Students Upset After Being Told to Date For at Least One Month Before Marriage
PROVO- In a stunning vote Tuesday, the BYU board of directors voted to pass one of the two controversial dating propositions placed before them. The Mandatory Familiarity proposal, a change that only allows temple marriage recommends to those who have dated at least one month or more, was passed while the Mandatory Maturity proposal, a ban on marriage or engagement during Freshmen year, was not passed.
When asked why only one of the two was passed, Board member Jamais Casado responded, “While we felt that people should get to know each other before they get married, we felt that the freshman marriage ban would decrease marriage numbers too much. Curbing marriage recommends for the first month will at least require students to vaguely know what they are getting themselves into.”
A Cannon Center spokesman applauded the failure, saying, “We could have lost nearly 30% of our regular business from sophomore and junior males who come here regularly to seek a future mate. Can you imagine what that would do to our revenue? You may as well ban freshman girls from going into the law building or near the business school.”
Reactions on campus to the news were decidedly negative.
Awnestee Burrbridge, of Pleasant Grove, an incoming freshman for winter 2014, was devastated, “I mean what if Mr. Right is in my first class winter semester? We would have to wait a whole month before we could get married.”
Peter “Priesthood” Williams, of Naperville, Illinois also voiced his concerns, stating that “waiting a whole month to see the naked shoulders of the woman you obviously want to spend forever with is really too much to ask!”
Paul Mitchell, a senior studying accounting, had a different reaction, “Wait. You mean people who are going on dates are supposed to be looking for marriage? I feel like I should have known this.”
How this will affect the dating atmosphere at BYU is yet to be seen, but as President Samuelson reassured worried women outside his office, “It’s still only a month.”