Dan Levin

But Sourine, a University of Michigan senior, was there because she had to be. As one of four city and government reporters for Ann Arbor’s sole daily newspaper, she had biked through a steady rain between classes to take notes on the city’s plans for developing a new park.

“If we weren’t covering it, no one would know what’s going on,” said Sourine, 21, who also plays rugby and is taking a full schedule of classes this semester. “It’s really hard to take time out of my day, especially when breaking news hits. But a lot of people rely on us to stay informed — not only students, but the people of Ann Arbor.”

For more than a decade, The Michigan Daily, the university’s student newspaper, has been the only daily paper in town. After The Ann Arbor News shuttered its print edition in 2009 — and eventually its website, too — a staff of about 300 student journalists has worked hard to provide incisive coverage about the city’s police, power brokers and policymakers, all while keeping up with school.

Student journalists across the country have stepped in to help fill a void after more than 2,000 newspapers have closed or merged, leaving more than 1,300 communities without any local news coverage. And several young reporters have broken consequential stories that have prodded powerful institutions into changing policies.

A high school newspaper in Pittsburg, Kansas, forced the resignation of the principal after discovering discrepancies in her résumé. After writing an article about a school employee’s unprofessional conduct charges, high school editors in Burlington, Vermont, won a censorship battle against their principal.

And when the State Department’s special envoy for Ukraine resigned abruptly last month, a 20-year-old junior at Arizona State University broke the news in the school’s student newspaper, a scoop that gained international attention. The university’s Cronkite News Service has offices in Phoenix and Los Angeles, as well as in Washington, where this semester 10 student journalists are contributing to more than 30 professional news outlets in Arizona.

“We’re the largest Arizona-based newsgathering operation in Washington because we’re the only Arizona-based newsgathering operation in Washington,” said Steve Crane, director of Washington operations at Arizona State’s Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication.

Despite little training and no university journalism program, the staff of The Michigan Daily has embraced its vital role. Last year, in the wake of the #MeToo movement, it published a lengthy investigation that detailed sexual misconduct allegations against a professor, leading to his early retirement. In 2014, the paper published a major scoop about a sexual assault that the university concealed to protect a football player.

And on the first day of classes this semester, the Daily reported that the university had quietly stopped offering free testing for sexually transmitted diseases, prompting protests that forced the school’s administration to reinstate the program.

The Daily also covers issues that matter to Ann Arbor’s 121,000 residents, such as the inner workings of the municipal government, cuts to the county’s mental health budget, and a police oversight commission that was created last year in response to the shooting death of a black woman and the violent arrest of a black teenager.

“We’ve been given this mantle of holding the powerful accountable, five nights a week, with no department backing us up,” said Finntan Storer, 21, managing editor of the Daily. “It’s a huge responsibility.”

In a sign of how seriously the Daily takes its responsibility to fully cover the city, Maya Goldman, 21, was elected editor-in-chief only after she was able to name the 11 members of the City Council, along with their wards and party affiliations.

Ann Arbor became the first city of any size to lose its only daily newspaper when The Ann Arbor News ceased print publication after 174 years and many rounds of staff cuts. The Ann Arbor Chronicle, an online news publication that focused on city government, folded in 2014 after six years.

Today, the Daily’s closest competitor is MLive.com, a news website owned by Advance Publications that covers the state of Michigan. The company regularly publishes articles about Ann Arbor, including in a twice-weekly print digest branded as The Ann Arbor News, and it employs a staff of local journalists who cover the city’s government, real estate, police and other beats.

Unlike many college newspapers, the Daily has financial support — in the form of a $4.5 million endowment — to sustain its breadth of reporting, said Neil Chase, chairman of the university’s student publications board.

Metropolitan daily newspapers, most of which have suffered through annual cuts to their news pages and editorial staffs, would quite likely envy the Daily’s rare financial position, said Chase, who was its editor-in-chief in the 1980s and is the former executive editor of The Mercury News in San Jose, California, and The East Bay Times in Northern California.

“In a city of 100,000 people, you have to decide if you’re going to cover a City Council meeting, a car crash, or some other local news because you only have a few people to go around,” he said. But the Daily “has so many people, they don’t have to make those tough decisions.”

During the academic year its print edition, with a circulation of about 7,500, is dropped off five days a week at more than 100 locations on and off campus, said Tommy Dye, 20, the paper’s business manager. Print costs are mostly covered by advertising revenue, helped in large part by special sections, such as an annual issue that includes baby photos of graduating seniors and brings in up to $45,000, he said.

Still, as reader habits have shifted, the newsroom has embraced a more digital future. Its website fetches nearly 500,000 page views every month, and the staff has created four podcasts, including a weekly news podcast that includes coverage of city issues.

Like the local news industry at large, the Daily, which had a daily circulation of 10,000 copies only a few years ago, has struggled to retain print readers.

Across the United States, digital readership of campus newspapers has continued to grow while print advertising revenues have plummeted. The University of Maryland at College Park’s student newspaper, The Diamondback, announced this month that it would begin publishing only online in March, joining a long list of student newspapers that have cut back or ceased print production in recent years.

