A University’s Struggle With Honor

On a recent Tuesday afternoon, Mindy Weston scrawled a message on a whiteboard in a library here at Brigham Young University: “Sex without marriage = bad.”

That’s the entirety of what young Mormons are taught about sex, she said. At 18, that was all she knew.

Then, just weeks before she was supposed to start her first semester as a BYU undergraduate, she was drugged and raped. “I didn’t tell anybody for years,” said Ms. Weston, who is now a 41-year-old graduate student in mass communications at the university. “I knew that I would be judged. I knew that I would be blamed. And I knew the story would be twisted.”

The assault was especially painful for Ms. Weston because she was, for the most part, a good Mormon. Abstinence before marriage was an easy decision for her, while she knew of many high-school students, including her younger sister, who had chosen to be sexually active. Ms. Weston had enthusiastically signed BYU’s Honor Code, which bans premarital sex, alcohol, drugs, caffeine, and being in the bedroom of someone of the opposite gender, among other things.

Now she couldn’t bear the thought of telling her parents, her sisters, her bishop. They might think it was her fault. They might hear “sex” and think “sin.”

She wasn’t sure how to describe what had happened, either. She had heard one story in high school of a rape, and it involved a stranger who hid in a house and jumped out at the victim suddenly. That didn’t fit the narrative of her assault at all.

“It took me a long time,” she said, “to be able to say ‘rape’ without crying and reliving the trauma.” Eventually she was able to find the words that eluded her when she was younger. Rape, she said, “is the most evil thing that can happen to a person. It is the most evil thing that a person can do to another.”

Ms. Weston’s assault occurred more than two decades ago, and much has changed since then — in the Mormon Church and in the national understanding of sexual violence. But the immense stigma of talking about any kind of nonmarital sexual activity in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, as the faith is formally known, continues to create challenges for young Mormons who are raped.

So when it came to light two months ago that BYU officials had routinely investigated students who reported sexual assaults for potential violations of the Honor Code, Ms. Weston understood how betrayed the students felt. She saw it as another example of how Mormon culture — and a university whose mission is inextricable from that culture — could unintentionally blame and silence victims.

Since 2011, when the Education Department issued a “Dear Colleague” letter clarifying that the federal gender-equity law known as Title IX applies to cases of sexual violence on campuses, a national movement against sexual assault has swept hundreds of colleges. In April it arrived with full force at BYU.

Madi Barney, a student who said she had been raped off campus, posted a petition demanding that the university promise not to investigate students who report sexual assaults for possible simultaneous violations of the Honor Code. Such offenses could include circumstances common to sexual assault, such as drinking.

Ms. Barney spoke, she said, from experience. Once campus officials got wind of the criminal case she was pursuing, she said, they had opened an inquiry to examine whether she had violated the code on the night the assault occurred. (BYU’s sexual-assault policy encourages students to report assaults and states that possible Honor Code violations “will be addressed separately from the sexual-misconduct allegation.”)

Ms. Barney refused to cooperate — she cannot discuss her case before it goes to trial — so BYU prevented her from registering for fall classes, she said. She has since filed a complaint against the university alleging violations of Title IX, and she now plans to transfer.

Meanwhile, her petition has drawn nearly 115,000 signatures. As Ms. Barney’s story spread online, more students and alumni began speaking out, sharing similar stories of feeling victimized by the code or by BYU more generally. About 40 demonstrators, including Ms. Weston, delivered Ms. Barney’s petition to BYU administrators after a rally just off campus.

Their activism drew national attention to BYU and stirred broader questions about how conservative, faith-driven institutions, often left behind by the swiftly evolving debate on campus rape, grapple with the issue. Affirmative-consent standards, student groups devoted to rape awareness, and bystander-intervention trainings have become the norm at secular colleges. But universities like BYU are still trying to figure out how to start a conversation about sexual violence that works for them — and how to stick to their principles without discouraging students from reporting attacks.

One reason sexual assault is so hard to talk about here: BYU students arrive with less knowledge of sex than does the average young adult. During church-sponsored programs for Mormon youth, there is little discussion of the gray areas of sexual activity, like nonconsensual contact, given that premarital sex is considered a sin.

