Formal complaint sent to BYU’s accreditor contesting academic freedom limitations

PROVO, Utah - March 12, 2015 - PRLog -- View press release here (https://docs.google.com/document/d/1zoRYpVXMIqcPJbXSTKTCU04Kvv-b6-PT4405IOLOtV8/edit?usp=sharing)

12 March 2015 — Over the past month, over 230 people voiced their concerns about Brigham Young University's lack of intellectual and religious freedom. Among those who responded are BYU students, alumni, professors, and parents of students.

Earlier this week, we sent those comments to BYU's accreditor, the Northwest Commission on Colleges and Universities (NWCCU), with delivery scheduled for today (March 12th). They will be reviewed by the NWCCU as part of BYU's accreditation Year Seven renewal in April.

FreeBYU’s Complaint asked the NWCCU to investigate BYU’s violations and elicit a remediation plan to bring BYU into compliance. Among other obligations, governance standard 28 requires that BYU:

“Supports independent thought in the pursuit and dissemination of knowledge. It affirms the freedom of faculty, staff, administrators, and students to share their scholarship and reasoned conclusions with others. While the institution and individuals within the institution may hold to a particular personal, social, or religious philosophy, its constituencies are intellectually free to examine thought, reason, and perspectives of truth. Moreover, they allow others the freedom to do the same.”

BYU’s Honor Code policy is to expel, terminate, and evict LDS students who change their faith while at BYU. The Complaint, which passed review by several attorneys, documents examples of local Bishops censoring student scholarship and burdening academic freedom through the proxy of ecclesiastical endorsements. FreeBYU argues that because the Honor Code does not articulate what it takes to be eligible for an ecclesiastical endorsement, and because in practice unaccountable Bishops make this decision for a variety of inconsistent reasons, BYU students’ intellectual and academic freedom is impermissibly burdened.

Additionally, the Complaint contends that the practice of expelling students for expressing a change of religious conscience is itself a violation of BYU’s obligation to ensure BYU students are free to “examine thought, reason, and perspectives of truth” and “share their reasoned conclusions with others.”

In November of 2014, BYU spokeswoman Carri Jenkins confirmed BYU’s policy of expelling LDS students who change their faith while at BYU. In the February 2015 news conference (http://www.mormonnewsroom.org/article/publicstatement-on-...), Elder Jeffrey R. Holland, an LDS Apostle, appealed to First Amendment religious freedom in regards to “employment, honor code standards, and accreditation at church schools”.

No response has yet been received from the NWCCU or from BYU.