Other challenges facing student journalists include the temporary nature of their positions. Unlike their professional counterparts, student reporters and editors learn on the job, and they invariably move on after a few semesters, well before developing sources or truly understanding the complexities of their beat, whether City Hall or the financial markets.

“I’ve pretty much become the institutional memory,” said Crane, who has worked for Arizona State in Washington for nine years, overseeing an army of students who have come and gone.

Shelby Lindsay, 23, who worked as a reporter and camerawoman for Cronkite News in Washington during her final semester at Arizona State, said it was too easy for people in authoritative positions — such as police or elected officials — to ignore student requests for interviews.

“People didn’t always take us seriously,” she said, and “older journalists who’ve been doing this for years just kind of look at you like you’re not there.”

On a recent evening, undergraduates wearing shorts and Michigan sweatshirts crowded around long tables in the Daily’s newsroom, housed on the top floor of the university’s art deco-inspired student publications building. A cluster of sports reporters was watching the Washington Nationals play the Milwaukee Brewers. As deadlines loomed, bagels and cream cheese sat largely forgotten.

Reporters are expected to write their articles in the newsroom, usually seated across from their editors. “If it’s getting late we can breathe down their necks a little bit,” said Leah Graham, 20, the paper’s no-nonsense city and government editor, who was waiting for more reporters to arrive from a city planning commission meeting and other events around town.

Elizabeth Nelson, a member of Ann Arbor’s City Council who started a blog to keep residents informed about the council’s votes and agendas, said the student newspaper covers a lot of things that MLive.com does not, adding that local journalism is even more crucial at a time when many residents are getting information — and disinformation — through social media.

While Nelson said she appreciates that the Daily’s journalists contact her for comment and context, she said their lack of institutional memory can make their reporting — and the students who read it — vulnerable to political spin.

“Council members are able to frame issues in a way that’s compelling for university students who don’t necessarily understand the history,” she said.

Many residents simply wish there was more local journalism.

Edward Vielmetti, 54, who works for a technology company and has lived in Ann Arbor for 37 years, said he misses the days when he could turn to one source for the latest city news, including restaurant openings, real estate prices or school board meetings. An avid follower of local politics, he said he often attends City Council meetings, where he has met some of the Daily’s staff.

“It would be nice to not have them be the only reporters in the audience, and yet they are there,” he said. “Without The Michigan Daily, this town would be a lot poorer for knowledge about what’s actually happening.”

This article originally appeared in

When the Student Newspaper Is the Only Daily Paper in Town

ANN ARBOR, Mich. — Municipal committee meetings — the tedious minutiae of Ann Arbor’s local governance — do not tend to draw a crowd. On a recent afternoon, Katherina Sourine was among only a few in attendance.

To prepare for the demolition, which is scheduled for Saturday afternoon and will involve blowtorches and explosives, the authorities widened an evacuation area around the site, where a Hard Rock Hotel under construction partially collapsed last weekend, killing three workers and injuring more than 20 people.

With Tropical Storm Nestor forming in the Gulf of Mexico on Friday, city officials were racing to safely bring down the cranes and stabilize ruined structures.

“Now it’s crunchtime,” the New Orleans fire chief, Tim McConnell, said during a news conference Friday morning. “We’re moving as fast as possible,” he said, noting that the demolitions could safely occur within 15 minutes of the preparations being completed.

Since the hotel collapse, the cranes, which rise about 270 feet and 300 feet, have shifted, hindering recovery efforts. Only one of the three bodies has been removed from the site.

Engineers had initially hoped to demolish the cranes Friday but delayed the operation to ensure safety. The forecast Friday offered some reprieve, with weather models suggesting that New Orleans would likely escape the brunt of Nestor, which was predicted to track further east. The National Hurricane Center warned that a dangerous storm surge and high winds could arrive along portions of the Florida Gulf Coast by Friday night.

City and state leaders announced the audacious demolition plan Thursday.

“We have concerns about how the weather may impact the operation here and the stability of the two cranes,” Gov. John Bel Edwards of Louisiana said during a news conference Thursday afternoon. “We are working as hard as we can on a timeline that will allow for the crane towers to actually be taken down safely.”

McConnell of the Fire Department said on Thursday that crews would use small explosives to implode the cranes “in a methodical way in a specific location” so they fall vertically into rubble and avoid utility lines.

“Think of it like it melting,” he said.

As Tropical Storm Forms, New Orleans to Use Explosives to Topple 2 Cranes

Emergency crews in New Orleans on Friday were preparing to demolish two cranes that were teetering over a partially collapsed hotel project near the French Quarter, with fears that high winds from Tropical Storm Nestor could topple the cranes onto critical infrastructure and historic buildings.

GROVELAND, California — Tucked in the shade of towering Ponderosa pine trees, AG-6 looked no different from every other cabin at Camp Tawonga, save the transgender pride flag draped between wet towels on the porch railing. The wooden structure was essentially a glorified tent, with no electricity or running water, and it was home for about a dozen campers this month.

There was Grae Smith, a 13-year-old transgender boy, clambering hand over hand up a ropes course to the cheers of his cabinmates 10 feet below.

Falling asleep to a symphony of crickets, Jack Carlisle, also 13, didn’t care that his friends in the nearby bunk beds included girls and children whose gender identities stretch beyond the binary of male and female.

