Kim Clark, President of BYU-Idaho, recently made the following remarks on his Facebook page:

Good Afternoon! I had the opportunity yesterday to get out of my office to visit the Constitution Day display in the McKay quad. It was inspiring to see the flags and read the words of the prophets about the U.S. constitution. I am grateful for all the people who made the display possible.

While out and about yesterday I noticed that a few of you (and it was a few) may need a refresher or perhaps an introduction to three items in the dress and grooming standards. The three things that caught my eye yesterday were pants that did not make it down to the ankle (some hemmed off 4-8 inches above the ankle, some pants rolled up that far); faces of young men not clean-shaven; and shorts on campus (mostly BYU-I shorts – just remember to wear warm-ups).

You may wonder why the president of BYU-Idaho would spend time on these small things. Here is the reason: The dress and grooming standards are one of those small things on which big things depend. Obedience in the small things creates a spirit of obedience in all things. And obedience brings the blessings of heaven, to you individually and to the whole campus community. I hope you will help each other to be obedient in even these small, but important, things. I send my love and hope you will share this message with roommates and friends.

This created a bit of a stir, from blog posts soliciting comments and thoughts to news outlets in Utah picking up on the story.

On the most recent Articles of News, Richie and Brittney briefly had a chance to bring it up, but didn’t have much time to get into a good discussion on the issue. As a former student of BYU-Idaho, I’m a bit more passionate about the subject, the Facebook post, and the issue than most.

I graduated from BYU-Idaho in 2009, not that long ago. I consider myself someone who loves the university, and I was not impressed with President Clark’s post on Facebook for a few reasons, the least of which was the dress and grooming standards themselves.

First, I think it’s very telling when other BYU-Idaho alums are also just as embarrassed at something like this. There are a great many of us who loved our time there, who want to see it succeed, and while the dress and grooming standards might be archaic, it was something we just dealt with. That discussion is for a different time and place. But things like this make it very difficult for those of us who were normal and graduated to promote the university. Skinny-Jeans-Gate was ridiculous, and this is in that same realm.

Second, my experience there both as a student and as a representative of my current company speaking to the business students this past spring on campus showed me that it is a VAST minority of students who might fit the bill that Clark was talking about. If this becomes a systemic problem, sure, I guess I can see it being something on his radar, but if that’s the case, BYU-Idaho better be placing CEOs, Nobel-prize winners, representatives at each of the major Ivy-league schools and had better have the same admissions standards and reputation of a place like Harvard before publicly criticizing students for their dress and appearance, because if this is on his radar, I would expect that the academic functions of the university (which should be the major focus) must be world-renowned

Third, this is not a systemic problem. I don’t care if BYU-Idaho wants to have a stringent dress code – that’s their prerogative. But with this coming on the heels of some national embarrassments like Skinny-jeans Gate (and I’d also include the “Wounded Soldier” masturbation and pornography video that was handled very poorly), it doesn’t help the institution progress as a premiere academic institution. When I was choosing universities a long time ago, I heard that BYU-Idaho was quite down to earth, knowing that they weren’t as big and bad as Provo, and that many of the students of Provo had a bit of an arrogance problem. That was a big draw for me. Now? BYU-Idaho is positioning themselves as a university that is focused more on the hem of your pants than providing a superior educational experience.

This could have been handled much better and much more efficiently, but Clark seems to be quite dedicated to setting BYU-Idaho up more for their ultra-orthodox positions on non-academic matters than a university with a strong academic tradition that it’s alumnus can be proud of. The Dress and Grooming standards aren’t the issue (though it’s for another discussion at another time). The main issue was that the president of the university was focused more on the dress and grooming of the students, and I would say (based on personal experience) that it was a relatively small minority that stood out to him. But instead of focusing internally as an institution to brainstorm how the issue could be resolved (again, the fact that he saw it as something that needed to be pointed out in such a fashion is another issue) and create a cultural change at the university, he decided to go public on Facebook and make a very poor analogy to the importance of following the Dress and Grooming standards, when the University should be much more focused on the academic affairs of the students. That, and this causing so many of us graduates to feel a bit embarrassed that this happened is the much bigger issue.