The Campus that Says Go Away

BYU-Idaho, it appears, is continuing on its chosen path to be the campus that says “go away” to its host community.

Twice in Tyler Burgener and Tommy Bailey’s article “BYU-I Stamps on New Policy,” in the Feb. 7 issue of The Scroll, it is mentioned that the policy requiring a hand stamp as proof of payment to use sports facilities on campus was put in place in part “to keep community members who have not paid to use the facilities out” and to “filter out members of the community who don’t have passes.”

Nowhere, however, neither on BYU-Idaho’s web site at least under my powers of Google-fu, nor at either the Hart or the BYU-Idaho Center is the policy clearly explained, nor is it outlined anywhere I can see where these seemingly unwanted community members may go to get a pass or otherwise throw themselves on the mercy of the powers that be to get in a little walk out of the weather in order to stave off obesity and eventual mortality.

As an online adjunct faculty member, I believe I barely qualify to use the sports facilities on campus without having to pay an additional fee, but I have to confess if a BYU-I Center employee came up to me to ask for my I-Number, all they’d get is a stunned bunny look from me. My wife and I walk on the track at least three times a week, and I can recall once being asked by a pleasant-looking person holding a clipboard if either of us were faculty as we huffed and puffed along. I said I was, and that was the end of it. I figured they were taking a student survey or something. Maybe they were preparing to put us on a list of community undesirables.

I would hope to see this policy more clearly explained to the community at large so we may know whether or not we are welcome on campus. As it stands now, it appears we are not.

I understand that BYU-Idaho’s policy overall is that campus facilities are for student use first. Given the amount of money students invest in their tuition, it’s understandable that the university wants to make sure its facilities are available to those who are paying for them. But in the times I have been in the Hart or the BYU-I Center exercising (walking exclusively) I have not seen the facilities overwhelmed by unshaven, uncouth and unwelcome members of the community at large, who apparently are now going to be cast out of the synagogue due to the coarseness of their apparel, though their tithing money goes in part to build the campus that keeps pushing them away.