BYU NewsNet talks about MTC Training Resource Center Looking For Volunteer 'Investigators.' I imagine they'll screen carefully, rejecting (1) anyone who might ask tough questions, and (2) anyone who is female.
LDS Newsline has an article on BYU's Honor Code. The article actually highlights the Honor Code Office, the guys who do the dirty work. The head of the office is quoted as saying, "Most students at Brigham Young University list the school's moral environment as the reason they choose to support the honor code." How misleading--yes, students like the moral atmosphere, but it's the students themselves that create it. The Honor Code Office, in my experience, is not well regarded by students; it helps create the tattle-tale mentality that pervades the campus.
Meridian Magazine has a nice local history article, Church History Lives in England. It's about the purchase and restoration of a United Brethren chapel (nice photos) where Wilford Woodruff preached Mormonism to symapthetic English listeners in the 1840s. Apparently all the money came from local members and the Church had no direct involvement, financial or otherwise. The official line, quoted in the article, is that the Church wants local (read non-American) Saints to own their own history, but it just sounds like the Church being cheap at the local members' expense to me. Millions for US PR sites, but not one cent overseas--not a great slogan for a hoping-to-be-global church. But I'll give credit to the English locals who pitched in to buy and fix up the site.
The SL Trib has a story on two FLDS runaways. This story has so many angles I won't even try to comment.
Re: The playing investigators thing. Females are welcome. I've done it before and there are usually far more females than males. As for asking hard questions, it's not really that sort of thing. You're given a scenario to act out (I can't remember the details), but you don't really ask anything other than what is on your paper to ask.
Posted by: Tanya | Mar 22, 2004 at 04:09 PM
RE: BYU honors office- When I was a freshman, the Honor's guy came to Deseret Towers (V-hall) to give a little fireside about the honor code, etc. Then he concluded with a story that he passed off as an actual incident, but was a flagrant retelling of a story from the Reader's Digest a few months prior! (the story was about him walking in on a Coed in the dorms who was coming out of the shower, and there was only a washcloth available, so she covered her face and ran down the hall to her room. So not only was this false, it was a bit blue as well!) My respect for the Honors office evaporated.
Posted by: Scott | Mar 25, 2004 at 07:05 PM