Brigham Young University Cracks Down on Beards
Some students are seeing their “beard passes” revoked, and those who managed to keep them are being required to wear the passes on a lanyard around their neck.
Greg Piper at The College Fix reports:
BYU refuses to renew ‘beard passes’ for some students in claimed crackdown
Update on our summer story about the lengths to which male students at Brigham Young University will go to get permission to wear a beard at the school: Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints schools are allegedly cracking down on even permitted beardos.
The Salt Lake Tribune reports that LDS Business College until recently forced bearded students to wear a lanyard with their beard permit (“They literally stopped, they pointed and they laughed,” one ashamed student said of others’ reaction), and BYU isn’t renewing permits for some students:
Students who had been pushing schools owned by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to loosen their beard bans worry the recent crackdown is in response to national news media attention after a September protest on BYU’s campus.
“If it isn’t a reaction, then it’s quite a coincidence,” said Shane Pittson, the 23-year-old international-relations major who led a BYU “Bike for Beards” rally in September.
But BYU spokeswoman Carri Jenkins counters that the school has not changed its policy. …
Jenkins said she doesn’t know why a student who had a pass one year might come up short the next.
BYU refuses to renew ‘beard passes’ for some students in claimed crackdown (The College Fix)
Comments
In the 1970’s, speaking at an engineering conference at BYU about my PhD research, there was A HUGE KERFUFFLE with the campus police about my full beard. The Dean of the College of Engineering had go to whatever governing authority to get a two-day dispensation. The terms were that I could do my presentation but could not deviate from the parking lot to the lecture hall; no wandering about the campus.
BYU is an excellent university, then and now. Title IX forced the university to open opportunities for racial balance since they had Federal research funding. Formerly, their athletics and student body were Lily White.