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April 30, 2007
Beck embraces expectations
John Beck, who was drafted by Miami in the second round of Saturday's NFL Draft, has already set a goal to try and fill the shoes of Dan Marino for Dolphin fans.
The BYU quarterback who surpassed Jim McMahon and Steve Young on the Cougar all-time passing chart is well-versed in the job ahead. That includes challenging injured veteran Daunte Culpepper and helping the Fish improve on a 6-10 mark and last-place finish in the AFC East.
A month of controversy over the decision to invite Vice President Dick Cheney to speak at Brigham Young University's commencement ended Thursday with more than 20,000 BYU graduates and their families, along with faculty and staff, soaking Cheney in applause.
There was no sign of disapproval inside the Marriott Center. Instead, the crowd cheered as Cheney arrived with President Gordon B. Hinckley of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. President Hinckley returned the greeting with a signature wave of his cane. The crowd cheered again when Cheney received an honorary doctorate of public service and cheered repeatedly during his apolitical speech, interrupting it 18 times with applause.
20,000 to hear Cheney at BYU: He'll get honorary doctorate
Air Force Two will deliver the vice president of the United States to Utah this afternoon, when Dick Cheney will speak to more than 20,000 people during commencement exercises at Brigham Young University.
BYU will award Cheney an honorary doctorate of public service during ceremonies that begin at 4 p.m. Cheney will arrive in Salt Lake City shortly before 2 p.m. and will meet with the First Presidency of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Salt Lake City at 2:30 p.m.
Last semester, weekly meetings of the College Democrats club at Brigham Young University drew three or four people.
The club shot out of obscurity this month when new club president Diane Bailey organized an on-campus political protest to criticize the record of Vice President Dick Cheney, who will be BYU's commencement speaker on Thursday. Bailey will oversee a second campus demonstration hours before Cheney speaks.
Womanhood will be celebrated during this year’s Brigham Young University Women’s Conference Thursday and Friday, May 3-4, at various locations on campus co-sponsored by the Relief Society of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
Wendy Watson Nelson, a former BYU professor of marriage and family therapy and wife of Elder Russell M. Nelson of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, will present the conference theme, “Thou Art Come To the Kingdom for Such a Time as This,” taken from Esther 4:14, in the opening session at 9 a.m. Thursday in the Marriott Center. Her address will be followed by more than 200 presenters and more than 90 sessions.
BYU-Idaho president gives Summer Semester opening devotional, teaches students the pattern of the Atonement
Elder Kim B. Clark, president of Brigham Young University-Idaho, gave the opening devotional address of Summer Semester 2007 on Tuesday, April 17. He taught students about Christ's Atonement and how to apply it in their lives.
"Think for a moment about your own life. Think about the paths you have walked. Have you felt the power of the Atonement in your life?" he asked.
Brigham Young University modified text included with its Honor Code last week, a change that clarifies the university's policy against homosexual behavior among students rather than against homosexual orientation.
BYU didn't publicize the clarifications, which were under consideration before the protest last month by the Soulforce Equality Riders, and university spokeswoman Carri Jenkins said the process is continuing.
The BYU quarterback derby couldn't have taken a more dramatic turn.
Head coach Bronco Mendenhall named Arizona State transfer Max Hall the starter coming out of spring drills on Monday, and Snow College all-American Cade Cooper is not only out of the race but will miss the 2007 football season with a serious foot injury suffered Saturday during his brief appearance in the team's final scrimmage at LaVell Edwards Stadium.
Cooper's injury is similar to the Lisfranc injury suffered by former Cougar and Philadelphia Eagle All-Pro tight end Chad Lewis in the NFC championship game several years ago. The injury is serious enough to sideline Cooper for a year and involves a tear of a major ligament in the middle of the foot.
“You mark that word, and from this school, I’ll tell you, will go men and women whose influence will be felt for good towards the establishment of peace internationally.”
These words spoken by President David O. McKay in the dedicatory address of the groundbreaking ceremonies for the Church College of Hawaii, February 12, 1955, have been heard many times since they were spoken.
Rare Protests at Brigham Young Over a Planned Cheney Appearance
The invitation extended to Vice President Dick Cheney to be the commencement speaker at Brigham Young University has set off a rare, continuing protest at the Mormon university, one of the nation’s most conservative.
Some of the faculty and the 28,000 undergraduate and graduate students, who are overwhelmingly Republican, have expressed concern about the Bush administration’s support for the war in Iraq and other policies, but most of the current protest has focused on Mr. Cheney’s integrity, character and behavior. Several students said, for example, that they were appalled at Mr. Cheney’s use of an expletive on the Senate floor in a June 2004 exchange with Senator Patrick J. Leahy, Democrat of Vermont.
