BYU Reaffirms Honor Code, Dress Standards

After a five-month review and approval by its Board of Trustees, Brigham Young University has reaffirmed both its basic code of honor and its dress and grooming standards.

The newest versions of the honor code (distilled to little more than one hundred words) and the dress and grooming standards were announced to students, faculty, and staff on March 13, by the BYU Student Advisory Council and a sixteen-member ad hoc honor code review committee. Students will now be involved in helping to administer the standards.

R. J. Snow, vice president of Student Life at BYU and chairman of the ad hoc review committee, said that the new honor code and dress and grooming standards are “essentially a reaffirmation of what we have had in the past, based on principles of honesty, cleanliness, modesty and Christian living, and on guidance from the Board of Trustees.”

The Code of Honor, based on principles articulated in the thirteenth article of faith, reads: “Brigham Young University exists to provide a university education in an atmosphere consistent with the ideals and principles of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. That atmosphere can be preserved through commitment to conduct that reflects those ideals and principles.

“As a matter of personal commitment, students, staff, and faculty of Brigham Young University seek to demonstrate in daily living those moral virtues encompassed in the gospel of Jesus Christ, and will: Be honest; live a chaste and virtuous life; obey the law; use clean language; respect others; abstain from alcoholic beverages, tobacco, tea, coffee, and drug abuse.”

The dress and grooming standards state that students’ dress and grooming should always be “modest, neat, and clean, consistent with the dignity of representing Brigham Young University and The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.”

The standards allow skirts and shorts “knee length or lower,” and bar “sleeveless, strapless, or revealing” clothing. For men, “neatly trimmed” mustaches are allowed, but beards (“except for certified medical reasons”) and earrings are banned.