For the first time this summer, Camp Tawonga, a 90-year-old Jewish sleepaway camp nestled in the mountains a few miles west of Yosemite National Park in California, offered an all-gender cabin option to its campers.

Over the 2 1/2-week camp, residents of AG-6 splashed one another in the swimming pool, sang songs around campfires and slathered themselves in mud and paint before jumping in the lake. For many of them, Camp Tawonga was a rare respite from the outside world where bullying, social media and the feeling of not fitting in can make growing up so hard, especially for those whose sexual orientation or gender identity challenges societal norms.

“Here I don’t have to hide who I am,” said Jonathan Brunn, a nonbinary 11-year-old from San Francisco who stayed in AG-6 this summer. “I can play soccer and braid my hair and nobody judges me.”

Two summers ago, Jonathan and their twin, Sabina, were placed together in a girls’ cabin that renamed itself “All-Gender 1.” But once the twins’ mother told them about the all-gender cabin option, the siblings jumped at the opportunity.

“The girls’ cabin was cool but I wanted to be with people like me,” said Jonathan, who has identified as neither strictly male nor female since age 4, and long endured bullying before transferring to a different school.

Camp Tawonga’s decision to create the all-gender cabin — which this summer included both nonconforming campers and several who are cisgender — comes as an increasing number of American youth believe that gender identity exists on a spectrum. A 2017 survey by Gay, Lesbian &amp; Straight Education Network, an LGBTQ youth organization, found that about one-fourth of the 23,000 LGBTQ students between the ages of 13 and 21 who were polled said they identified as transgender or nonbinary, up from less than 10% in 2013.

And more than one-third of Americans who are in their teens and early 20s know someone who uses gender-neutral pronouns like they/them, according to a recent survey by Pew Research — double the number of those who are in their 40s and triple the number of those in their 50s and 60s.

The surge has prompted some schools and summer camps to become more inclusive, while lawmakers in six states have introduced bills to add a nonbinary marker to driver’s licenses.

But growing up remains tough for many gender-nonconforming youth. According to the GLSEN survey, 70% of the LGBTQ students polled said they had experienced verbal harassment at school because of their sexual orientation. More than half attributed the bullying to their gender.

Over the last few years, states have passed legislation prohibiting transgender students from using bathrooms that do not match their biological sex. And the Trump administration two years ago rescinded protections for transgender students that had allowed them to do so. In May, it proposed rolling back civil rights protections for transgender people, and last week it asked the Supreme Court to rule that transgender employees are not protected by a federal law prohibiting workplace discrimination.

Rejection can have fatal consequences. A study last year found that gender-nonconforming youths face a much higher risk of suicide.

Camp Tawonga aimed to address that by teaching all 1,400 campers how to unlearn social norms that often leave young people — however they identify — feeling like they don’t measure up to stereotypes around body image, masculinity and femininity, said Jamie Simon-Harris, the camp’s executive director.

Along with traditional camp pastimes like talent shows and archery, she said, every cabin participates in programs designed to build self-esteem and challenge misogyny, transphobia and other prejudices, whether it be writing love letters to their own bodies or cross-dressing to understand how clothes reinforce socially acceptable gender norms.

“With hate on the rise, it’s so important today for kids to feel seen and valued,” Simon-Harris said. “We allow children to see they don’t have to fit into a box, and give them the tools to become stronger allies and better activists back home.”

Camp Tawonga has a long history of inclusivity. Two decades ago, it started a special session for LGBTQ families, and in recent years began asking all staff members and campers to include their preferred gender pronouns in introductions. It also allowed transgender children to bunk in cabins that matched their gender identities, and added a “beyond the binary” campfire alongside separate ones for men and women. On Shabbat, some male counselors have worn dresses in solidarity with gender-nonconforming campers.

Rebecca Meyer, the camp director, said some cabins renamed themselves in previous years to be more inclusive of gender-nonconforming bunkmates, which prompted her to think seriously about trying out a dedicated cabin for all genders. She sent out a questionnaire to every registered family to gauge interest and was “blown away” by the positive response, she said.

The camp planned to have two all-gender cabins this summer, but found that many transgender campers felt so accepted in their girls’ or boys’ bunks last year that they did not want to opt in.

Still, even for those who felt accepted at Camp Tawonga, the pressures of the outside world were never far away. One camper, who lives in California’s politically conservative Central Valley, said his parents did not allow him to be photographed or identified because they did not want their friends to know they have a transgender son.

But at camp, there was a true sense of safety and freedom.

“The kids are really able to open themselves up without fear and just be silly,” said Kirby Woolley, 24, a nonbinary counselor assigned to AG-6. The diversity of identities helped the campers forge close friendships rooted in respect for differences, said Woolley, who uses a gender-neutral courtesy title.

The AG-6 campers, who are between the fifth and seventh grades, forged lasting bonds and made lifetime memories: shrieking in terror at the sight of bats swooping under the cabin porch’s roof; brushing the camp’s resident goats, named X-Box and Pippi; giddily racing to break the cabin’s record of 23 hugs in one minute (after asking for consent), as Woolley kept time with a watch.