Many students and alumni say their parents didn’t bring it up, either. “The church is so central in the lives of so many LDS people, sometimes it feels as though it doesn’t need to be supplemented by anything,” says Taylor R. Monson, a 2013 graduate of BYU’s Hawaii campus and cofounder of the Taste of Honey, a sexual-assault-awareness organization. Mormons often don’t realize, she says, “that some conversations that need to happen aren’t happening in church activities.”

“Learning how to have a healthy relationship with sex is so hard for Mormon kids,” says Kelsey Bourgeois, a former BYU student who left the church. (Ms. Bourgeois helped Ms. Barney craft her petition.) “I grew up feeling so much guilt. Like, I have sexual feelings, what’s wrong with me?”

Mormons at BYU might date for months before kissing, and they are accustomed to limits on when and where they can hang out. Students don’t typically go further than a “NCMO,” or a noncommittal makeout, outside of dating. That’s the Mormon version of a one-night stand, says Madeline MacDonald, a rising junior.

So the advocacy that has helped spark change at other colleges doesn’t work as well at BYU, she says. A “yes means yes"-type campaign on consent, for instance, wouldn’t make sense.

In Ms. MacDonald’s view, activism on controversial issues must be “100 percent couched in religion.”

Meanwhile, many students say they are stuck with a system for dealing with sexual-assault complaints that many acknowledge has flaws but that no one knows exactly how to improve.

University officials say they take the criticism seriously. Kevin J. Worthen, BYU’s president, announced in April that he had formed a four-person committee to review the relationship between the university’s Title IX and Honor Code offices.

A website created in May to gather input from the BYU community has yielded more than 3,000 responses. One of the committee’s first priorities is laying the groundwork for a campus-climate survey.

That’s a significant step for an institution that’s often reluctant to appear influenced by public opinion, many here say.

BYU is the largest religiously affiliated university in the United States, the pinnacle of educational prestige for many LDS church members. “When I was a kid, my parents used to wake me up every morning by singing the BYU fight song,” Ms. MacDonald recalls.

It’s an attractive choice for a number of reasons. For outdoor enthusiasts, Provo — which sits along the Wasatch Range, the western edge of the Rocky Mountains — is pretty close to paradise. Then there’s the low tuition, which is heavily subsidized by the church. Tuition is about $2,600 per semester for full-time undergraduates who are members of the church.

But for some students, the biggest draw of all might be the Honor Code, which outlines the principles that students, faculty, and staff must live by. The original code was written by students in the 1940s, and a student-run committee added provisions in the 1960s on appearance, alcohol, and chastity. Several years later the university took over administering the code. While some alumni say enforcement is less black and white than it once was, the language hasn’t changed much over the years.

The Honor Code can appear onerous to non-Mormons, but it’s a point of pride for most BYU students. It means they’re surrounded by peers who are focused on academics, volunteering, and spiritual growth. Ms. MacDonald says she didn’t want to attend a college where alcohol and casual sex drove the social life.

“We really love it and are proud of it,” says Sage Williams, a junior, over salads and fries at Station 22 Cafe, a popular local joint. “At the same time, it’s an easy thing to joke around about.” Beards are banned by the code, for instance, and male students will often get teased about shaving facial hair.

Annalaura Solomon, who graduates in August and serves as president of the BYU Women’s Studies Honor Society, says members of her organization often discuss how the code’s appearance standards could weigh more heavily on women. (Female students may not wear sleeveless, strapless, or form-fitting clothing, and skirts and shorts must be at least knee-length.) Still, Ms. Williams says, the Honor Code helps foster a culture in which women are more respected than at other colleges.

Achieving and retaining good Honor Code standing is an extensive process that starts before students are officially admitted to BYU. Applicants must meet with their local bishop and discuss how to live a moral, church-centered life. The bishop uses that interview to determine whether a student receives an ecclesiastical endorsement. Students must renew that endorsement annually with their campus bishop to stay at BYU. A bishop can pull the endorsement at any time without explanation.

Given the stakes, most students take the Honor Code seriously. Sierra P. Debenham, who graduated in 2012, remembers staying out too late with her boyfriend one night and being locked out of her apartment. He wouldn’t let her sleep on his couch because it was against the code. So she slept in her car.

The Honor Code has its drawbacks. Most students sign it when they’re 18, Ms. Debenham says, and it can feel as though there’s little room for students to change or make mistakes during a formative period in their lives.

