Is BYU harder to get into than normal?

Off-Topic
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Thank you for clarifying some of the issues. At the same time, some of the reasons used to show racism is false. The movie thing is most certainly false. The movies have always shown all races as drug dealers and gang members. For time sake I won’t go down the list now. And the interpretation of the FBI list is faulty for many reasons. Perhaps they might want to look at the Sharpton’s and Jackson’s that pushed for throwing blacks into prison over the drug issues. Or, the enslavement of Democrats into poverty through buying votes for free welfare money and food. Or the predatory lending of Obama when he was rising up in the Democrat Party in Chicago. 8 years of Obama-Biden destroyed the peace between the races. Now, we just see more hatred because the left really aren’t trying to root out racism. They are trying to flip it and shame whites as the minority populations grow. So, now, the TV shows and movies are depicting whites as the drug dealers in the wrong proportions. There are some shows trying to balance it out.

As far as the Priesthood, those who leave because of this really don’t know much of the scriptures and how the Lord works behind the scenes and life was always full of racism, religious persecution and slavery. The Lord in his day on earth still worked within the evils of slavery and did so in the times of Moses as well. In other words, if the reason was racism, it’s no reason to apostatizing over it. The Gospel and Church continued to grow and fill the earth and will not be given to another. No matter how liberal things get even in the Church. But, there is no reason not to voice concerns over allowing sinful behavior to be accepted because everyone is doing it.

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Last week, on KSL TV (owned by the Church BTW) had a story about a complaint in a southern part of the state. The complaint was about a librarian who said something “offensive” to ONE parent. Guess who KSL had on talking about the complaint as an expert - a local Black Lives Matter leader. So KSL is socializing its viewers that BLM is mainstream and an authority to be catered to. So it is about the older adults also - the older adults who run KSL and the older BOD of KSL. So liberalism and socialism permeates all levels of our national and local lives.

Just for clarity’s sake: much of what we are deliberately hearing and seeing with the mass media is "black people good and white people bad. Not at all good for harmonious race relations.

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To be fair, It should be mentioned about this lady is that her organization has nothing to do with the National BLM group. In fact, she has been quite critical about the national group and how they invoked some of the rioting.

But she is as Arkie said “black people good and white people bad” in a lot of her arguments.

I watched her on a program with a police union rep… No matter what the State does for changing what tactics can be used within the police force, she was not happy about… “It is not enough!” was her usual comments.

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There was no interpretation of the facts by the FBI… They themselves made the statement that If a black man is put on trail, he is eight time more likely to be sentenced to prison over a white person.

A lot of people out there thinks cops are racist, but the facts the FBI study did does not show that, it shows there is a biased in sentencing by the judicial branch based on race.

These statistics are based all on court records, who went to trail, what was their race, who was or was not sentenced to prison. Simple logic on these findings.

Please sight one scripture that says “blacks” are to be denied the Priesthood?

"Today, the Church disavows the theories advanced in the past that black skin is a sign of divine disfavor or curse, or that it reflects unrighteous actions in a premortal life; that mixed-race marriages are a sin; or that blacks or people of any other race or ethnicity are inferior in any way to anyone else. Church leaders today unequivocally condemn all racism, past and present, in any form.

Early members of the Church were, for the most part, converts from Protestant sects. It is understandable that they naturally brought this culturally-conditioned belief in the “curse of Ham” with them into Mormonism. Many modern members of the Church, for instance, are unaware that Joseph Smith ordained at least one African-American man to the priesthood.

At some point during Brigham Young’s administration, the priesthood ban was initiated. No revelation, if there ever was one, was published, although many throughout the history of the Church have assumed that the reason for the ban must be that blacks were the cursed seed of Cain, and therefore not allowed the priesthood (usually stemming from a misreading of Abraham 1). The correct answer as to why the ban was put into place is: we don’t know.