On a recent night, the stars glimmered as AG-6 set off down a dirt trail, headlamps glowing, and made their way through the woods to the schvitz, a Yiddish word for steam bath.

Built into the mountainside, the schvitz was pitch black and sweltering inside, getting hotter as water was poured over lava rocks that had been heated for five hours. The campers sat beside one another, chanting and sharing how they wanted to release regret and anger from their lives, and let in pride and friendship.

Afterward, the campers partook in a ritual cleanse — dunking in the nearby river — and held hands as they howled at the moon.

In many ways, AG-6 was just as refreshing for Zypher Wildera, a 12-year-old cisgender boy from Santa Cruz who chose the all-gender cabin partly to get away from his brother, but more so because he thought it would be a really cool group of people.

Although he is friends with some LGBTQ children at his school, adjusting to his cabinmates’ various gender identities and preferred pronouns took a little time, he said.

“I call everyone ‘dude’ and some people in the cabin don’t like that term, so I try to be very conscientious,” Zypher said. “In boys’ bunks, and with my male friends back home, we’ll jokingly insult each other. But in this cabin, everyone tries to be as kind and generous as possible. It’s made me more accepting and I feel better about myself, too.”

The final shabbat at Camp Tawonga began with a parade. A Torah scroll was held aloft, and AG-6 campers, wearing face glitter and bow ties made from candy wrappers, ran to join the procession as it wound past American and LGBTQ pride flags waving in the evening breeze.

Inside the dining hall, hundreds of voices chanted Hebrew blessings, before crooning a degendered version of Sabbath Prayer from “Fiddler On The Roof.” On this night, it sounded like a mantra for Camp Tawonga: “May the Lord protect and defend you,” the happy campers sang. “May God always shield you from shame.”

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/22/us/summer-camp-gender-transgender.html" id="fe8692d0-c359-3f3b-abf2-7ce263875124">The New York Times</a>.

In an All-Gender Cabin, Summer Campers 'Don't Have to Hide'

(Summer in America)

The settlement, proposed by civil rights groups and Gov. Roy Cooper, a Democrat, could also end a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of two bathroom bills that thrust North Carolina into the epicenter of the nation’s culture wars over protections for LGBT people.

The settlement concerns the use of bathrooms in public buildings like state offices and highway rest stops. Left unresolved, however, was a part of the lawsuit challenging a moratorium on local anti-discrimination ordinances.

“It feels like a consolation prize,” said Joaquin Carcano, a transgender man and the lead plaintiff in the case. “Legally we can’t be punished under these laws, but this resolution doesn’t provide safety or peace of mind when we can still be fired for being who we are.”

North Carolina’s House Bill 2, which the Republican-controlled Legislature passed in March 2016, required transgender people in government and public buildings to use the bathroom that corresponds with the gender on their birth certificate. It also made it illegal for municipalities to adopt anti-discrimination policies intended to protect LGBT people.

The law drew nationwide outrage and unleashed severe economic consequences for North Carolina. Companies like PayPal canceled planned expansions in the state, and the NBA and NCAA moved events elsewhere. Facing the loss of billions of dollars, the state passed a law in 2017 that repealed House Bill 2 but maintained the state government’s control over transgender bathroom access and halted local anti-discrimination rules until the end of 2020.

The compromise, House Bill 142, satisfied neither side of the debate, with gay rights groups saying that it was barely a repeal and that it failed to explicitly protect bathroom usage by transgender people, while conservatives complained it backtracked on traditional values.

According to the settlement, North Carolina is permanently barred from using current state law to “prevent transgender people from lawfully using public facilities in accordance with their gender identity” in state government buildings.

The part of the case relating to limits on local anti-discrimination laws is on hold until the U.S. Supreme Court addresses the question of whether a federal ban on sex discrimination includes gay and transgender people.

“The mark of HB 2 remains,” said Chase Strangio, a staff attorney with the ACLU’s Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and HIV Project, which is involved in the case. “It’s not a full win. But it’s still a huge win for a community that has faced so much discrimination.”

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/23/us/north-carolina-transgender-bathrooms.html" id="318b7157-0cb1-381d-a4ff-4b9b57bf3e20">The New York Times</a>.

A federal judge in North Carolina approved a settlement Tuesday that prohibits the state government from banning transgender people from using bathrooms in state buildings that match their gender identity, ending a yearslong legal battle that prompted a divisive cultural debate.

North Carolina Reaches Settlement on 'Bathroom Bill'

But Easton, valedictorian of Brigham Young University’s political science department, put aside fears that he could be expelled and found the courage he said was inspired by a presidential candidate.

“I stand before my family, friends and graduating class today to say that I am proud to be a gay son of God,” he said last Friday in a commencement speech before 10,000 people inside the Marriott Center in Provo, Utah.

To his surprise, the crowd erupted into cheers.

“I am not broken,” he continued in a speech that immediately went viral. “I am loved and important to the plan of our great creator. Each of us are.”

Easton’s declaration — imbued with religious devotion and a call for social equality — came as the church and Brigham Young are wrestling with how to reconcile gay members of the Mormon faith. It came on the heels, too, of an academic year that has included the church’s reversal of a contentious policy that had condemned members in same-sex marriages as apostates and subject to excommunication, and in the wake of a grassroots movement on campus to change the university’s honor code.

