[Rich]

Originally Posted by Snaqwells

Their policy is based on the conviction of their beliefs; so you'd feel better if they weren't so strict with their beliefs?

You can disagree with it, and you certainly have the right to ridicule it, but I think it's silly to do so. As a Hawkeye fan, I remember the Pierre Pierce debacle, so I found BYU's stance refreshing, even if I thought it was a bit heavy handed.

They not only have the right to enforce their policy, they have the right to consider whatever mitigating circumstances they choose to allow. Some expose by ESPN doesn't change that.

Quite frankly, I have a problem with an honor code when it's pretty obvious to me that Brandon Davies probably wouldn't have been suspended had he not been an African American. Being a clean cut Caucasian must be a mitigating circumstance.

Yes, I'm quoting Deadspin. But the editorial written has some pretty appalling statistics.

Originally Posted by Deadspin

The reality isn't so appealing. While it's impossible to know how many students disobey BYU's honor code, which prohibits fornication and alcohol use, among other things, the honor code violations that come to light almost always involve student-athletes. And they almost always involve athletes of color. Since 1993, according to our research, at least 70 athletes have been suspended, dismissed, put on probation, or forced to withdraw from their teams or the school after running afoul of the honor code. Fifty-four of them, or nearly 80 percent, are minorities. Forty-one, or almost 60 percent, are black men. These are conservative numbers, compiled from media reports and interviews. In several cases, we could not confirm an honor code violation. In other cases, we could not establish the race or ethnicity of the athlete involved. We excluded those cases from our tally.

Clearly, though, something is amiss at BYU, where around 23 percent of the athletes are minorities, according to the university. Only .6 percent of the student body is black (176 out of the 32,947 students enrolled in 2010). Yet a majority of the honor code violations involve black athletes. Do these numbers mean these athletes "sin" more than everyone else? Hardly. Several former BYU football players told us that their white teammates routinely broke the honor code and got away with it, either because they didn't get caught or because their violations were covered up. (To a lesser extent, this holds true for Polynesian athletes, 14 of whom are included in our honor code tally. More on that later.) Mormon athletes can turn to bishops and church leaders from their own homogeneous communities — people who look like them and might even be related to them — to "repent" and avoid official punishment. Black athletes, who are typically non-Mormon, rarely have this option.