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[quote=“fish, post:12, topic:8988, full:true”]
It is a real problem. BYU rejects too many excellent students. Probably time for another BYU Idaho to pop up without all the idaho wind. Need a mid sized town with a walmart, where should we put it? Make it happen, Gilbert or an LDS suburb. Too many great students are not being served by BYU’s entry req…s…[/quote]

[quote=“Sr_Burton, post:13, topic:8988, full:true”]
Somewhere in Arizona or New Mexico[/quote]

It will never happen. The Church would like to get out of the university business altogether, if it could. I have that on pretty good authority — there will be no more Church schools

Back in 2008, during the real estate crisis, our town of 54,000 was half empty, with waves of foreclosures and bankruptcies. We were projected to have hit 150,000 by now, but the bubble hit hard. The Church bought thousands of acres right outside of our town, and there was speculation that it might be a “BYU-Southwest” (with Arizona, SoCal, S. Nevada, and New Mexico/Texas in mind). Our town is right off of a state highway and I-8 to San Diego, and about an hour south of Phoenix, so that made sense. People were excited at the prospect of becoming a college town, with the growth and economic infusion from that.

I asked Bishop Burton, when he presided at a stake conference, about it. He said it was literally an investment, and nothing more. When the right time came, the land would be sold for a huge profit. No regional BYU was in the works.

It was also controversial at the time, because the land was bought from massive homebuilder Ira Fulton (who has buildings at both ASU and BYU named after him for his millions in donations). Fulton was hit hard by the recession, and the Church bailed him out by purchasing land he was taking a big hit on with homebuilding stopping (which only recently picked back up).

26

It was how BYU/the Church handled it (or didn’t handle it — there was radio silence for weeks as the protests and national news coverage intensified before anything was done making this clear).

The Honor Code Office was the main culprit in “going rogue” and announcing this — and then went radio silent for weeks before being contradicted by Elder Johnson in a statement.

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Yea, the church/BYU does at times seem like they are a bit “late to the party” when responding to things.

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The other issue with BYU-Provo is that BYU is getting land locked… meaning there is not much more room for expansion for buildings, housing units, etc.

It is already hard in Provo to find enough housing for not only BYU students, but people who want to live in the Orem/Provo area. I believe that is “ONE” reason that BYU is getting harder and harder to enrolled into. they simply do not have the space for more students.

Back in the hey day (1980’s) when most of you were students, I believe the cap was around 28,000 now in 2020 it just topped over 34K. There is housing issues within the Orem/Provo area because both BYU and UVU have increased their student caps.

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Aro- NO LDS kid would ever choose to be gay, not in a million years. They commit suicide at horrendous rates because they feel like god does not love them and their lives don’t matter. Times have changed for the better. You can be a gay kid and attend BYU.

I have a gay son, a doctor. He is married to a wonderful man, a pediatric doctor. They have a wonderful grandson who is loved by my wife and myself. We don’t get to choose what our kids do with their lives but we do get to choose how we love and support them. I am active but because of church policy, I have seen 4 families leave the church over the gay issue in my family. I have hope that they will all come back in the future.

I am giving you a heads up because I do respect you in many ways. Our job is not to judge them, our job is to love them and let god sort it out.

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So the real question in my mind Chris is “Does your kid fish?”

Not sure I could love someone who does not love to fish…:open_mouth:

Oopps, wait I can’t say that, I love my daughters too much, even though they do ask me if they can fish with a cork on the hook so as to not hurt the fish too badly.???

Hmmmm…

Seriously Chris, I admire your stance on the issue, it is so easy to judge when it does not affect you personally. I think you have a healthy and “gospel centered” view on the issue.

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Can’t speak to the study you cite. Don’t know what study you cite for that matter.
I have spoken to a couple of federal judges on the federal sentencing guidelines revision committee. They are aware of the basic facts about the sentencing…much more acquainted than you or I obviously. Neither one is remotely conservative in any sense, but the basic problem they think they have is that when statisticians break down the data in any number of logical ways the judiciary asks for, and largely this is driven by the judiciary who sees the horribly racist bias the overall picture seems to show, the subsets do not come out racially biased.
A different way to put it is that it is the inputs to the judicial system not the outcomes of the system that create the impression of bias.
What inputs? People who commit crimes that are caught…
What creates the most impression of bias is the convictions stemming from the war on drugs…take out the people involved in the drug trade and bias in the convictions for the murders, assaults, etc that largely feed the fed prison system disappear.

