The Daily Herald has lately been publishing nothing but stories about Julie Stoffer, the BYU student who appeared on MTV’s “The Real World” and subsequently got kicked out of school. This is part of our ongoing attempt to annoy our readers and get letters that say, “I thought the Daily Herald was a newspaper, but then I opened the paper this morning and saw another story about Julie, which makes me think I am reading the National Enquirer! I am 182 years old and would like to see more stories about puppies, please.”
In case you’ve been dead for a while, I’ll summarize what happened. MTV — which stands for “Music Television,” which is ironic, since the station no longer plays any music, so I’m going to call it “M”TV from now on — “M”TV has this show called “The Real World” — which is also ironic, because it involves impossibly self-centered college students living rent-free in mansions, so I’m going to call it “The ‘Real’ World” from now on — “M”TV — I’d better start over.
“M”TV’s “The ‘Real’ World” is a show in which seven strangers cohabitate for five months, their every action being filmed and condensed into dull, vaguely smutty half-hour packages to be aired later. BYU’s Honor Code specifically prohibits cohabitation, even when students are away from school. Julie Stoffer knew that the Honor Code prohibited cohabitation; she said as much before she went on the show. Then, after she cohabitated, she was tossed out of school for cohabitating. Apparently, this came as quite a shock to her and her parents, who evidently were unaware that cohabitating would be in violation of the Honor Code’s “no cohabitating” clause.
Normally, I would sympathize with Julie, and not just because she’s hot. I generally am not a fan of the Honor Code Office, where mere innocence does not necessarily protect you from being punished, and where the important thing is that someone has TOLD the Honor Code Office you’ve done something wrong. Whether or not you actually did it is irrelevant. The principle of “innocent until proven guilty” applies only in America, after all. (The same goes for the principle of “you have the right to face your accuser, or at least know who he or she is.”)
HONOR CODE OFFICE: A person whose name we’re not going to tell you has informed us that you were smoking crack on your apartment’s balcony.
STUDENT: My apartment doesn’t even HAVE a balcony!
HONOR CODE OFFICE: Oh, right, like we’re going to believe a crack-smoker. Where were you smoking the crack, then?
STUDENT: I’ve never smoked crack.
HONOR CODE OFFICE: Don’t play games with us. You’re obviously a crack-smoker. We can tell by the way you’re lying when you say you’re not a crack-smoker.
So while I support the Honor Code itself, the enforcement of it is often heavy-handed, failing to take the accused party’s word for it that they are telling the truth. (The office does have its softer side, though: A friend of mine was once falsely accused for 20 minutes of cheating in his American Heritage class, and after the Inquisition was over — this is absolutely true — the Honor Code Office man offered him a hug.)
But in this case, there is no question whether Julie is telling the truth. She did, in fact, live with guys for five months. Even if she wanted to deny that, she wouldn’t get very far, since it’s there on TV, watched nationwide by literally dozens of people every week. From the moment she unpacked her bags in that remodeled New Orleans whorehouse (every mansion in New Orleans was once a whorehouse), she was breaking the Honor Code.
Was she a good example of Mormon youth? Yeah, probably. I mean, she lived with six libidinous strangers for five months and apparently failed to have sex with any of them, so rah-rah for her. Maybe she can still get her Young Women’s medallion. It’s all beside the point. She broke the Honor Code, she got kicked out, now she’s a big “M”TV “celebrity,” and life will probably go on for her. As for me, I’m hoping for more Daily Herald stories telling me that it was really hot yesterday, because when it hits the upper 90s in a desert climate in August, well, THAT’S news.