 | |
| Type | Online daily student newspaper |
|---|---|
| Format | Digital |
| Owner(s) | Brigham Young University |
| Founded | 1956 |
| Language | English |
| Headquarters | 770 E University Pkwy, Provo, Utah 84604 |
| Circulation | 18,500 |
| Website | The Digital Universe |
The Universe (formerly The Daily Universe) is the official student newspaper for Brigham Young University (BYU) and was started in 1956. [1]
BYU's student-published newspaper was first titled White and Blue (1898–1921), later becoming the Y News (1921–1948). In 1948, the title was changed to the Brigham Young Universe (1948–1956), and in 1956 this was updated to simply The Daily Universe. The Universe is part of a larger news organization called BYU NewsNet, which was one of the first integrated (web, radio, newspaper, and television) news organization in the world.
The paper was printed Monday through Friday, except during school breaks and some holidays. It was distributed free of charge on BYU campus and is sent around the world to alumni and friends of the university for a small fee. [2] On January 12, 2012, the BYU College of Fine Arts and Communications announced the newspaper's move to digital. [3] Beginning in 2012, content would continue to be published online daily, while the print newspaper would only be published once a week. [4]
In 2017, The Universe partnered with HuffPost on a series called Listen to America to investigate issues facing Mormon millennials. [5] In 2020 a satirical website was launched by BYU students called The Alternate Universe, mimicking The Onion on issues related to BYU and students. [6]
The editors, writers, photographers and copy editors are all students, some paid, some reporting for a journalism class. These students are overseen by a collection of school professors and other full-time staff, who help train students and maintain professional standards. The opinion pieces in the paper are overseen by an editorial board which includes student staff, professional staff, university professors and local professionals. Limitations on what the paper can publish has been an issue in years past with debate over content appropriate for the campus audience. [7] Student editors are required to avoid any topic that is critical of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church), including examinations of polygamy and segregation in church history. Rules about content were established in 1970 and forbade coverage of drugs, sex education, birth control, and specifically, acid rock music. One student editor said there were many spoken and unspoken rules about what topics were permitted. [8]
One of the paper's most popular features is the letter to the editor section, which routinely becomes a forum for campus issues or ideas. Police Beat is a popular ongoing round-up of eccentric reports to campus police. [3]
Brigham Young University is a private research university in Provo, Utah. It was founded in 1875 by religious leader Brigham Young and is sponsored by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
Jeffrey Roy Holland is an American educator and religious leader. He served as the ninth President of Brigham Young University (BYU) and is a member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. As a member of the Quorum of the Twelve, Holland is accepted by the church as a prophet, seer, and revelator. Currently, he is the fourth most senior apostle in the church.
Y Mountain is a mountain located directly east of Brigham Young University (BYU) in Provo, Utah, United States. The Slide Canyon, or Y Mountain Trail, leads to a large block Y located 1.06 miles (1.71 km) from a parking area at the mountain's base with an elevation gain of 1,074 feet (327 m). This hillside letter was built over a hundred years ago as the insignia for BYU. For years the trail to the Y has been one of the most hiked trails in Utah Valley and provides a scenic view of Provo and Orem, the rest of the many cities in Utah Valley and Utah Lake. The trail is also regularly used by hikers, bikers, paragliders and hunters to access the backcountry in the Slide Canyon area.
The Church Educational System (CES) Honor Code is a set of standards by which students and faculty attending a school owned and operated by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints are required to live. The most widely known university that is part of the Church Educational System (CES) that has adopted the honor code is Brigham Young University (BYU), located in Provo, Utah. The standards are largely derived from codes of conduct of the LDS Church, and were not put into written form until the 1940s. Since then, they have undergone several changes. The CES Honor Code also applies for students attending BYU's sister schools Brigham Young University–Idaho, Brigham Young University–Hawaii, and LDS Business College.
Student life at Brigham Young University is heavily influenced by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The school is privately owned by the church and aims to create an atmosphere in which secular and religious principles are taught in the same classroom.
Richard Olsen Cowan is a historian of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and a former professor in the Church History Department of Brigham Young University (BYU). He was one of the longest-serving BYU faculty and the longest-serving member of the Church History Department ever.