And as now President Biden could show, if he had the kahones, was that the crime bill he spearheaded under Clinton was largely shaped by the leaders of minority communities who were trying to get criminal justice solutions to problems on their streets.

For my part, the fix for the “racist” criminal justice system, is simple but expensive and will not look good for the stats the anti-racists want.
For a long time the criminal justice system ignored minority america. That meant a criminal culture developed, most horrifically organized crime feeding the drug trade. The way to root out that criminal culture as minority leaders who Presidents Biden and Clinton, our first “black” president before Obama, was to improve laws and improve policing to protect minority neighborhoods. It is now basically concluded that the federal law improvement wasn’t an improvement. But even conservatives site the growth of police officers protecting minority neighborhoods as a good thing. Or at least is was considered a good thing by both sides until the defund the police movement started.
More police in minority neighborhoods does mean crime goes down. It also means convictions go up. At least until the criminality, ie organized crime, is changed.
So get rid of the absurd war on drugs.
Up the police presence to protect the least protected amongst us…which tend to be the women without husbands and the children without fathers. Men are more criminal than women…
If gender activist paid attention to the percentage of men vs women in the criminal justice system. ie if they were male instead of female. The gross disparities of men instead of women in prison would be the statistic we could all recite…but somehow putting more men in prison as long as they are proportionate by the color of their skin or ethnicity, as long as we leave out the absurd category of Asian, is completely ok.
Asian is an absurd category simply because it is almost like saying European…nobody thinks swedes and greeks and spaniards are that much alike. Japanese are different than Chinese are different than Hindus are different than Pashtun are. . . well the list of Asian ethnicities and cultures can go on for a long way…The Chinese government recognizes more than 40 different ethnicities inside China’s borders. And that doesn’t include the wide swath of Asia that isn’t even remotely Chinese culturally.

32

Floyd: There was no interpretation of the facts by the FBI… They themselves made the statement that If a black man is put on trail, he is eight time more likely to be sentenced to prison over a white person.

Scott: Yes, it is. If you look at the reasons behind the sentencing, I doubt it. I’m sure that from what I’ve heard and seen that the raw data is interpreted this way because it doesn’t take into considerations like most of the sentencings were for repeat offenders. Let’s also remember that it was during the Clinton era that Jessie Jerkson and All Dullson and the NAACP were pushing for more and longer sentences for blacks doing drugs with the crack cocaine. The manipulation of numbers is used way too many times by liberal politicians and media.

Floyd: "Today, the Church disavows the theories advanced in the past that black skin is a sign of divine disfavor or curse, or that it reflects unrighteous actions in a premortal life; that mixed-race marriages are a sin; or that blacks or people of any other race or ethnicity are inferior in any way to anyone else. Church leaders today unequivocally condemn all racism, past and present, in any form.

Scott: I’m glad they say this. I have no problem with it. However, I disagree with the idea that Brigham Young did not have a reason from Heaven to stop the ordination of Blacks to the Priesthood. Besides things like polygamy and general hatred of the Church in those times, the Church didn’t need more reasons for attacks and for stopping the work to go forth. The laws in some states at the time prevented ministers to ordain blacks. But, the most telling reason that President Young received direction from Heaven was the fact it took a revelation from Heaven to President Kimball to be able allow blacks to be ordained to the Priesthood again. So, I agree that some of the reasons we heard about were probably not the correct reason. But, there was a reason and it wasn’t racism.

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I agree with most of what you write. It was Jackson, Sharpton and Clinton that pushed for more arrests and convictions (longer ones too) on drug and gang activity. Well, that was accomplished. But, now the same liberal dweebs call it systemic white racism. Instead of the NAACP, Black Lives Matter and the Jerkson-Dullson shows admitting their mistakes, they blame and shame the white man.

