Satan Made Shorts

I received my undergrad degree - with honors for my stunning good looks - from Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah. But for the last few years, when people ask where I went to college I usually just tell them where I went to graduate school because then I don't have to face the shame I feel about having spent four years in the most fucked up place in the United States.

Not that BYU is a bad school. A lot of smart people and a whole lot of hot chicks go there. I root wildly for BYU's sports teams, I met my wife there, and my Freshman year I met some good dudes that became lifelong friends - at least for awhile until I couldn't stand them anymore. And I had a great time dry humping as often as possible. But BYU might have the oddest culture of any place in the United States. Students don't know how insane BYU is when they're there, because they get accustomed to the weirdness and think that's just how life is.

What reasons could I have for making such bombastic statements? I ask you to consider an even dozen:

1. When I was there you couldn't wear shorts. In many ways, you still can't.
   
2. Facial hair violates the Honor Code and is grounds for expulsion.
   
3. One Sunday each month there is no food available on campus until 5pm or later, because you're not allowed to eat.
   
4. Not regularly attending church violates the Honor Code and is grounds for expulsion.
   
5. If a member of the opposite sex is in your house/apartment after midnight, or if they use your bathroom at any time, you can be expelled.
   
6. Among students, 56% of men and 42% of women are married.
   
7. It's considered an oversight if the professor doesn't lead a prayer to start each class.
8. The student newspaper regularly prints debate about whether or not Jesus truly feels this is"The Lord's University".
9. Many call it the Harvard of the West, despite (in the late 80's) many students having been admitted with a high school GPA below 2.0. Oh, and it's 98% Mormon. And Mormons are white. Period. And if they're not "white", then they're still white.
   
10. It's heavily debated, but is generally considered a sin to watch an R-rated movie.
11. Don't even ask about being gay.
12. And my favorite: Having more than one earring in any ear at a time is a violation of the Honor Code and is grounds for expulsion.

And that's just the mundane. Imagine the stuff they really care about: no drinking, no smoking, no sexual touching in any way. No pre-marital sex, prayer several times every day (or more if you like - the more pious you are the more your chance to get action from hot chicks, which action you must ultimately turn down because of the chastity force field), bringing your Bible and Book of Mormon to most of your classes, and saying prayers over every meal. In public. Out loud. I spent four years at BYU. Like almost everyone else, I used to walk around knowing:

1. that God is watching us. From a distance, of course
2. that guys with beards are mocking the Honor Code and, therefore, God.
   
3. that Satan is very real and exists solely to tempt you and try you. Do not mock Satan.
   
4. that we should be "in the world but not of it", because the world will destroy all that which is good. And what is good? It is that which you learn at church and at BYU.
5. (and the coup de grace) that if you did not stop every day at 7am and again and 5pm, put your hand over your heart while they played our national anthem through speakers placed at every light post on campus, and solemnly think about how George Washington would have been a Mormon (if Mormonism had existed in 1776) - and how he's almost certainly a Mormon now because he was baptized by proxy after he'd been dead for like a century - then you might be a bad person, or worse: a Communist.
   

I was often on the lookout for bad people. They were everywhere. But one day I was bound to be caught off guard, taken totally by surprise. One cannot always know the evil that lurks in the hearts of men. Why do I tell you these things, you might ask? Because of Cody Judy, my friend. It's all because of Cody Judy.