Readers’ Forum: September 15, 2015

218

ROC pass

BYU athletic games are great! We all love those couple of hours of being distracted from our studies and cheering for our teams. But recently, I’ve come to the decision that I cannot buy anymore Roar of Cougars (ROC) passes. Over the past two years, since the introduction of the ROC pass, there have been several changes to the student section for all sports. The first wave of changes came with moving the ROC into a smaller area for both football and basketball. The results have been disastrous for student attendance. If you’re a student who has camped out in line for a good seat for a football game, you can probably describe the feeling of watching the person in front of you saving spots for every person in Helaman Halls. If you are lucky to get a good spot in the stadium, you can probably tell many stories about fighting off people who show up 5 minutes after the start of the game, and want to squish in next to you. If you are a student, you know the whole student section becomes a mosh pit. Every year, BYU athletics makes the student section smaller, and every year students have to hone their skills at preserving 8 inches of space to sit or stand and watch the game. It doesn’t seem like BYU athletics cares about the student section, and I’ve decided to stop caring about going to games and screaming my lungs out in freezing temperatures when I have a test the next day.

Nathan Dyer
Encinitas, Ca

Re: Modesty

Moral relativism is really popular in society, but it is gaining a strong foothold in the Church, too. When I read letters to the editor that express sentiments like, “My modesty is different from your modesty. We each have our own definition of modesty that works for us and no one should judge us,” I shake my head. Modesty is not some elusive concept. We’ve known what the Church standards are since we read the Strength of Youth pamphlet when we were twelve. It’s really not complicated. We should know better. But when we try to rationalize around being modest and find any excuse for wearing less than we should, shame on us. And though men and women both need to be modest, yes, women are often singled out because the female form is so powerful. We need to stop fooling ourselves and pretending that we can wear whatever we feel like and no one will be affected, man or woman. Let’s take some responsibility for our power and stop whining about people being sexist. Let’s stop adding to the sensual images of women all around us in the media by wearing revealing clothing. Let’s be a light to the world rather than embracing its philosophies of permissiveness. We know better.

Maddie Senator
Cedar Hills, UT

I found a guy on Tinder who, in his profile, mentioned something like “you should swipe left if you think modest is hottest.” I swiped right cause he was cute and why not, and it turns out we matched. We started chatting, and I asked him about it. It was actually a subtle way of saying he wasn’t really Mormon anymore, but I started thinking about it anyways. No, I don’t think modest is hottest.

Modesty, in the actual sense of the word, has nothing to do with the specific length of clothing you are wearing. It has nothing to do with your shoulders or thighs showing, nothing to do with bikinis or leggings. Modesty has everything to do with “the quality or state of being unassuming or moderate in the estimation of one’s abilities.”

By saying “modest is hottest” you are going against the very core of what modesty is supposed to be. Covering up a bit more skin is to draw less attention to one’s self, and by trying to hold up the ideology that covering up is better, it defeats the purpose almost entirely. I’m not saying that you should dress unattractively. In fact, that can also draw undue attention to yourself. But dressing modestly is about dressing well and not flaunting for the sake of attention. Modest isn’t hottest, but it can be very attractive anyways.

Elena Hirst
Brainerd, MN

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