I question whether allowing drugs to just pour into the U.S. by legalizing drugs will stop crime in the minority and white neighborhoods. It hasn’t in Colorado and other states. Cartels and organized crime sees a great opportunity selling drugs on the black market cheaply as compared to legal drugs. Also, legalizing drugs doesn’t stop people from getting hooked on their drugs and needing more than they can afford. Which means they have to rob and steal more for their drugs. It’s hard to see logically that crime will go down, not up.

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This last week a majority of the Washington State Supreme Court, (at this point every single one of them appointed by a democratic governor, the conservative side of the court is at best middle of the road judicially speaking in the USA), in it’s great wisdom chose to declare the state law regarding possession of drugs as unconstitutional under both state and federal constitutions.
State possession conviction stats state that now something on the order of 3500 convictions state wide will not occur.
Nor will police be checking for such possessions.
Which means that the random drug conviction on dealing because a particular user had over the local prosecutors definition of the amount necessary to prosecute for dealing will no longer occur. Probably still making it less than another 500.

A nice punt making it against the federal constitution, any organization can now use the ruling to avoid the state courts to fight the federal possession statutes. This being one of those insane crimes with the double sovereign allowing for both conviction in state and federal courts…

35

Harold,
The FBI study was not about racism in the court system or anything like that…

The FBI gathers statistics as part of the process on how many people were arrested for crimes, how many went to court or was some other action taken, then if they did go to court what was the outcome of the court hearings? and finally how many ended up in Prison.

Of course, when they gathered the data the collected the personal information of those they were tracking which included race.

I believe they tract this information for the DOJ as part of their processes to do their jobs, but i am not certain. I also think they use it to see how well States who passes sentencing laws actually work.

I know in Utah during the 1990’s or so, our state law makers decided to get tough on crime and started putting mandatory sentencing guidelines on certain crimes. What they found is a boon doggle of a mess was being created and over populating prisons that they would have to fund to keep all these people inside. Like1-3 yr mandatory sentencing for having an ounce of weed on you, that kind of crap.

(This last paragraph is my conjecture based on working at the DOC for 7 years)

As I told Grasshopper, the data the FBI gathered had no interpretation of the data. They simply “Stated” the information (See second link).
The reported the data as it was put into the system, I am assuming the NCIC system which all states are required by Federal law to enter criminal information (arrests, conviction, etc.) into. The only reason I know this is because I use to work at the Department of Corrections for Utah and had to help people use the system.

I will try to find the actual report I am speaking of, but of course, I am not the best googler in the world and seem to never find something when I need it :open_mouth: I do believe it might have been part of an article I read from PEW Institute, but being old as I am, memory fails me at times.

Here are some sources that kind of backs up my comments:
Demographic Differences in Sentencing | United States Sentencing Commission (ussc.gov)

FBI Releases 2019 Statistics on Law Enforcement Officers Killed in the Line of Duty — FBI

Again, I believe some groups on the left are using the “Race” card to promote “Votes” if you know what I mean and they will take liberal shots at data to back up their beliefs. Just google “Are blacks more likely to get shot by a cop”? It is interesting what passes for “truth” these days.

Having family that grew up in the deep south, I can say “Yes” we still have issues with racisms in this country.

I have seen it first hand, especially by police officer’s in the south. But as I have grown up, I thought we were getting a lot better as time went on, more and more “equal” justice was being done for all races. Well until a certain President in the past blew up race relationships with his comments about incidents in Missouri.

I understand your point about crime, it is going to happen. When a city neighborhood is a majority of a race, then “Yes” more of that race is going to be arrested. What I found is that if say two people are arrested for say robbery, one is black and one is white. Same circumstances of the crime. What happens in the courts is that the black will face longer prison sentence for the crime than the white person. Now we have to be careful here, because some states have tougher sentencing guidelines than other states. So we have to take that into account as well.

36

The thing is you used the FBI statistics pointing out racism exists. You did that. And so does the left.
I’m sure the FBI have to include race just like a mortgage broker has to by law when taking an application for a loan for statistical reasons so the law can look for redlining and predatory lending.