Playing with energy: BYU students design toy that generates power
A team of Brigham Young University students has achieved a feat that has eluded soft drink and clothing manufacturers for years.
They have found a way to harness the energy of youth.
Six students from BYU's engineering department unveiled Tuesday a playground merry-go-round that generates electricity as it spins. The goal is to provide an inexpensive, simple power source for remote school houses in developing nations.
Most LDS students at Brigham Young University are too deferential to the Bush administration, a BYU professor said Monday during a panel discussion about Vice President Dick Cheney and the war on terror.
Professor Scott Cooper said many BYU conservatives refuse to question President Bush or Cheney on virtually anything, but he agreed with another panelist that much of the faculty is just the opposite.
Theme is “Thou Art Come To the Kingdom for Such a Time as This”
Womanhood will be celebrated during this year’s Brigham Young University Women’s Conference Thursday and Friday, May 3-4, at various locations on campus co-sponsored by the Relief Society of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
Wendy Watson Nelson, a former BYU professor of marriage and family therapy and wife of Elder Russell M. Nelson of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, will present the conference theme, “Thou Art Come To the Kingdom for Such a Time as This,” taken from Esther 4:14, in the opening session at 9 a.m. Thursday in the Marriott Center. Her address will be followed by more than 200 presenters and more than 90 sessions.
Some at BYU urge withdrawal of Cheney's commencement invitation
Some students and faculty on one of the nation's most conservative campuses want Brigham Young University to withdraw an invitation for Vice President Dick Cheney to speak at commencement later this month.
Critics at the school question whether Cheney sets a good example for graduates, citing his promotion of faulty intelligence before the Iraq war and his role in the CIA leak scandal.
Some students and faculty on one of the nation's most conservative campuses want Brigham Young University to withdraw an invitation for Vice President Dick Cheney to speak at commencement later this month.
Critics at the school question whether Cheney sets a good example for graduates, citing his promotion of faulty intelligence before the Iraq war and his role in the CIA leak scandal.
An invitation by Brigham Young University to the vice president of the United States to be the commencement speaker next month has triggered discussion and some controversy over the issue of political neutrality.
Whatever the personal views of individual students or other members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the invitation is seen by the university’s board of trustees as one extended to someone holding the high office of vice president of the United States rather than to a partisan political figure.
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints fired back Thursday at criticism of the choice of Vice President Dick Cheney as Brigham Young University's commencement speaker.
The church and the university also announced Thursday that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, an LDS Democrat from Nevada, will speak at BYU on Nov. 27.
An on-campus protest opposing the invitation of Vice President Dick Cheney to speak at the April commencement ceremony has been approved by Brigham Young University officials.
Boyd Ivey, for the Deseret Morning NewsSpencer Kingman talks to fellow BYU students Wednesday at a meeting held to organize next week's protest. A group of students met Wednesday night to organize the protest, scheduled for next Wednesday, as well as other possible demonstrations in the Provo area.
The location and time for the protest at BYU have not yet been decided, said BYU spokeswoman Carri Jenkins.
Several professors at Brigham Young University are joining a chorus of scholarly voices debunking the claim in a new book that Jesus was buried with his family in a tomb outside early Jerusalem — rather than resurrected, as the New Testament gospels say.
"The Jesus Family Tomb," written by Simcha Jacobovici and Charles Pellegrino, ranked 10th on last week's New York Times' best seller list in the nonfiction category. But the majority of biblical scholars who are familiar with the work say it is little more than a slick blending of heavy fiction with slim fact.
On paper, Apana Nakayama's collegiate baseball journey has only spanned about 10 miles — the distance from Utah Valley State College, where he spent his first two years of eligibility, to Brigham Young University, where he spent the last two.
But factor in an LDS mission and the knee injury that confined him to the dugout last season, and you've got a long, strange trip that spans seven years.
GORDON MONSON: BYU's Collie works on regaining skills
Brigham Young receiver Austin Collie and quarterback Max Hall were bragging over dinner Monday night, after their first official practice in spring camp, about their budding chemistry on the field and arguing about their individual athletic prowess off it.
The conversation started out a love-fest and ended in a near brawl.
Collie: "Max is throwing the ball really well. He has what it takes out there. The more we throw, the more in sync we'll be."
One and undone: Xavier comeback keeps Y. from elusive victory
BYU's NCAA win drought grew to 14 years on Thursday in the blue grass of Kentucky.
Unlike the last BYU try in 2004 — a loss to Syracuse in Denver — it wasn't a Gerry McNamara-type 43 points that killed BYU. It was a bunch of hops, skips and floaters inside the key by tiny 5-foot-7 Xavier guard Drew Lavender in the closing minutes that muddled BYU's NCAA hopes and lifted the Musketeers to a 79-77 win in the first-round of the South Regional in Rupp Arena.