The L. Tom Perry Special Collections is the special collections department of Brigham Young University (BYU)'s Harold B. Lee Library in Provo, Utah. Founded in 1957 with 1,000 books and 50 manuscript collections, as of 2016 the Library's special collections contained over 300,000 books, 11,000 manuscript collections, and over 2.5 million photographs, among many other rare and unique research materials. Since its inception, the special collections have been housed in numerous places including the crawl space of a university building and a wholesale grocery warehouse. Since 2016, the special collections have been located on the first floor of the Harold B. Lee Library and is considered to hold "the finest collection of rare books in the Intermountain West and the second finest Mormon collection in existence".
The Brigham Young University Student Service Association (BYUSA) is the official student association at Brigham Young University (BYU), located in Provo, Utah. Student government appeared at BYU as early as the 1900s. Throughout its existence, the student government took different forms. Up until 1933, the student government association was known as the student body, after which it was known as the Associated Students of Brigham Young University (ASBYU). During its early history the student body sought to provide students with campus events and forms of entertainment for its students; however, with the transition to ASBYU, the organization sought to not only provide for the social life of students but also seek to advocate for their needs. The structure of modern BYUSA includes a president and executive vice-president as well as four area vice-presidents in charge of a distinct sect of BYUSA which include Experiences, Clubs, Student Advisory Council, and Student Honor.
The Brigham Young University (BYU) College of Fine Arts and Communications (CFAC) is one of the nine colleges at the university, a private institution operated by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and located in Provo, Utah. Founded in 1925, the college has grown from a small college of the arts with minimal faculty and only 100 students to the second largest college on campus.
BYU Magazine is the alumni magazine of Brigham Young University (BYU) in Provo, Utah, United States. It is published quarterly and is edited by Peter B. Gardner.
The Ryde is a bus service that provides transportation to the Brigham Young University (BYU) community in Provo, Utah, United States. The service is owned and operated by Student Movement, Inc. (SMI) and operates under the brand, "The Ryde". Although The Ryde began as a limited service paid shuttle bus, but the fall of 2015 it expanded to limited-service bus routes that are free to BYU students.
McKay Coppins is an American journalist and author who is a staff writer for The Atlantic. In 2012, Coppins was one of the Forbes magazine's "30 under 30" media pundits and listed along with three other young BuzzFeed News journalists as one of Politico's "ten breakout reporters of 2012." He is a regular contributor to CNN and MSNBC.
USGA is an organization for LGBT Brigham Young University students and their allies. It began meeting on BYU campus in 2010 to discuss issues relating to homosexuality and The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. However, by December 2012, USGA began meeting off campus at the Provo City Library and is still banned from meeting on campus as of 2018. BYU campus currently offers no official LGBT-specific resources as of 2016. The group maintains political neutrality and upholds BYU's Honor Code. It also asks all participants to be respectful of BYU and the LDS Church. The group received national attention when it released its 2012 "It Gets Better" video. The group also released a suicide prevention message in 2013. A sister organization USGA Rexburg serves the LGBT Brigham Young University–Idaho student community in Rexburg, Idaho.
Students identifying as LGBTQIA+ have a long, documented history at Brigham Young University (BYU), and have experienced a range of treatment by other students and school administrators over the decades. Large surveys of over 7,000 BYU students in 2020 and 2017 found that over 13% had marked their sexual orientation as something other than "strictly heterosexual", while the other survey showed that .2% had reported their gender identity as transgender or something other than cisgender male or female. BYU is the largest religious university in North America and is the flagship institution of the educational system of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints —Mormonism's largest denomination.
The Harold B. Lee Library (HBLL) is the main academic library of Brigham Young University (BYU) located in Provo, Utah. The library started as a small collection of books in the president's office in 1876 before moving in 1891. The Heber J. Grant Library building was completed in 1925, and in 1961 the library moved to the newly constructed J. Reuben Clark Library where it stands today. That building was renamed to the Harold B. Lee Library in 1974.
The Seventh East Press (7EP) was an American student newspaper at Brigham Young University (BYU) in Utah that published 29 issues from October 6, 1981, to April 1, 1983. Its peak was 4,000 copies. The newspaper was banned from being sold on campus in February 1983 after publishing an interview with Sterling M. McMurrin, a former institute teacher of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints who stated that he never literally believed in the Book of Mormon. Afterwards, the 7EP's sales notably decreased, and it ceased publication later that year. Several contributors had their faithfulness questioned by their local leadership at the request of LDS Church leader Mark E. Petersen.
Below is a timeline of major events, media, and people at the intersection of LGBT topics and BYU. Before 1959 there was little explicit mention of homosexuality by BYU administration.