During her last year at BYU, she drifted away from the church and had sex. She then felt guilty, so she told the Honor Code office. As a result, she says, BYU delayed her graduation by several months, jeopardizing her ability to start medical school.

More troubling, Ms. MacDonald says, the code contributes to a belief that sexual violence hardly happens on the campus. “There’s this idea that everybody is Mormon and shares the same values, so you’re perfectly safe,” she says. “Nobody is ever going to assault you because they’re good Mormon kids.”

The code’s influence might mean that sexual assault occurs less often at BYU than on other campuses, says Tiffany Turley, director of the university’s Women’s Services and Resources office. An Associated Press analysis of Department of Education data last month showed that BYU reported an average of 1.5 sexual assaults per 10,000 students annually from 2004 through 2014. In four of the years, the university reported no assaults, while the University of Utah, similar in size, reported at least three incidents each year.

It’s unclear whether fewer reports mean fewer assaults. In any case, the perception of safety has consequences, Ms. MacDonald says: “There definitely is a feeling that if you have something happen to you, you’re at fault.”

That feeling haunted her after she was sexually assaulted during her freshman year.

In December 2014, a couple of weeks before final examinations, Ms. MacDonald took a study break and started chatting with people on Tinder, the popular dating app. She agreed to meet up briefly — for no more than half an hour, she told her roommates — with a male student who attended a different Utah university. She thought they were going to get hot chocolate. To her surprise, he drove her far away from BYU, into the mountains.

They talked for a while and eventually began kissing. Ms. MacDonald says she stated clearly that she wouldn’t go any further and wanted to go home. But the man was insistent. “After a while, I couldn’t stop him. There was no one to help me,” she says. “I was trapped.” He removed her clothes and sexually assaulted her.

Ms. MacDonald returned home late, hair mussed, shirt on backward. That sounds like sexual assault, her roommates told her. She wrote down everything she could remember, and put her clothes in the refrigerator, to try to save DNA evidence. But she wasn’t sure how to report the assault. Since it wasn’t an emergency, she didn’t want to call 911.

So she went to the place on BYU’s campus that, she says, describes itself as “the one-stop shop” for sexual-assault victims — Women’s Services and Resources.

In a small suite on the third floor of BYU’s student center, a staff of friendly students greets visitors to Women’s Services and Resources. The office came to be nearly 25 years ago, after a campaign waged by female students and faculty members, who criticized BYU for “pretending that women students here are not victimized by rape, incest, or battery,” and demanded a resource center to support them.

To the right of the entrance is a comfortable waiting area where a plush couch and an armchair flank a coffee table featuring bowls filled with candy. (Twix bars are the most popular, the students say.) One of the walls is lined with dozens of pamphlets — on scholarships for single mothers, women and careers, healthy relationships.

Ms. Turley, the director, welcomes students who want to talk about a sexual assault directly into her office. Three framed prints hang above her desk: two of Mary, the mother of Jesus Christ, and one of Jesus comforting a woman as she kneels in prayer.

Ms. Turley — a BYU graduate, a trained rape-crisis counselor, and a sexual-assault victim herself — recalls watching The Hunting Ground, a controversial documentary about campus sexual assault, for the first time last year. “I remember thinking, My goodness, I’m so glad I work for BYU, because I feel like BYU doesn’t just sweep this under the rug,” she says. “We know it happens here.”

She tells students upfront that she is required by Title IX to report any details she learns about a sexual assault to the institution’s Title IX coordinator. If a student doesn’t want to file a complaint, talk about specifics, or even give her name, Ms. Turley still must report what she knows.

Ms. MacDonald didn’t have a problem with that. “I said, I’ll report to anyone,” she says. On December 10, 2014, she reported the assault to the university’s Title IX office herself.

That’s where problems began, she says. As Ms. MacDonald sees it, her decision to report put her under investigation immediately by the Honor Code office, as Ms. Barney later described in her petition. Earlier this year, she says, she asked to view her Honor Code case file. She discovered that the date on that file was also December 10, 2014 — suggesting that administrators had opened conduct proceedings against her within hours.

BYU officials said that the identical dates were likely to have resulted from both offices’ using the same tracking system, not an indicator of the actual start of the Honor Code investigation.