Indeed, Easton’s coming out signals the emergence of a younger generation demanding that its views and identities be heard and embraced.

Patrick Mason, chairman of Mormon studies at Claremont Graduate University, said Easton’s coming out marked “a sea change” happening both nationally and within the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

“It shows how rapidly the culture is changing,” he said, adding that the speech highlighted how the shift was being driven from the ground up, with conversations happening today “that would have been unthinkable even five years ago.”

Easton, 24, was raised in Salt Lake City in a family that has been members of the church for generations. After serving a mission in Sydney, he enrolled at Brigham Young. As a student, he was a member of its Political Science Honors Society and acts as the Republican state delegate for his home precinct in Cottonwood Heights, Utah.

In an interview Monday, he said he had always known he was gay. He told his parents two years ago, but never expected to come out while at Brigham Young, where any exploration of his sexual identity could result in losing his chance to earn a degree.

While the university states that “same-gender attraction is not an Honor Code issue,” the policy prohibits — and punishes — violations like immodest attire, premarital sexual activity and homosexual behavior. “Homosexual behavior includes not only sexual relations between members of the same sex, but all forms of physical intimacy that give expression to homosexual feelings,” the honor code reads.

Despite his fears — and the advice of his parents to conceal his sexuality from the university — Easton said he began to change his mind a few months ago, inspired by how Pete Buttigieg, the Democratic mayor of South Bend, Indiana, who is running for president, had spoken about his faith and sexuality.

A turning point, Easton said, was watching the 37-year-old gay mayor’s speech in April to the Victory Fund, a group that supports gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender politicians, in which Buttigieg challenged Vice President Mike Pence on his opposition to gay rights.

“That was the first time I had seen myself in a role model,” Easton said. “Pete was just like me, Christian and gay. It gave me a lot of courage.”

But he was also inspired by something much closer to home: For years, the university has not allowed its LGBT group to meet on campus. At a rally to protest the university’s honor code, attendees observed five minutes of silence for gay and transgender students, a moment that cemented for Easton why coming out was so important.

“There were 500 people saying we see you, we hear you,” he said. “I thought maybe I can give the same hope to other LGBT students who are afraid.”

Easton submitted his commencement speech to the dean’s office for approval two weeks before graduation, which included the words of church apostles who were supportive of LGBT Mormons. Easton said he prepared for the speech to be rejected, but to his surprise, the dean’s office told him, “Go for it.”

The required theme was “celebration for all,” but he said he was anxious until he approached the lectern and looked out at the crowd that had gathered for BYU’s College of Family, Home and Social Sciences ceremony.

“As soon as I started speaking,” he said, “I knew it was exactly what I wanted to say.”

Easton began by congratulating his undergraduate classmates for obtaining rigorous degrees and praising those who had married or raised children while attending classes. He then addressed LGBT students, and others “who stood in the face of adversity to make our campus better for future generations.”

“You are seen,” he said to cheers. “You are loved.”

He heard the cheers, but expected his own coming out to be met mostly with silence. After he shared some of his own struggles, like surviving a hit-and-run accident with a deer that required hernia surgery and learning that his mother had terminal cancer, he said he had triumphed over “the quiet moments of pain and confusion.”

And then he came out, speaking the words that his sister had never heard him say. People cheered and screamed and clapped, and many rose from their seats.

In a video of the speech he posted online, Easton smiled as he waited for the applause to die down.

“Four years ago, it would have been impossible for me to imagine that I would come out to my entire college,” he continued. “It is a phenomenal feeling. And it is a victory for me in and of itself.”

Thinking back to that moment, Easton said Monday that he was overwhelmed by the vocal support.

“It was better than I ever imagined,” he said.

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/30/us/byu-gay-graduation.html" id="f065320c-8a40-392b-a1fb-4ed746d00f8a">The New York Times</a>.

At a university that considers same-sex marriage a “serious transgression,” and where its honor code explicitly prohibits “homosexual behavior,” Matt Easton’s very public coming out was not without risk.

'Gay Son of God' Cheered at Brigham Young

But Easton, valedictorian of Brigham Young University’s political science department, put aside fears he could be expelled and found the courage he said was inspired by a presidential candidate.

While the university states that “same-gender attraction is not an Honor Code issue,” the policy prohibits — and punishes — violations like immodest attire, premarital sexual activity and homosexual behavior.

Despite his fears, Easton said he began to change his mind a few months ago, inspired by how Pete Buttigieg, the Democratic mayor of South Bend, Indiana, who is running for president, had spoken about his faith and sexuality.

Those experiences inspired Draughon, after she had received her diploma last summer, to start a social media account sharing her concerns. “It was so hurtful, and I felt so alone,” she said. “I kept thinking someone has to feel the same way.”

Her effort has attracted many others with similar stories and grown into campuswide concern about the risks of the honor code being “weaponized” against students. At a sit-in last week and a large demonstration Friday on the Provo, Utah, campus, students called for changes to the system.

The very public and rare push comes as part of a broader effort within the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which owns the university, to balance doctrine with the more mainstream views of many of its younger members. It comes, too, on the heels of a decision earlier this month to allow children of same-sex couples to be baptized, reversing a contentious 2015 policy that declared church members in same-sex marriages were apostates and subject to excommunication — a major move that signaled attempts by the church to heal rifts within its ranks.

