Agency – or the fallacy of rules
The other night I showed some people a picture of a poster produced at BYU further explaining a nuance of The Honor Code. The Honor Code is a code of conduct, a standard, that all BYU students agree to live by before they are even accepted. What this means is that, allegedly, the individual who decides to come to the school has read, understood, and agreed with the terms of the Honor Code.
What was said, “The Honor Code takes away your agency.”
I disagree with this statement. In general, I disagree with most people when they claim that agency is taken away when you apply rules or rules of living to a life. Agency denotes that you can choose to live your life in any way you want; on the flipside, though, agency also denotes that by your choices you have to live with the consequences of your lifestyle choices.
Therefore, going to BYU requires that you agree to a code of conduct. By choosing to attend the university, you also choose to follow that code. When you choose not to, long enough, whether you realize it or not, you also choose to no longer attend BYU. At all steps, the individual has made choices that affect their life and the lives around them. The individual has not had agency removed, they have merely agreed to specific aspects of a code of conduct that they are to live by.
The poster I was showing shows a girl wearing a mini-skirt. Under the skirt are a pair of leggings or tights. According to the Honor Code (which also gives guidelines for dress and grooming) this is against what was agreed to. A mini-skirt, regardless of what is beneath it, is still a mini-skirt and is forbidden.
When Erin and I saw the poster (and I want a copy of it) we then proceeded to count the girls wearing mini-skirts and leggings/tights around campus. The number was, actually, rather disturbing.
The point in the BYU Honor Code is not whether or not we should or should not live a specific standard, but that as students we agreed to live a specific standard.
Once you have agreed to a standard you are required to live that standard. That does not take away your agency, nor does it stop you from making choices to go in a different direction. Even as a BYU student, you have a the ability to (as a girl… heck as a boy too) wear mini-skirts. As a boy, you have the ability to make the choice to grow a beard, knowing full well in advance that you a) are not allowed to have a beard; and b) you have to have a pre-existing condition and a beard card to have one, or special dispensation as a result of a play or other project happening on campus.
This extends beyond the boundaries of BYU, though. Every school in this country has an Honor Code. Whether or not the school chooses to enforce that Honor Code is not the issue. What is the issue is whether or not you choose to follow a code of conduct you agreed to before you started attending the university, college, or community college. You actually agree to the code of conduct before attending.
In some universities the code of conduct might include not drinking while on campus in the dorms. However, without going to those campuses, I know that alcohol is prevalent on the campus in direct opposition to the code of conduct. Some schools actively enforce this rule, other schools do not actively enforce the rule.
As a member of the LDS church, I have made a choice in my life to follow The Word of Widsom. This set of guidelines for healthy living have do’s and do not’s. Most people focus on the do not’s. In this case, do not’s include: alcohol, tobacco, coffee, tea, etc. These are lifestyle choices. Many members of the LDS faith believe that coffee and tea denote caffeine and go out of their way to avoid caffeine in their diets. Some of the do’s include: exercise, eating grains, meat in moderation, etc.
These are guidelines for a healthy life. The longer we live, the more science shows us the negative effects of alcohol and tobacco and other substances on our bodies. Too much caffeine can cause problems with the heart. Too much alcohol will destroy your liver. Too much tobacco will cause cancer. In essence, we can avoid lifestyle choices and the negative consequences by living a simple lifestyle guide.
However, you don’t have to live it.
That’s right, like the Honor Code at BYU, you have the option, even after agreeing to the guidelines, to live them or not. You can drink. You can smoke. You can drink coffee and tea. You can do all sorts of things that are against the guidelines that the church seems to be connected to, AND you get to live with the consequences of those choices.
One consequence is addiction.
Even then, the argument that laws or rules fly in the face of agency is a fallacy as well. You still have the ability to decide whether or not you will follow certain rules. You can walk into a store and steal if you want. You can knock down an old lady and take her purse. You can drive recklessly and kill someone. You have that choice.
However, by making those choices, you also choose to take the consequences when you are caught. The consequences include jail time. Going to jail is a result of a negative choice; but, no one is able to stop you prior to your going to jail from making the negative choices in your life. What you chose, ultimately, was going to prison.
What always gets me, 100% of the time, is watching a movie where someone drags their younger sibling into a firefight and then watches as that sibling dies. They then get angry and want revenge on the person, often the protagonist of the movie, and proceed to do whatever they can to kill the protagonist and his family for taking the life of their younger sibling. As exciting and edge-of-seat-making this plot development is, the choice for the younger sibling to die existed when that individual was dragged into a firefight. Not when the protagonist of the story, in order to save a life or in some heroic fashion, pointed a gun at the person and pulled the trigger.
And yet, for some reason, we, as a society, believe that A should have no direct response on B. In the case of the example I just used, the antagonist takes no responsibility for his brothers death, instead assigning all blame on the protagonist. The antagonist’s response is revenge.
I think we, as a people, often mistake what it means to have agency. We assume that no matter what, we should always be able to choose what we want to do. We allow the noise in the world around us to convince us that our actions have no affect on the people around us and that we should be allowed to live and let live. This attitude is fallacious. It is not true. We don’t have that as an option in our lives.
When we choose to live around other people and in a civil society, we choose to follow the laws and rules that exist. Within the confines of those laws we can develop into honest, hardworking people. We can be citizens rather than anti-citizens. We can be law-abiding rather than without law.
I think people live in a fantasy world where rules and regulations get in the way of their being able to live the life they dream about. They want to be able to drink and smoke and swear and sleep around without consequence, and yet, those same consequences are what allows them to even have a conversation or thoughts about what a lawless society might be.
BYU has an Honor Code. I find it difficult to understand why adults (legal adults, not literal) come to this school and think they can flaunt the rules they agreed to in the face of other students, the faculty and staff, and the community as a whole. I also find it interesting that quite a lot of those students are going to wantonly break the rules, do what they want, and see where they can push the very guidelines they agreed to, to the breaking point.
I think either live what you agreed to, or go somewhere and give someone who wants to be at BYU a chance to be there. I think if you want to be treated as an adult, act like one. And I think too many people think that because they are able to live on their own and make choices, and because the law and world looks at them as adults, that they are actually capable of being an adult.
John Hattaway | smokingpen | Alicia Grey | Clockwork Princess | Cassandra West
Real Heroes Fly