Your last paragraph is an example of what I was talking about. Using basic raw data without details to draw conclusions that may or may not be accurate. You would have to look for evidence that the whites person and black person had the same number of convictions prior to the sentencing. That all things being equal, the sentence for the black criminal is longer.

Lastly, Utah had no choice when Clinton’s crime bill was passed pushed on by the black leaders at the time like Jackson and Sharpton due to the drug problems. That was a federal mandate pointed directly at the black criminals and supported by black leaders including the NAACP. Trump reversed that law at the demands of current black leaders and he still is called a racist. So, you are right about the politics involved.

37

Doesn’t take a family in the deep south.
Racism still exists, and way too much in this country.
On this board sometimes.
I talked to an elderly black man Vietnam Combat vet shortly before Covid hit who was thinking about going back to one of the famously most racist cities in the USA because he couldn’t stand the racists and the racism he found endemic here in Seattle.
He did make a distinction between racists and racism. The racists he could handle he said. The racism, basically the systemic racism of our current new headlines, was what he couldn’t abide in Liberal Progressive Seattle.

Seattle is one of the few cities with judicial oversight of its police force because of racism problems. I get a kick out of the current mayor being accused of racism as she was the federal prosecutor who took the Seattle PD to court over the issue.

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I should clarify that statement, I knew about racism because, well we all live in an unfair world. But when I was a teenager, I never really understood the depth of hatred some of my family felt and expressed towards another race. To me, as a “Westerner”, I could not phantom someone hating another person to that level. I was not raised that way, so it was an “Eye Opener” for me.

Personally, I am not one that believes we has systemic racism in the police force or cities. Sometimes things are the way they are because idiot politicians makes bad decisions, especially when it comes to police policies and procedures. Most people who claim racism does not understand that the “How” police do their jobs the way they do it is based on the edicts the City Mayor wants it to be done.

Here in SLC, we have seen some epic battles between the SLC Mayor and the Chief of police over how they interact with minorities.

Harold, I do appreciate your candor and thoughts, I do not always agree, but you are very respectful about expressing your opinion. I sometimes come across less respectful, so I hope you accept my apology if I said something offensive.

BTW, my sister lives in Kent, so I hear a little about what is going on up there.

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Then you need to check your own racism before supposing you know other people in Cougarfan. So, enough of that.

As far as the term “systemic racism,” it’s a fabricated term on the left to justify their cancel culture which is destructive. There is less conversation because of this bogus Satanic term that serves only to justify white shaming, talk of reparations and hatred between the races. Since Obama, the white supremacy groups have awaken and become more violent as has the leftist AntiFa and BLM. Mostly because cancel culture attempts to silence the first amendment free speech rights. It’s hard to discuss differences when the language of both sides is limited or canceled.

Racists do exist. Silencing speech hurts the elimination of reasons for racist feelings. If a person can’t talk about their feelings and reasons they have they cannot work that out. There is no way to root out systemic racism since it doesn’t exist. It only adds fuel to the fire of those who hate.

Long live Dr. Suess

40

Of course, racism exists, in the south, the northeast, the midwest, the rocky mountain region, the southwest, and the west coast. Racism exists in white vs. black, black vs. white, black vs Latinos, Latinos vs. blacks, and other variations.

When I was 16 years old, a white friend and I were stopped, walking on the side of a public street, by a large group of teenage blacks, and one of my front teeth were broken in half by a punch to my jaw. We were told to get the h___ out of that public street and well on down the road. So now I have a fake tooth in the front of my face. We learned several days later that 3 other white kids were surrounded the same evening with similar actions taken against them. 2 or 3 years later, my brother and a couple of his white friends had a similar experience. Of course, I realize that black aggression against white people is not racism because it is impossible for black people to be racists (I said sarcastically). As a pre-teem child. I grew up with Latino, black and American Indian kids, as friends, in Galveston, Mesa, Salinas and Arkansas. There is an effort now to castigate all whites and portray all whites as extremists. If this continues and the cancel culture continues, there will be civil war of some sort. I hope not but I can see it coming some time in the future.

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