2 BYU-I Professors fired, even though their Bishops claim to have endorsed them

[blackstrap]

The article does say that they assume that the reason they were let go had to do with their expressed attitude toward LGBT issues. 

[Hamba Tuhan]

I think their unquestionable loyalty to the Church is clearly manifest in their eagerness to whinge publicly in the pages of the Salt Lake Tribune.

Edited November 29, 2022 by Hamba Tuhan

[CV75]

On 11/28/2022 at 4:26 PM, Snodgrassian said:

https://www.sltrib.com/religion/2022/11/28/byu-i-instructors-fired-failing/

I wonder if there are different standards at BYU-I or if other CES employees will lose their endorsements as well. I can't imagine these are the only 2 (from the same University) that had their Bishop's endorsement overruled. 

I do not envy the Universities/CES in trying to determine where the line is. Academics is a place to challenge ideas/thoughts/status quo, but at some institutions, the boundaries of the discourse are narrower than others, and schools like BYU have the right to dictate that as long as students continue to enroll.

The denial of ecclesiastical endorsement may have nothing to do with ideas/thoughts at all.

[The Nehor]

6 hours ago, Arthur Vandelay said:

Wait, someone invented a way to transfer knowledge directly into someone’s brain but built it to only take old Atari games?

Not the format I would have chosen.

Edit: Oh, do you have Adventure? I loved that game!

Edited November 30, 2022 by The Nehor

[The Nehor]

1 hour ago, Hamba Tuhan said:

I think their unquestionable loyalty to the Church is clearly manifest in their eagerness to whinge publicly in the pages of the Salt Lake Tribune.

Good believing members would have bottled up their rage over being fired in a very weird and unprofessional way and pushed that anger deep down inside them where it will never bother anyone again.

Edited November 30, 2022 by The Nehor

[SeekingUnderstanding]

21 minutes ago, The Nehor said:

Good believing members would have bottled up their rage over being fired in a very weird and unprofessional way and pushed that anger deep down inside them where it will never bother anyone again.

Remember when Dan Peterson didn’t lose his job, but was released from a certain aspect of it? He didn’t complain to anyone, I’m pretty sure. 

[OGHoosier]

6 minutes ago, SeekingUnderstanding said:

Remember when Dan Peterson didn’t lose his job, but was released from a certain aspect of it? He didn’t complain to anyone, I’m pretty sure. 

My memory of those events is foggy, so I can't be certain, but I don't recall him protesting the events in a forum notoriously opposed to his former employer.

[smac97]

2 hours ago, Hamba Tuhan said:

I think their unquestionable loyalty to the Church is clearly manifest in their eagerness to whinge publicly in the pages of the Salt Lake Tribune.

Devotion to the Restored Gospel and the Church that houses it?  How gauche!  How very déclassé!  

 

-Smac

[Kenngo1969]

1 hour ago, The Nehor said:

Good believing members would have bottled up their rage over being fired in a very weird and unprofessional way and pushed that anger deep down inside them where it will never bother anyone again.

 

54 minutes ago, SeekingUnderstanding said:

Remember when Dan Peterson didn’t lose his job, but was released from a certain aspect of it? He didn’t complain to anyone, I’m pretty sure. 

 

44 minutes ago, OGHoosier said:

My memory of those events is foggy, so I can't be certain, but I don't recall him protesting the events in a forum notoriously opposed to his former employer.

@OGHoosier

Your response is deserving of more than the single rep point I was able to give it.

Thanks,

-Ken

[Calm]

I can understand the impulse of desiring to know and believing the only way to find out was to make a stink about it.  I can’t go back and reread it, but my memory said one had the option to appeal and they might have learned that way, but they had lost the desire to work there, feeling betrayed.

So this might be the only way they may find out without having to jump through too many hoops. (Even the bishop couldn’t find out if it was his endorsement).

I would hope nobody equates the BYUs with the Church myself.

Edited November 30, 2022 by Calm

[ksfisher]

1 hour ago, The Nehor said:

Good believing members would have bottled up their rage over being fired in a very weird and unprofessional way and pushed that anger deep down inside them where it will never bother anyone again.

I’ve been fired before.  I’ve been laid off.  It never entered my mind to go to the newspaper.  

So why would these people go to the newspaper?

[Tacenda]

27 minutes ago, Calm said:

I can understand the impulse of desiring to know and believing the only way to find out was to make a stink about it.  I can’t go back and reread it, but my memory said one had the option to appeal and they might have learned that way, but they had lost the desire to work there, feeling betrayed.