"This was a tough, hard-fought game that could have gone either way," said Xavier coach Sean Miller.
Missionary work has grown immensely in the last decade, but there is much more to do, said Elder Quentin L. Cook of the First Quorum of the Seventy in Tuesday's campus devotional.
"I believe with all of my heart that we are on the threshold of the most significant missionary success to date," Elder Cook said.
It is a private religious school named after an important ecclesiastical figure. It has been to the NCAA Tournament approximately 20 times. It won a national championship, of sorts, decades ago. Even so, its coaches and players still find themselves explaining who they are and what they've done.
Only once in its history has it advanced as far as the Elite Eight. It is often referred to by a single alphabetical letter.
The clip of his famous dad's most famous moment at Brigham Young is always running somewhere.
It's either on the big video screen at the Marriott Center during a Cougars home game. Or it's on the TV before a BYU contest begins. Or it's running through his head.
Beyond a simple test of talent, the N.C.A.A. tournament is a caldron of pressure. And Brigham Young, more than any team in the field, would seem to have the maturity to handle it.
The point guard is 25. Two top reserves are juniors, but they are six years removed from high school. Five of the players are married, and a sixth is engaged.
BYU-Idaho stake president teaches students how to keep an "eternal perspective"
Brad Foster, president of the Brigham Young University-Idaho 7th Stake, gave the devotional address at BYU-Idaho Tuesday, March 6. He taught students how to keep an eternal perspective that "will broaden your mind, enhance your vision and deepen your understanding of who you are and how to excel along this great journey we call life."
Foster reminded students life is not easy and that, despite our trials, "Heavenly Father has a plan for each of us and he will help us accomplish what we need to do in this life to fulfill his will in that plan."
New BYU station to broadcast in Spanish, Portuguese, English
BYU Broadcasting has launched a TV station that will provide audiences in the Americas, Spain and Portugal with multilingual television programming from Brigham Young University and The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
The programming service, BYU Television International, will broadcast in Spanish, Portuguese and English and will carry educational, religious, cultural and sports content.
For those making the argument that athletics are cyclical, look no further than the Brigham Young and Utah basketball programs.
Each is where the other was.
Only two years ago, coach Ray Giacoletti's nationally ranked Utah team took a 12-game winning streak into the Marriott Center against BYU. Over the next two months, Utah would lose only to New Mexico before bowing out of the NCAA Tournament in the Sweet 16.
BYU Students, Rising Star Outreach Join Forces in India
After sitting in the hospital waiting room in Tamil Nadu, India all day, BYU student Emily Predmore was still waiting for treatment for Ashok, a little boy with tuberculosis. The doctor said they couldn't treat him because he didn't have insurance. But Predmore stayed and hoped for a miracle.
Ashok lives with his parents in a leprosy colony in Tamil Nadu, India, and could not find treatment anywhere because of his social class. Without Predmore, he would have been turned away immediately.
Yale was, in Robbie Cook's words, "Harry Potter's castle," a place where a straight-laced Del Oro football star/history buff with a 4.2 GPA could easily fit in.
Negative portrayals of children and families have led most Americans to adopt an inaccurate view of family relationships, said Kristin Anderson Moore at a lecture Thursday night.
Moore presented "Child and Family Well Being: A New Look" at Brigham Young University for the third annual Marjorie Pay Hinckley Endowed Chair Lecture. The program area director of Child Trends, a nonprofit research organization, emphasized the need for research that focuses on positive child and family outcomes to counterbalance the prevailingly negative focus on families.
President Shumway called to preside in Tonga temple this fall
BYU-Hawaii President Eric B. Shumway announced to his President's Council on February 2 that the First Presidency recently called him and his wife, Carolyn Merrill Shumway, to serve as president and matron, respectively, of the Nuku'alofa Tonga Temple, starting in fall 2007.
PROVO — They told us so four years ago this week, and their expert predictions about the aftermath of an American invasion of Iraq now appear downright prophetic.
In hindsight, what may be most striking about a guest editorial written by six Brigham Young University political science professors and printed in the Deseret News on Jan. 23, 2003, is that their questions about going to war in Iraq made little or no dent in public opinion.
Member of the Seventy encourages BYU-Idaho students to bring balance to their lives
Elder Robert F. Orton, a member of the Second Quorum of the Seventy of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, asked Brigham Young University-Idaho students to "seek and obtain the balanced life" in a devotional address given Tuesday, January 23.
PROVO — A group of 44 Brigham Young University students arrived in Israel on Wednesday ready to become the first to study at the university's Jerusalem Center in six years.
