Recently BYU Forward, Brandon Davies, was suspended from the most successful basketball season to take place at BYU due to an honor code violation. As you can imagine what would happen to a player who plays for a team that is nationally ranked #3, he instantly not only became the talk of the town, but the talk of the country.
Davies' situation has become a number one topic all over ESPN and several news agencies and blogs. He has been one of the top Tweeted topics on Twitter over the past few days, consisting of over 185 million tweeters.
I respect the fact that BYU has a standard and sticks to it, but I would like to point out that Davies has gone through much, much more than what an average student would have had to go through if the exact same rule had been broken. Has his punishment been detrimental? I think so.
The church is centered around the fact that the natural man is evil and constantly committing imperfections that prevent man from returning to live with God someday. Because of this fact, a savior was needed and a gospel was created to give man the opportunity to be forgiven of his sins through repentance. It's a church of forgiveness.
I believe that some kind of restitution had to take place in order to teach a lesson, but was it necessary to take away hopes and dreams, destroy a chance of a lifetime and basically inadvertently defame that crap out of a student just because he had sex with his girlfriend? The school should have taken into consideration the effect this would have on Brandon Davies. Was public humiliation part of the god's forgiveness process? I don't know, God works in mysterious ways, but it's possible.
If you asked me what a proper shellacking would have been, I would have said a suspension from the regular season, and maybe take away the guy's scholarship for next year. This student has had it far worse than any normal student who would have committed the same violation. So if every honor code violation punishment is resolved on a case-to-case basis, why couldn't this case take a slightly different turn to avoid broadcasting a man's sins to the world? Something so personal that should only be known between you, your bishop and God; according to the LDS faith. I suppose Davies knew what he got himself into, so technically nobody should feel bad for him; however, I wonder how many other BYU athletes are sweating bullets right now?
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