So this might be the only way they may find out without having to jump through too many hoops. (Even the bishop couldn’t find out if it was his endorsement).

I would hope nobody equates the BYUs with the Church myself.

You don't have to answer but how does your husband feel about this? Didn't he work for BYU, apologize if wrong or being nosy.

[Calm]

20 minutes ago, Tacenda said:

You don't have to answer but how does your husband feel about this? Didn't he work for BYU, apologize if wrong or being nosy.

UVU, its neighbor. I haven’t asked him yet. Maybe later. 

[SeekingUnderstanding]

46 minutes ago, ksfisher said:

I’ve been fired before.

Did they tell you why?

[SeekingUnderstanding]

2 hours ago, OGHoosier said:

My memory of those events is foggy, so I can't be certain, but I don't recall him protesting the events in a forum notoriously opposed to his former employer.

So it’s okay to complain about your employer to high heaven and for years, as long as it’s not to the tribune 😂

[OGHoosier]

1 hour ago, SeekingUnderstanding said:

So it’s okay to complain about your employer to high heaven and for years, as long as it’s not to the tribune 😂

One's choice of audience is itself part of the communication. 

[SeekingUnderstanding]

13 minutes ago, OGHoosier said:

One's choice of audience is itself part of the communication. 

Hardly. Both complained where they thought they would find sympathetic ears. 

[bsjkki]

2 hours ago, Calm said:

I can understand the impulse of desiring to know and believing the only way to find out was to make a stink about it.  I can’t go back and reread it, but my memory said one had the option to appeal and they might have learned that way, but they had lost the desire to work there, feeling betrayed.

So this might be the only way they may find out without having to jump through too many hoops. (Even the bishop couldn’t find out if it was his endorsement).

I would hope nobody equates the BYUs with the Church myself.

No one should equate the BYU’s with the church? My mother in law often says this. She worked at BYU. But, isn’t it sad we can’t? 
 

Is it really that much different than when people say the ‘gospel’ is true but the people are not. Sometimes, I think this is a big cop out excusing bad behavior. 
 

I think many view the BYU’s as an extension of the church. I’m sure many students make no distinction.

[The Nehor]

3 hours ago, ksfisher said:

I’ve been fired before.  I’ve been laid off.  It never entered my mind to go to the newspaper.  

So why would these people go to the newspaper?

This would be more akin to losing your job at a defense contractor because your security clearance was pulled and no one will tell you why. Not just being let go because they need to cut back staff or you weren’t a good fit. It is more personal while ironically the method of firing was particularly impersonal.

[ksfisher]

11 hours ago, SeekingUnderstanding said:

Did they tell you why?

Yes, but even if they hadn’t I can’t see myself going to a newspaper to complain about it. 

[ksfisher]

9 hours ago, SeekingUnderstanding said:

Hardly. Both complained where they thought they would find sympathetic ears. 

Both complained to a newspaper that is historicity antagonistic to the church that they profess to believe in. That would seem ironic. 
 

Did either think they would get their job back after their stories appeared in the SL Tribune?  I doubt it.  So why go to the Tribune other than as a form of revenge?

[BlueDreams]

9 hours ago, bsjkki said:

No one should equate the BYU’s with the church? My mother in law often says this. She worked at BYU. But, isn’t it sad we can’t? 
 

Is it really that much different than when people say the ‘gospel’ is true but the people are not. Sometimes, I think this is a big cop out excusing bad behavior. 
 

I think many view the BYU’s as an extension of the church. I’m sure many students make no distinction.

I don't think so. I know that BYU wields a disproportionate cultural influence in the church.  But for one the 3 schools are very different from the other in many ways. BYU H is farrrrr more international/multiracial and the concerns/strengths it faces are likely going to be tied with its more international facing purpose. BYU I is just shy of open enrollment and located in rural Idaho. The people most willing to go will need to be comfortable in a very remote and distinct setting. It also (at least when I was in Provo) has a reputation for being more restrictive. Lastly BYU-p is the more competitive school and works to maintain an academic edge. The concerns it garners tends to follow those as well. While there I also noticed that it had a tendency to placate the vocal more  conservative end of what was deemed ok. Even if these ideas didn't fit the general body of members attending. The culture within the undergrad programs were also a little different than the masters programs. All of these schools overwhelmingly are serving a population around 18-27

If BYU is representative of the church I would wonder which aspect is most representative. If anything it would represent to me that the church isn't one entity really. That you have a group of people who hold a similar faith tradition figuring out how to both adhere to that while meeting the needs of it's people as well as it's general academic purposes...most of which aren't overtly religious. 