Empowered by social media and galvanized by national conversations around privacy, integrity and the #MeToo movement, the activism fueling changes in the church represents a cultural shift among Latter-day Saints, said Patrick Mason, the chairman of Mormon studies at Claremont Graduate University.

“This is a generation that feels that their voices matter, and they’re not always going to defer to authority,” Mason said. “They’re getting wins in the broader culture, and we’re seeing LDS leaders are not immune. In fact, the church is responding to the concerns of its members. Authority matters in the faith, but community matters, too.”

Draughon, 24, kept her concerns about the honor code quiet until she had left school, but now her Honor Code Stories account on Instagram has attracted more than 34,000 followers and generated nearly 200 tales of punishment meted out by the office charged with enforcing the code.

“Nobody talks about the Honor Code Office on campus because they’re terrified,” Draughon said. “The code has been weaponized. That’s not the culture you need at a religious university.”

Every student at Brigham Young must sign the school’s honor code to enroll in classes. The morality contract prohibits — and punishes — violations that include immodest attire, premarital sexual activity, beards, and the consumption of alcohol, tobacco, drugs and coffee.

Many students defended the code itself and said it’s one of the reasons they decided to attend BYU. But they also said the system ought to be more forgiving.

Carri Jenkins, a university spokeswoman, said the school was aware of the honor code discussions online. “These messages are leading to constructive dialogue between students and the leadership of the Honor Code Office,” she said in an emailed statement.

This is not the first time the university has faced criticism for how the code is enforced. After the university drew outrage for punishing sexual assault victims who were found to have violated the honor code, it implemented a new “amnesty” policy in 2017, granting confidentiality to victims and ending the practice of punishments for related infractions, like drinking or entering a bedroom belonging to a member of the opposite sex.

According to the Honor Code Office, all credible violations of the code are investigated, a process that includes university staff members reviewing evidence and speaking with witnesses. During the inquiry, an employee interviews the accused student, who is expected to respond to the allegation, preferably in writing. If the student is found to have committed the violation, penalties can range from a warning to suspension or expulsion.

Punishments are not standardized, the university said, but instead are based on individual judgment calls and reviewed by a committee.

Students said other consequences of violating the code may include mandatory religious worship, hours of community service and the withholding of diplomas, regardless of academic standing.

Support for change extends beyond campus and into the broader Mormon community. More than 22,000 people have signed an online petition demanding that the code be updated, and Mormon supporters have rallied around the symbol “Y?,” a twist on the university logo, that is worn on clothes and has been posted on social media.

On Instagram, students and graduates have shared stories of being suspended or expelled for violations such as kissing a date good night or wearing a two-piece swimsuit.

One young man, according to his sibling, killed himself less than two months after he was expelled on grounds that he had engaged in sexual acts with a former girlfriend. Another student said she overdosed on pills after she was punished for revealing she had been sexually assaulted. A gay student said he was asked explicit questions about his sexuality and sentenced to nine months’ probation after he spent the night at a woman’s apartment.

For her final violation, Draughon said an Honor Code Office investigator called while she was in Atlanta visiting her family for the holidays. The administrator wanted to know graphic details about a months-old intimate encounter with her ex-boyfriend, who had reportedly told the school they had broken the rules on sexual touching.

“She asked things like, was it over or under the bra, and where exactly did you touch him and for how many seconds,” Draughon said. Her mother, who was listening to the conversation on speaker, told her to hang up, but Draughon refused.

“I need to graduate,” she recalled telling her mother, “and if I don’t answer, I’ll lose everything.”

Students are expected to report themselves and others to the Honor Code Office. But until recently, few appeared to know how its enforcers investigated infractions, or that those who had undergone interrogations felt traumatized by the experience.

Until he read the honor code stories on Instagram, Keaton Hill, 23, a junior at Brigham Young, said he had little understanding of just how it had impacted his fellow students. He does not want the code to be abolished, but he noted that it is far stricter than the standards required to be a fully faithful member of the church. Its enforcers should recognize that young people make mistakes and prioritize atonement, he said.

“We sign this document and agree to the terms,” he said, “but we all fall short from the glory of God.”

A leader in Brigham Young’s student Democrats group who spent two years as a missionary in Virginia, Hill got involved this month with Restore Honor BYU, the campus movement campaigning for reform. He attended a sit-in outside the student center last week, which attracted about 300 people, and has participated in discussions with Honor Code Office officials.

The group wants more transparency and protections for students, and it has proposed a number of specific changes to ensure that the accused are treated fairly. Among their demands, the students want to bar the reporting of trivial offenses, like cursing or watching R-rated movies, a practice that some said fosters a culture of spite.

Other proposals include the creation of a student advocacy group that could provide information about Honor Code Office proceedings, allowing accused students to bring in a trusted third party, and changing the code’s prohibition of “homosexual behavior” to “homosexual activity,” so gay students are not penalized simply for their sexuality.

Many students pushing for change said they see it as a way to align the code — and the church — with their larger goals of social justice, particularly on the rights of sexual minorities.