The file was nearly 90 pages long, and Ms. MacDonald says administrators wouldn’t let her copy or photograph it. In it she found materials from the Title IX office, including the statement she gave to investigators.

“It had every line annotated with what could and couldn’t have indicated my consent,” she says. “That makes sense for a Title IX investigation, but when you see it in the context of the Honor Code office, it becomes terrifying.”

Ms. MacDonald wasn’t ultimately found responsible for any Honor Code violations. But she says the investigation was more traumatic than the assault itself. She also wonders what the outcome would have been if the Title IX officials had decided that her report couldn’t be substantiated. In that case, her conduct might have been considered consensual sexual activity in the eyes of the Honor Code office, and she could have been expelled.

“I didn’t realize that when I was reporting, I was only reporting myself,” she says. “From the very moment that I asked for help, I was going to get sent to the Honor Code office.”

Janet S. Scharman, vice president for student life, says misconceptions have spread about the interaction between the Title IX and Honor Code offices. When the Education Department issued its “Dear Colleague” letter, she says, BYU — like most colleges — scrambled to come into compliance.

The Honor Code office had a system for collecting data and tracking it over time, so officials decided to use that system temporarily for the Title IX office as well, Ms. Scharman says. “We created a wall so you couldn’t see the information from either side,” she says. “They don’t share information, except at certain times if there needs to be some kind of consequence.”

The decision to have both offices use the tracking system wasn’t a problem “until we had a student who asked to see a Title IX report, and it said ‘Honor Code office,’” she says. “It was one of those adjustments that we just didn’t quite get done soon enough to avoid what the appearance of that was.”

Despite her reporting obligations, Ms. Turley says, her focus is always on making students feel safe and connecting them with resources. She’ll often walk students to Counseling and Psychological Services, two floors below.

That’s how Ms. MacDonald ended up at the counseling office, which she now describes as “the only one that didn’t screw me over throughout this whole thing.”

Unlike Women’s Services and Resources, the counseling office is confidential and doesn’t interact with the Title IX or Honor Code offices at all. BYU has more than two dozen therapists on its staff, six with rape-crisis training. While increasing demand means that the office has to refer some students to off-campus practitioners, the staff does its best to treat sexual-assault victims in-house, says Steve Smith, director of the Counseling and Career Center.

Mr. Smith has heard the “rape just doesn’t happen here” line. “We know differently,” he says, noting that among his relatively few patients are four sexual-assault victims. The counseling office also offers therapy groups for victims of sexual abuse.

In addition to Ms. Turley’s and Mr. Smith’s offices, some students who have been assaulted first seek help and support from campus bishops. BYU officials have said that bishops don’t report Honor Code violations that they hear in confidential interviews with students, but the bishops have strong ties to the Honor Code office, given that they handle ecclesiastical endorsements. Mr. Smith, who served as a bishop for three years, says he never felt pressured to report any information to the Honor Code staff, but he has heard stories of bishops who did otherwise.

Colleen Payne Dietz, a 2005 graduate who sought help after being sexually assaulted as a freshman, says she was caught in one such case. Her bishop, she says, treated the ordeal as consensual sex, and he said she would have to undergo Honor Code proceedings. If she was pregnant as a result of the rape, the bishop told her, she would have to leave BYU.

He eventually decided not to get the Honor Code office involved. Still, “the bishop trumps everything,” she says. “If they feel that you at any point are not worthy to attend BYU, all they have to do is call the Honor Code office.”

Like Ms. MacDonald, Ms. Payne Dietz says the institution’s response to her assault was what really traumatized her. “I was able to kind of compartmentalize the assault, to put it in a box, to bury it deep inside where I didn’t have to deal with it,” she says. “But the treatment that I received from my campus bishop — that was lifelong.”

When Julie Valentine, an assistant professor of nursing at BYU, first saw students describing fraught sexual-assault cases in the news media, she was “heartsick about it.” Ms. Valentine specializes in sexual-assault research and has recently focused on improving the criminal justice system’s response to sexual assault in Utah. She also serves on the committee doing the policy review at BYU. “The last thing I want is for victims to be revictimized by the system,” she says.

At the same time, given how many other cultural factors discourage victims from reporting, “it would be way too simplistic to say, OK, we’ll fix the relationship between the Honor Code and Title IX, and then we’re good,” Ms. Valentine says.