I think the church is perfect people aren't addage is false mainly because the definition of  the church generally entails the people in scripture. But with that to me it means the church here on earth can't be perfect because it incorporates imperfect beings into it's definition. And because it represents the whole, a single entity or branch in the church can't fully represent what the church is. 

 

With luv, 

BD 

[MustardSeed]

The following is my opinion. BYU particularly BYU Idaho leads with control. My God leads with love. The church is somewhere in between.

[smac97]

10 hours ago, bsjkki said:

No one should equate the BYU’s with the church? My mother in law often says this. She worked at BYU. But, isn’t it sad we can’t? 

"Sad we can't" ... equate BYU with the Church?

I think BYU is quite differently situated from the Church.  So while BYU can and ought to have echoes and proximities to the Church in terms of governance/administration, there also need to be some substantive differences in expectations and allowances.

By way of analogy, while I was serving as my ward's bishop, I was also working as an attorney focusing principally on foreclosure and eviction matters.  While my experience as a bishop (and my membership in the Church generally) certainly informs my approach to how I practice law, at the end of the day I was performing two very different functions.  As a bishop, I worked hard to be patient, accommodating, helpful, etc.  As an attorney, I worked hard to be ethical, but also to zealously work to protect and advance my clients' interests.  This often included foreclosing on somebody, and/or evicting them. 

For example, last year I finished up a foreclosure of a commercial property in Salt Lake City.  Almost exactly one year ago I received in the mail (at my home address) what looked like a Christmas card.  I opened it up and found a folded-up letter from the wife of the former owner of the commercial property.  She excoriated me for my part in pursuing the foreclosure, saying I had "destroyed" her family, ruined their Christmas, and left them destitute.  (This was something of an exaggeration, as I used the return address of the card to look up her house on Zillow, and found it to be valued at $1.2 million.  Plus the commercial property had been vacant and unused for some years prior to the foreclosure.)  She also told me that she had found out that I was a bishop in the Church, that I had brought the Church into disrepute by foreclosing, that I should be ashamed of myself, that she hoped I could not sleep at night knowing what I had done to her, etc.

I admit that I felt some twinge of regret as a result of these harsh words, but only for about five minutes.  Foreclosures are an essential part of our legal/financial system.  Plus, I had acted in full compliance with the law.  Plus the foreclosure was authorized by a judge, who reviewed and approved everything we did in the process.

Nevertheless, this lady conflated my being a bishop with my being an attorney foreclosing on real property.  I think that was, in the main, inappropriate.  My duties and actions as an attorney are certainly informed by me being a Latter-day Saint (we are, after all, taught to be honest, respectful, hardworking, etc.), but during the foreclosure process I am functioning as an attorney, applying the laws of the land in an adversarial setting.

BYU is an educational institution that, though affiliated with the Church, is not identical to the Church.  Hence students who don't pay tuition are not allowed to enroll.  Students who do not perform well in their classwork may not get good grades.  Faculty and other employees who do not adequately perform their duties may lose their employment.

10 hours ago, bsjkki said:

Is it really that much different than when people say the ‘gospel’ is true but the people are not. Sometimes, I think this is a big cop out excusing bad behavior. 

With respect, I disagree, as I think this sentiment is very important.  This sentiment is not really about "excusing bad behavior," but rather about guarding against unrealistic expectations of perfection.

10 hours ago, bsjkki said:

I think many view the BYU’s as an extension of the church. I’m sure many students make no distinction.

The Church bends over backward to accommodate members as they navigate life's difficulties.  BYU does the same, but has some constraints on those accommodations that do not generally apply to the Church.

Thanks,

-Smac

[Snodgrassian]

15 hours ago, CV75 said:

The denial of ecclesiastical endorsement may have nothing to do with ideas/thoughts at all.

But their bishops allegedly did not deny their endorsement, another group stepped in and overruled their Bishops... I guess it is possible that the two named in the article COULD have other issues in their lives that would remove their eligibility to teach at BYU, but this article doesn't mention it and their Bishops were not involved. It is not fair to speculate about such things. 

All the article shares is that their Bishops' endorsements were allegedly overruled.