years later, students lobbied to have the "publications board" replaced by a committee of students, but were unsuccessful.⁸³

Paralleling their increased role in choosing editors, administrators began asserting more control over editorial content in the late 1950s. In 1959, Universe editors were summarily informed that they were not to provide news coverage of weekly Sounding Board sessions--question-and-answer forums sponsored by student government featuring university leaders. These sessions were known for their sometimes heated exchanges between officials and students. An even more serious infringement of editorial freedom occured in 1960 when the Universe attempted to publish a map of the university's land-expansion plans, obtained from the Provo City Manager. The map included an outline of private lots needed to be purchased for a controversial student housing project. When Ben E. Lewis, director of the school's auxiliary services, learned that the map was being included with a Universe article, he ordered the presses stopped and removed the illustration, effectively preventing the paper's appearance that day. An angry student editor fired off an editorial for the next issue castigating administrators for not consulting students before censuring news content. Lewis, with the collaboration of the student coordinator, Paul Felt, blocked publication of the editorial. In protest, the editor allowed a blank space to appear where the editorial should have been. When students learned what had happened, they accused the Universe of being "a glorified Pravda, Utah style." Three months after the incident, Lewis was appointed a university vice-president.⁸⁴

Two years later, in March 1962, a second confrontation erupted when student editor Paul Richards ran an editorial endorsing an ASBYU presidential candidate, contrary to publication board policy and against the advice of the faculty advisor to the Universe. Richards appeared before the Board of Student Publications to defend himself against a charge of "insubordination" and submitted a letter of resignation the next day. Richards wrote, "If editorial comment is to be curtailed, there is no need for an editor. An advertising staff can publish a bulletin board." Letters to the editor supported Richards. Students questioned how the editor of a newspaper which advertised that it was "published . . . by the Associated Students of Brigham Young University" could be guilty of insubordination to a faculty advisor and faculty publications board. Later, when no one applied for the position left vacant by Richards, the faculty advisor wondered about students' "lack of interest" in the post.⁸⁵

By the mid-1960s, the role of faculty advisor to the newspaper had become that of a ghost editor-in-chief. Toward the end of the 1966-67 school year, Universe editor Jaron Summers satirically boasted, "We print anything we please and would immediately resign if anyone ever dared to censor us. . . . Will you excuse me for a couple of hours while our advisor proof reads this column prior to its publication?" In May 1969, President Wilkinson, who was concerned with the paper's "liberal" slant, instructed faculty advisor Merwin Fairbanks to "stay with the paper until it goes to press every night." Five months earlier, Wilkinson had forwarded three clippings from the Universe to his assistant, Stephen R. Covey, with a memo reading, "I wish you would take the time to prepare a careful answer to the letter published January 6, and we will find some way of getting it in the Universe under some student's name." Wilkinson later recorded in his journal of meeting in April with "those involved with [the] university newspaper" to discuss its future: "I think I sold them on the idea, at least I announced the decision, that from now on we want the newspaper to represent all publics other than just the students." He added that "it was decided that nothing would be announced about this new policy, but it would be carried out in a transitional way. In order to do this properly we will have to have a full time newspaper man who will supervise the entire operation." The following year, BYU hired a professional "general manager" to oversee the production of the newspaper. A list of topics deemed unsuitable for treatment in the Universe was compiled, including "advocacy of communism, socialism, fascism and other extremist doctrines or systems of government; . . . advocacy of birth control, illicit sex, drug abuse, illegal procedures, invasion of privacy, and other anti-social practices; debate on the validity of church doctrines; ridicule of university and church leaders; libel in any form; [and] other issues as may be identified by the Board of Trustees" (Wheelwright to Wilkinson). Over the next four years, the list expanded to include:

Negro and the priesthood and other racial problems; polygamy; sex education, pornography, nudity; . . . personal stories on church leaders involving age, health, children, et cetera; confidential church and university information such as finances, appointments, council meetings, ecclesiastical tribunals, embarrassing incidents both historical and current; attacks on church and BYU policies; . . . church policies regarding the war in Vietnam; . . . university policies regarding standards, et cetera; evolution and claims of science in conflict with beliefs of church leaders; church censorship such as involving "Jesus Christ, Superstar," and acid rock music, nude painting, et cetera (Wheelwright to Oaks).⁸⁶