“Currently at school, we finally said it’s OK for you to be gay, as long as you don’t have a relationship. I think that’s morally repugnant,” said Grant Frazier, 18, a freshman involved with Restore Honor BYU. “Threatening a student’s academic future because they are having a healthy relationship with someone they’re attracted to is wrong.”

Although the church’s recent decision to allow the children of LGBT parents to be baptized stopped short of ending its teaching that acting on same-sex attraction is sinful, the move was praised by its younger members and galvanized their efforts to push for change on BYU’s campus, which is attended by about 30,000 faithful students.

School officials have been receptive to the group’s concerns, Hill said.

“We’re going to be respectful,” he said of the students’ discussions with university officials about the honor code. “But we’re not really going to bend on anything.”

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/12/us/byu-honor-code.html" id="d3041ec7-ad75-3291-ac55-cd62149b6e6c">The New York Times</a>.

Brigham Young Students Value Their Strict Honor Code. But Not the Harsh Punishments.

As a student at Brigham Young University, Sidney Draughon committed two violations of the school’s honor code, which prohibits everything from sexual activity to drinking coffee. First, officials faulted her for wearing clothing that they deemed indecent in a vacation photograph. Then, in December of her senior year, an ex-boyfriend confessed that the two had engaged in “sexual touching,” which led officials to put Draughon on probation, preventing her from graduating on time.

The lesson: “People are like tape and once they have sex they’re dirty and can’t have meaningful relationships,” said Clark, now 15 and a freshman at a Colorado high school in the Denver suburb of Highlands Ranch.

While sex education classes are not mandatory in Colorado, proposed legislation that is widely expected to pass would bar the state’s public and charter schools from abstinence-only education.

Clark was among several students who testified last month in support of the bill, which would also mandate teachings about safe sex, consent and sexual orientation, elements that have prompted a fierce backlash from those who argue they pose an attack on traditional family values and parental rights.

The comprehensive sex education bill, which passed the House this week and is headed to the Senate, would make Colorado the ninth state in the nation to require that consent be taught. Washington, D.C., also teaches consent.

Colorado, with its increasingly liberal cities but strong conservative footholds, is a microcosm of the larger national debate over sex ed. Across the country, 37 states require abstinence be covered or stressed, while only 13 require sex education to be medically accurate, according to the Guttmacher Institute, which studies reproductive health. In seven states, laws prohibit educators from portraying same-sex relationships positively.

In many schools, however, the focus on abstinence goes beyond just warning children about sexually transmitted infections or unplanned pregnancies. Often, students say, teachers tear off flower petals or pass around an object like tape, a stick of gum or a chocolate bar that becomes increasingly grubby as it’s touched.

Studies have repeatedly shown that abstinence-only education increases rates of teenage pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases, while comprehensive sex education lowers such risks. But according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, from 2000 to 2014, schools that required sex education dropped to 48 percent from 67 percent, with half of middle schools and more than three-quarters of high schools focusing on abstinence. Only a quarter of middle schools and three-fifths of high schools included lessons about birth control. In 1995, 81 percent of boys and 87 percent of girls reported learning about birth control in school.

The Colorado legislation would require schools that offer sex education to teach the new curriculum or refrain from the lessons altogether.

“I’d rather they just don’t teach anything if they can’t be honest,” said Susan Lontine, a Colorado state representative who introduced the bill. Lontine, who filed a sexual harassment complaint against a fellow lawmaker last year, connected the bill to the #MeToo movement. Allegations of sexual harassment rocked Colorado’s legislature in 2018, resulting in the expulsion of a Democratic lawmaker accused of harassing several women in government.

“The sooner we talk to kids about what consent looks like,” Lontine said, “the sooner I hope a tide will turn so we’re no longer hearing stories of people being harmed.”

During a 10-hour debate on the bill last month, which was attended by hundreds of people, opponents condemned homosexuality, accused a Democratic lawmaker of being a pedophile and falsely claimed it would allow schools to teach explicit sex acts to 9-year-olds. Much of the outrage was spurred by social conservative groups, which sent emails to their followers that contained incorrect information about the legislation.

Lawmakers opposed to the bill objected to lessons about lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people, argued that sex education should be taught at home, and claimed that children removed from the lessons would be bullied. The legislation allows parents to withdraw their children from the curriculum.

The backlash follows similar protests nationwide by conservative organizations against comprehensive sex education. After California passed the Healthy Youth Act of 2016, which required school districts to provide comprehensive sex and HIV education, along with lessons on sexual orientations and healthy relationships, parents flooded school boards with accusations that the curriculum was “pornographic.” Last year, parents opposed to comprehensive sex education staged “Sex Ed Sit Out” protests in cities around the country, a campaign organized by national conservative groups.

Debra Hauser, president of Advocates for Youth, a nonprofit sexual health organization in Washington, D.C., whose comprehensive sex education curriculum is used widely in California, said the backlash in Colorado fits a pattern of coordinated misinformation campaigns that are used to stoke fear and are promoted on social media.

Hauser said she has been pleased to see teenagers and young adults mobilizing their communities on behalf of comprehensive sex education. “They want to take it into their own hands,” she said.