Mr. Smith, the counseling director, believes that the relationship between the two offices merits scrutiny. “I’m really, really, really glad that the university is taking a look at their processes, because they need to,” he says. BYU has “got to figure out how to handle the Title IX process so that women feel safe coming to report,” he says.

The question is how. Since Ms. Barney’s petition calling for an amnesty provision in the Honor Code went viral, that proposal has dominated the discussion.

“To be able to then get in trouble for one of the consequences you were in when the assault happened — that represents a more national problem of victim-blaming,” says Ms. Solomon, the student who leads the Women’s Studies Honor Society. She’s not sure if amnesty is the best solution for BYU, but she believes strongly that it’s not appropriate “to ever suggest in some way that a victim is responsible for what happened.”

Amnesty is just the beginning, though, Ms. Payne Dietz says. “It is a vital and important first step to take to show a good-faith effort, but it’s a Band-Aid on a hemorrhage of problems that are systemic and culturewide.”

Ms. Turley doesn’t see amnesty as the right approach. “As soon as you start turning the Honor Code on and off in certain situations, there’s no point in having it,” she says. Unofficially, BYU already grants a kind of amnesty, she says: “If someone comes forward and says, ‘I was drinking and then I was raped,’ BYU is not going to punish them for that.”

Ms. Turley is familiar with many cases of students who have spoken out publicly. Their emotions and pain are real, she says. Still, “if someone comes forward and says, ‘I was kicked out of BYU because I was sexually assaulted,’ that’s just not true,” she says. “So there’s got to be more to that story.”

Many people who have spoken out against the university’s handling of sexual-assault cases stress that BYU isn’t hurting victims intentionally. It’s not what “the Lord’s university” stands for, they say. It’s not what the Mormon Church stands for.

But they see the controversy as a crucial opportunity for BYU to start a broad, important conversation about sexual violence that has never before occurred on the conservative campus.

When controversy about Ms. Barney’s case surfaced, in early April, university leaders waited a full week to acknowledge that their processes for dealing with rape complaints might be flawed. “Maybe that message could have come sooner,” Ms. Turley says. “I do think that, for a little bit there, we were like, No, we stand by what we do, and we’re good.”

But she says BYU’s administration over the past academic year has been more proactive than ever in addressing sexual-assault awareness. One example of that commitment: Women’s Services and Resources now teams up with the Title IX office, with the goal of expanding on-campus education and prevention. There’s also optional online Title IX training for students, and Ms. Scharman, the student-life vice president, says officials are working on something similar for faculty and staff members.

Women’s Services and Resources sponsored what Ms. Turley describes as a “soft campaign” in the fall: banners and posters across the campus debunking rape myths and publicizing sexual-violence statistics. One poster focused on the myth that most rapes are perpetrated by strangers, clarifying that the victim knows the offender in about 80 percent of sexual assaults.

In April the office held a weeklong series of activities focused on education and prevention, such as a chalking event where students wrote messages describing what a world without sexual assault would look like.

Some students saw parts of the programming — the healthy-relationships workshop and the self-defense class, for example — as putting the onus on would-be victims to protect themselves. “This is a really emotionally charged issue, and I think that whenever we put ourselves out there and say, We’re going to do these events, we set ourselves up for criticism,” Ms. Turley says.

Another challenge is the added pressure of living in a religious community where it can seem as if everyone knows everyone else. During self-defense classes, Ms. Turley says, “I always like to take a moment to say, Do you really think you’ll be able to do this when you’re sitting next to someone who you’re going to see in church tomorrow — someone who you know?”

Ms. Solomon says she’s seen evidence that BYU’s conversation on sexual assault is making progress. Three years ago the Women’s Studies Honor Society sponsored a campus screening of The Invisible War, a documentary about sexual assault in the military. During a post-film discussion, students talked about rape primarily as a national problem.

This April, when her organization held a rape-awareness conference, students immediately jumped in with questions specific to BYU: What happens when a rape victim goes to a particular office to report? What is the university doing to support victims?

Another student, Ms. Williams, works as a research assistant for Ms. Valentine and volunteers at the local rape-crisis center. She is eager to teach her peers about sexual assault, and she has ideas for how to do so at BYU. For instance, she says, a training session could talk about how “it’s OK to say no to a date if you don’t feel comfortable with it.”