The 1969 student editor, Pierre Hathaway, conceded to the reorganization of the Universe under the general manager, with the new editorial policies. He also agreed to replace the Letters to the Editor section with a question-and-answer column, in which administrators were allowed to respond to inquiries rather than allow criticisms to appear uncontested. Hathaway circulated a memo to his staff encouraging them to "report the news, the activities, and the happenings at BYU in a manner that would be pleasing to our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, our prophet David O. McKay, the General Authorities of the church, our university president, Ernest Wilkinson, and the full-time staff of the university." However, only five months later, in February 1970, general manager Rodger Duncan reported to the Board of Student Publications that Hathaway was guilty of "gross irresponsibility" in his choice of articles and editorial topics and called for his resignation. Duncan was especially irritated that Hathaway had retained on his staff a student whom the publications board had previously dismissed as a paid employee of the Universe for the confrontive tone of his writing. This decision had been part of a major personnel shake-up at the beginning of the winter semester. Another staff member simultaneously left the paper and transferred to another school. She explained to President Wilkinson, "My one major regret about my years at BYU is that I failed to reach this decision two years ago." One week after Duncan's complaints to the Board of Student Publications, Hathaway resigned.⁸⁷

Specific areas of editorial concern during Hathaway's editorship included the appearance in the paper of long hair and beards in advertisements and photographs, occasional favorable reviews of rock-and-roll groups, and discussion of the church's withholding of the priesthood from blacks. When Hathaway's replacement allowed an article dealing with racial prejudice to appear in April 1970, Wilkinson wrote to the chair of the publications board Lorin Wheelwright (who was also dean of the College of Fine Arts), "Will you please see to it that there is a minimum of these articles, and that when there are articles, they are somewhat buried by their location in the newspaper?" When an article later appeared dealing with religious intolerance among area residents, Wilkinson demanded that the newspaper be controlled "so that we won't have more articles that will embarrass us." Wheelwright answered in May with a recommendation that Wilkinson allow students to "continue to publish student opinion that expresses viewpoints different from official opinion on subjects of concern to students, and that [advisors] try to balance the same with opposite opinion of equal or superior weight and influence." Wheelwright believed that if administrators "muzzle every cry of student anguish and never give it a chance to be heard in the Universe [they could] expect it to be expressed in some other way--in an underground paper, or, heaven forbid, in more violent form."⁸⁸

At the conclusion of the 1969-70 school year, Wilkinson received a letter from the First Presidency of the church, cautioning him "in the management of the Daily Universe against doing or saying anything which could be misinterpreted as an improper suppression of student thoughts and attitudes. Our concern in this matter is that nothing be done which would jeopardize the good standing of the university as a result of inquiries made by the accreditation teams which periodically check into conditions on campus." Nevertheless, Wilkinson proceeded with an itinerary for transforming the student newspaper into a university paper, interpreting counsel only as caution against moving too quickly or being too obvious. The formal transfer of the paper from student jurisdiction to the communications department occured in April 1972, when the chair of the communications department was named publisher. Faculty assumed the positions of "executive editor," "business manager," "photography editor," and later "editorial page director." Writing for the Universe became a requirement of all journalism majors, making the publication a "laboratory paper." In the late 1970s, the faculty positions were removed from the staff box, but the organizational structure of the paper continued unchanged.⁸⁹

One year following the transfer of the Universe to the communications department, six paid student editors and eight reporters signed a letter to President Dallin Oaks, simultaneously releasing it to the local press, complaining that the "control-the-news" attitude of their superiors had prevented them from printing a story about J. Willard Marriott's car being towed away by BYU Security during the dedication of the Marriott Activities Center and from reporting bomb threats over the use of experimental animals in the life sciences. Oaks blasted the release of the letter to the press, calling it "a breach of professional ethics and a violation of personal trust." Seven years later, in 1980, eleven student editors and the student copy chief sent another letter to Oaks and to the local press, protesting what they termed the "paternalistic attitude which precludes student participation in decisions which vitally affect them." The students claimed that because communications department faculty feared "administrative retribution," they had adopted the "inconsistent [policy] of teaching freedom of the press in the classroom and censoring in the newsroom." They explained that journalism students succeeded "most often in spite of the program rather than because of it." Again, Oaks responded that he had "a policy of not communicating with members of the university community through the pages of any newspaper. What has already been published in the public press . . . on this issue is the only formal reply that you will receive on this subject," he wrote.⁹⁰

Considering the polarization of its staff, with students &

	Brigham Young University A House of Faith by Gary James Bergera and Ronald Priddis Salt Lake City, Utah © 1985 by Signature Books. Table of Contents: Introduction 1. Growth and Development 2. Integrating Religion & Academics 3. Standards & the Honor Code 4. Organic Evolution Controversy 5. Partisan Politics & the University 6. Student Government, Social Clubs, & Newspapers 7. Intercollegiate Athletics 8. Arts, Entertainment, & Literature 9. Academics & Intellectual Pursuits Sources and Abbreviations Authors