Classes are scheduled to begin today despite opposition from some Jews and against the backdrop of a power struggle between the Palestinian movements Hamas and Fatah.
BYU is preparing to announce that it will double — to 88 — the number of students admitted to the center for both the spring and summer terms, university spokeswoman Carri Jenkins said. The center has room for 170 students.
Brigham Young University's sober reputation is cemented in the national consciousness — more on that in a moment — but 2006 proved that humor, if not alcohol, flows freely in the shadow of Y Mountain.
The biggest campus wits included the president of the Board of Trustees and the president of the university. Since those men double as President Gordon B. Hinckley, leader of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and Elder Cecil O. Samuelson, of the church's First Quorum of the Seventy, students have strong ecclesiastical examples of drollery.
Without further ado, then, let's hand out the 2006 "Sammies."
Elder Jeffrey R. Holland of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints will speak at the Brigham Young University-Idaho fall commencement ceremony on Wednesday, December 20 at 5:00 p.m. in the Hart Auditorium.
Elder W. Rolfe Kerr, a member of the First Quorum of the Seventy and commissioner of the Church Education System, will also be in attendance.
Gordon B. Hinckley Alumni and Visitors Center Gets "Topped"
The construction of the Gordon B. Hinckley Alumni and Visitors Center reached a milestone during a "topping out" ceremony Dec. 8. Topping out is a term used by steel workers that signifies the last piece of steel being hoisted into place on a structure. For the GBHB the designated piece of steel is a pyramid-shaped roof section for the clock tower weighing 14,000 pounds.
"The clock tower is very appropriate to receive the last piece of steel," says King Husein, owner of Span Construction & Engineering, who, in conjunction with Okland Construction, has the responsibility of erecting the new building. "It will become the newest landmark on campus."
Those with ties to BYU or Utah like to think of their rivalry as one of the country's great hates.
It is, at least, one of the most unique, according to sports psychologist Dr. Keith Henschen, who works with Olympic teams, the Utah Jazz, many pro sports stars and athletes from both schools.
Henschen grew up in Indiana, schooled at Ball State and IU. He's been to an Ohio State-Michigan game and traveled the world in the name of sport. He took a professor's position at Utah in 1971 and is an LDS convert.
"It's just different," he says. "I've found that fascinating all the time I've been here.
At Brigham Young University, local artists currently are sharing wall space with some of the world's renowned painters.
"Baptism of Christ," J. Kirk Richards, oil on canvas.
The impressive and unique collection includes 170 paintings, prints, icons, illuminated manuscripts and sculpture from diverse times and creeds.
Local artists are Lee Udall Bennion, Brian T. Kershisnik, J. Kirk Richards, Laurie Olson Lisonbee, Bruce H. Smith, Ron Richmond and Kent Goodliffe.
They share space with Carl Heinrich Bloch, Albrecht Durer, John Rogers Herbert, Sir Edward John Poynter, Rembrandt, Ary Scheffer, Bernard Sleigh, Minerva Teichert and the Workshop of Titian.
Demolition day for two of seven landmark Deseret Towers dormitories at Brigham Young University could come during Christmas break after workers punched a hole through an exterior wall of W Hall on Tuesday.
"They are looking at the best way to bring the building down," BYU spokeswoman Carri Jenkins said. "They are doing some preparation work, but demolition won't take place until about the third week of December to the end of December."
The university has also decided to vacate the other five towers at the end of the school year in August, Jenkins said. The dorms will remain open for the 2007 Education Week, which brings more than 20,000 adults to campus from around the world.
To be successful in life, Brigham Young University students need to learn three critical skills, President Thomas S. Monson said Tuesday during a campus devotional.
He spoke of the three skills — preparation, performance and service — as gates that students must swing open on their own.
"Years ago, I discovered a thought which is true, and in a way, prophetic. It is this: The gate of history swings on small hinges," said President Monson, first counselor in the First Presidency of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
BYU students try out all-terrain wheelchairs in Dominican Republic
INSERT FIRST PARAGRAPH HEREA group of MBA students from Brigham Young University are conducting a marketing study in the Dominican Republic to find out if needy people in third-world countries want wheelchairs with aggressive mountain bike tires or if they prefer the traditional kind with solid rubber wheels.
"I am so glad and I say thank God you are here," said Association of Rehabilitation Director Peggy Batista as four BYU students and their professor delivered wheelchairs to a clinic in the remote village of Harabacoa. The church sent the first batch of test chairs in October. Three weeks later the students arrived to survey the users. "She is saying that she likes this one better because this rim right here feels better because it is thicker," said Steven Moser, a BYU student studying business administration who questioned the users with a clip board in his hands.
