Dear Editor,
Each summer a plague of teenage Mormon crickets descends upon campus in a swarm and leave a wake of pestilence and destruction. EFY was once intended as an opportunity for upstanding LDS youth to gather and celebrate common values and standards. It has now become a one-week free-for-all, where teenagers forsake dignity and maturity in a spring break-style escape from parental supervision.
On June 4, two EFY participants were arrested on possession of marijuana and sent home. Two other adolescents were evicted on July 11 when they were caught stealing from the BYU Bookstore.
As EFY begins, the Police Beat inexplicably begins to swell with reports of anonymous crimes — some petty and silly, others destructive and harmful. Some examples include prank phone calls, broken windows, joyrides in campus golf carts, pulled fire alarms and necking at the carillon bell tower.
During EFY, the WSC begins to feel more like a high school cafeteria than a university student center. EFY counselors actually have to guard the elevators and Bookstore to contain the swarm, and in their zeal to restrain the masses unnecessarily harass tuition-paying students. Also, forget about eating in the cafeteria, going bowling, or getting a Jamba Juice — it just isn’t going to happen.
Can anything be done to stop this scourge? Probably not. Perhaps BYU students should remember EFY as: Evade the Ferocious Youth. Short of chicken wire and electric proximity collars all we can do is pray for giant seagulls to come and rescue us again.
Benjamin C. Rich
Hampshire, Ill.
Steven A. Lowder
Huntsville, Ala.
Daniel R. Holmgren
Bountiful, Davis
Joshua L. Benson
Las Vegas, Nev.