Caitlyn Steiner, 17, a high school student in Durango, Colorado, said abstinence was the focus of her eighth-grade sex ed class. But in her freshman year at a charter high school, she and her classmates spent four days learning about anatomy, birth control, sexual orientation and gender identity.

Perhaps the most powerful lesson she said she learned was about consent, including not pressuring others into sexual activity. As a result, “people were much more respectful and aware of healthy relationships,” said Caitlyn, who started a petition for the Colorado bill at the public high school she now attends, which does not offer comprehensive sex education.

The need for lessons on consent is a national issue. In Wyoming, officials said Monday that around 15 middle and high school girls reported being inappropriately touched as part of a “game” by male students who dared each other to touch female peers in their “intimate” areas.

In Pennsylvania, which requires that abstinence be stressed, one teenager’s activism succeeded in changing her school’s curriculum. Earlier in the academic year, Abigail McElroy, 18, a senior at Strath Haven High School in Wallingford, surprised a school board meeting with her account of an abstinence class led by representatives from an anti-abortion crisis pregnancy center. The district later announced a ban on outside sex education presenters, and she is now working with state lawmakers to pass a comprehensive sex education bill.

During her sophomore year, she said, the representatives warned students that simply holding hands or hugging would lead to sex, diseases and failed relationships. “It was incredibly degrading,” she said.

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/21/us/colorado-sex-education-in-schools.html" id="11970a63-5b4d-3ef7-aede-8e3d6d87f019">The New York Times</a>.

Last year, when Clark Wilson was in eighth grade, his sex education teacher repeatedly rolled a piece of tape on a table until it lost its stickiness, using words like “tainted” and “impure” to describe those who engage in premarital sex.

As Colorado Moves to Bar Abstinence-Only Sex Education, Teenagers Take the Lead

But in many ways, that is where the ideological similarities end. Larson, a dual major in biology and Spanish at Gustavus Adolphus College in St. Peter, Minnesota, does not oppose the legalization of marriage equality. She views climate change as undeniable, believes “immigrants make our country richer,” and disagrees with her parents on the need for a border wall.

Larson is part of Generation Z, one of the most ethnically diverse and progressive age groups in U.S. history. People born after 1996 tend to espouse similar views to the age cohort just ahead of them, the Millennials, but they are far more open to social change than older generations have been, according to the findings of a new report by the Pew Research Center. The findings mark a shift that could substantially reshape the nation’s political and economic landscape.

According to the study — which was based on online surveys of 920 youths ages 13-17 and nearly 11,000 adults 18 or older — only 30 percent of Generation Z respondents said they approved of President Donald Trump’s performance; more than half believed humans were fueling climate change; and 70 percent said they wanted the government to do more to solve the nation’s problems. Those views roughly mirror attitudes held by Millennials, and together, the two age groups may add up to a powerful voting bloc at odds with Republican orthodoxy, political scientists say.

“This should be an alert to the Republican Party as they think about generational replacement,” said Elizabeth Bennion, a professor of political science at Indiana University South Bend.

Each succeeding generation of Americans tends to be more progressive than those that came before, Bennion noted, a trend that potentially poses a long-term threat to the Republican Party’s power.

“If there isn’t a will to change within the party,” she said, “it could become permanently in the minority moving forward.”

Democrats of all ages tend to align fairly closely on major social and political issues, but the report highlights a sharp generational divide among Republicans. For example, more than half of the youngest Republicans surveyed said that racial and ethnic diversity was good for American society, a view shared by fewer than 40 percent of their Millennial counterparts, 34 percent of Generation Xers and just 3 in 10 baby boomers.

Young Republicans are also more likely to approve of same-sex marriage and accept transgender people.

Michael Schaefer, 18, a politically conservative college freshman from Youngstown, Ohio, said he was in the sixth grade when some classmates came out as gay, and had a number of transgender students as friends in high school.

“For over half my life, I’ve been shown the other side of sexuality and gender,” he said. “I don’t care about their sex or gender; I just care about the individual.”

More than one-third of Generation Z respondents said they knew someone who preferred to be addressed using gender-neutral pronouns, the Pew study found, compared with 12 percent of baby boomers.

More than 68 million Americans belong to Generation Z, representing about 22 percent of the nation’s population, according to 2017 survey data from the U.S. Census Bureau — a share larger than the Millennials’ and second only to the baby boomers’.

Contrary to conventional wisdom, Americans’ political and social views do not tend to drift to the right as they age, according to Kim Parker, who oversees research into social demographic trends at the Pew Research Center.

“The differences we see across age groups have more to do with the unique historical circumstances in which they come of age,” she said, noting that demographers have not seen a generational pattern of growing more conservative or more Republican over time.

Paulina Aceves, 18, a high school senior in Scottsdale, Arizona, embodies the complexities of her generation. The daughter of Mexican immigrants, she proudly identifies as a Christian and a Republican. But she does not support a border wall, nor does she believe the government should be less involved in American society.

“The right solution is definitely for the government to take a more active role,” she said.

As a self-described political conservative, Reagan Larson might seem to be a natural fit for the Republican Party. The 19-year-old college student from South Dakota grew up in a Catholic household that objected to same-sex marriage, and she remains firmly opposed to abortion.

Dan Levin

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