Controversy
In the 1970s, several schools protested against BYU, claiming it was a racist organization — Stanford and San José State both refusing to play the university in sports. In 1970, the University of Arizona sent a “fact-finding committee” to determine if BYU was racist, finding that “rhetoric had escalated too far” with regards to racism and the Western Athletic Conference. The BYU newspaper The Daily Universe reported that Arizona's committee determined that BYU was not racist, but was an “isolated institution whose members simply do not relate to or understand black people.” BYU football players were met by 75 picketers demonstrating against racism at BYU when they played Arizona a week after the report.
In April 1992 during Take Back the Night, an on-campus women's rights group marched in protest at the University's lack of a Women's Resource Center. They feared that by not having such a center BYU was not giving enough aid to female students who were the victims of rape and abuse. By December 1992, a center had been approved. Then-BYU President Rex E. Lee said that the decision of the Board of Directors to approve the building of the center was unanimous.
In February 2012, a YouTube video called "What do you know about black history?" of students at BYU surfaced, exemplifying some students' knowledge about Black History Month and African Americans in general. The interviewer himself does Blackface while asking students a variety of questions.
Read more about this topic: Student Life At Brigham Young University
Famous quotes containing the word controversy:
“Ours was a highly activist administration, with a lot of controversy involved ... but I’m not sure that it would be inconsistent with my own political nature to do it differently if I had it to do all over again.”
—Jimmy Carter (James Earl Carter, Jr.)
“And therefore, as when there is a controversy in an account, the parties must by their own accord, set up for right Reason, the Reason of some Arbitrator, or Judge, to whose sentence, they will both stand, or their controversy must either come to blows, or be undecided, for want of a right Reason constituted by Nature; so is it also in all debates of what kind soever.”
—Thomas Hobbes (1579–1688)