That BYU officials have sought feedback on their sexual-assault policies is an enormous step forward, says Valerie M. Hudson, a professor in the Bush School of Government and Public Service at Texas A&M University at College Station. She taught at BYU for 24 years, until the end of 2011.

“That’s not a typical BYU thing. Nobody cared what the grass roots ever thought about anything,” Ms. Hudson says. “The fact that the president said, ‘We want everyone to send suggestions,’ is a remarkable change in the BYU administration.”

Ms. MacDonald wonders, though, whether she and other students will be able to sustain the momentum, particularly since Ms. Barney is leaving. Ms. MacDonald considered transferring, too. The publicity around her assault “is such a scarlet letter for me,” she says.

It’s refreshing, says Ms. Weston, the graduate student, to see BYU being self-critical. But ultimately, she says, the university isn’t the one at fault. It’s the church’s culture that needs to change.

Two months ago she probably would’ve kept that sentiment to herself. After attending the demonstration, in April, Ms. Weston hung back, hoping to thank Ms. Bourgeois, who had organized the event. “It was really nice to have people standing up for survivors,” Ms. Weston says. She chokes up. “I had never seen that before.”

The Salt Lake Tribune snapped a photograph of their embrace, which ended up online. “I kind of felt outed,” Ms. Weston says. She didn’t want to look like a victim of BYU. “But at the same time,” she says, “I was like, I obviously have to be part of this and figure out how to solve the problem.”

For months she had struggled to settle on a topic for her master’s thesis. As the debate about the Honor Code and sexual assault gathered steam this spring, she began thinking more deeply about the role of Scripture in that discussion.

“I can see, of course, that students have signed the Honor Code, and I can see the reasons to have an Honor Code,” says Ms. Weston, who describes herself as a lifelong, devout Mormon. “And I can completely understand why victims can’t report and how church teachings are contributing to that. Where is the disconnect?”

One day in late April, she turned to Section 89 of the Doctrine and Covenants, a Mormon Scripture that contains what’s known as the Word of Wisdom. The passage is best known for its bans on alcohol consumption, hot drinks, and tobacco, among other things. Then she thought about what Joseph Smith, the founder of the church, had taught: that people should take these correct principles and govern themselves. The research question came to mind almost immediately: “Are the Saints ready to govern themselves?”

“The church says we’re free to choose,” Ms. Weston says. “But so far, we’ve only been given a choice of whether or not to obey these black-and-white, short-leashed, nonsensical rules.”

That same logic, she says, can be applied to Section 132, which is taught alongside other scriptural passages as a law of chastity. She has concluded that the passage is being misinterpreted within Mormon culture, contributing to an environment that silences sexual-assault victims.

The correct interpretation of that Scripture, she argues, will teach people to feel empowered about their ability to understand God’s laws and, in doing so, will give them a choice to follow or not — a concept she describes as the law of agency. They’ll grasp that “the worst thing in the world isn’t to have sex before you’re married, it is to violate someone else’s agency,” with rape being “the absolute worst way.” While Mormonism stresses that sex before marriage is one of the worst sins people can commit, she says, in her view — and, she believes, in God’s view — the greatest sexual sin is rape.

She looks back at the whiteboard: “Sex without marriage = bad.”

“We’re taking this word for granted,” she says, pointing to “marriage” with her marker. She crosses it out and, below it, writes “agreement.”

Openly criticizing the LDS culture is a difficult undertaking and carries risks. Ms. Weston knows that.

She also knows that it’s not clear to what extent the church’s leaders will listen to her. Ms. Weston recently tried to take a press release explaining her argument about agency to the LDS headquarters, in Salt Lake City. She wanted to leave a copy for Thomas S. Monson, president of the church, to read.

Instead, she was rebuffed: “You can’t just leave a message.”

Sarah Brown writes about a range of higher-education topics, including sexual assault, race on campus, and Greek life. Follow her on Twitter @Brown_e_Points, or email her at sarah.brown@chronicle.com.

Correction (6/20/2016, 5:29 p.m.): This article originally misstated the source of a passage of Mormon Scripture. Section 89 appears in the Doctrine and Covenants, not the Book of Mormon. The article has been updated to reflect this correction.