Provo runs on an institution that asks 30,000 people to sign a code of conduct. If you have moved here, married into it, taken a job near campus, rented a basement to students, or simply had a neighbour explain that they cannot come to your barbecue on Sunday, the BYU Honor Code shapes daily life in this valley whether or not you have ever read it.
Most explanations of it online are either defensive or hostile, and — more usefully for anyone trying to understand it — most are describing a version of the document that no longer exists. It was substantially rewritten in 2023 and revised again since.
This is a plain account of what it currently says, who administers it, and what changed. No argument in either direction.
First, the thing almost everyone gets wrong
Your bishop is no longer the enforcement mechanism.
Until August 2023, the annual ecclesiastical endorsement interview — the sign-off from a local church leader that a student needs in order to stay enrolled — explicitly covered the Honor Code and the dress and grooming standards. In practice that made the interview a compliance checkpoint, and it is where the popular image of the system comes from: the idea that a bishop can end your degree over a beard.
The 2023 update deliberately separated the two. The endorsement interview was rewritten to focus on a student's spiritual life and standing, and the questions about the Honor Code and dress and grooming were taken out of it. Administration of those policies now resides with the university.
Both things still exist. A student still needs a current endorsement and still has to keep the Honor Code. But they are now two different processes handled by two different parties, and any explanation that has a bishop policing hemlines is describing the pre-2023 arrangement.
What it actually says
The formal name is the Church Educational System Honor Code. The same document applies at Brigham Young University, BYU–Idaho, BYU–Hawaii and Ensign College. BYU–Pathway Worldwide and Seminaries and Institutes match local church standards instead.
It is short. Eight commitments, which every student, employee and volunteer accepts by being admitted, enrolling or continuing in employment. In summary, they are:
- Maintain an ecclesiastical endorsement, including striving to deepen faith and keep gospel standards.
- Be honest.
- Live a chaste and virtuous life — which the document defines as abstaining from sexual relations outside marriage between a man and a woman, and states also includes abstaining from same-sex romantic behaviour.
- Abstain from alcohol, tobacco, tea, coffee, vaping, marijuana and other substance abuse.
- Participate regularly in church services.
- Respect others, including avoiding profane and vulgar language.
- Obey the law and follow campus policies, including the dress and grooming standards.
- Encourage others in their commitment to the code and the dress standards.
That is the entire thing. It fits on one screen, and it is framed as a voluntary commitment that becomes binding through enrolment rather than as a disciplinary schedule.
Point four is worth reading precisely, because it is the source of the most common visitor confusion in Provo: the document names coffee and tea, not caffeine. Caffeinated soft drinks are sold on campus. If that seems arbitrary from outside, it is because the line is drawn by a scriptural text — the Word of Wisdom — rather than by pharmacology.
Point five is applied according to a student's own faith; students who are not Latter-day Saints are not expected to attend Latter-day Saint services.
Dress and grooming: a separate, and much shorter, document
The dress code is not in the Honor Code. It is a companion policy — the CES Dress and Grooming Principles and Expectations — and understanding what happened to it explains most of the folklore.
The version people describe from memory is the old one: specific, itemised, famous for regulating sideburn length. The current document is four principles and four expectations.
The principles ask people to represent the Savior, the Church and the Church Educational System; to preserve an environment without distraction or disruption; to promote modesty, cleanliness, neatness and restraint; and to maintain an elevated standard.
The expectations, in full, cover two areas:
Dress should be modest in fit and style — the document offers dressing in a way that would cover the temple garment as a guideline, whether or not a person has been endowed — and should be neat and clean, with sloppy, overly casual, ragged or extreme clothing named as unacceptable. Accommodation may be made for athletic participation.
Grooming asks that hair be clean, neat, modest and avoid extremes in style and colour; that men's hair be neatly trimmed; that men be clean shaven; and that mustaches, if worn, be neatly trimmed.
Two things follow from this that surprise people.
Shorts are fine. The 2023 unification means modest shorts are permitted at all four schools. BYU–Idaho had been the outlier that banned them, and it no longer does.
Beards still require an exception. The clean-shaven expectation survived the rewrite intact. BYU grants exceptions for religious or medical reasons through a formal process, which is why you will see bearded students on campus and why that is not evidence the rule has quietly lapsed.
The broader design change is that the document now states principles and gives examples, and says explicitly that the examples are not the limit of the principles. It asks people to apply judgement rather than to consult a list. Whether that is more or less demanding than an itemised code is a matter of opinion, and people at BYU hold both.
The policies people mistake for the Honor Code
A great deal of what visitors attribute to "the Honor Code" is actually a separate BYU policy sitting alongside it. The main ones:
- Academic Honesty Policy — plagiarism, cheating and academic misconduct are handled under their own policy, not the Honor Code.
- Student Housing Policy — this is the origin of the visiting-hours folklore. In single-student housing, opposite-sex visitors are limited to common areas and are not permitted in bedrooms. Approved off-campus housing is contractually bound to the policy, which is why it shapes the entire student rental market. See finding student housing in Provo for how that plays out practically.
- Honor Code Investigation and Administrative Review Process — a defined procedure exists for how reports are handled and reviewed. The Honor Code Office remains the responsible office for students.
- Political Neutrality, Demonstration, Drug-Free School and Minor Protection policies — all separate documents.
If you are trying to work out whether something is a rule, the useful question is which policy — because they are administered by different offices with different processes.
The endorsement, in practice
The endorsement is the piece with the most direct grip on a student's life, because without a current one you cannot register.
It runs annually. Latter-day Saint students are interviewed by a bishop or branch president, with a stake presidency involved in some circumstances; mission presidents also appear in the church's own guidance. Students of other faiths go through a chaplain or their own clergy rather than a bishop. An endorsement can be withdrawn, and an expired one can block both registration and graduation — which is why the deadline reminders are a fixture of the BYU calendar.
The interview itself was rewritten in 2023 around spiritual life rather than rule compliance. Published examples of the current questions ask whether a student is striving to deepen their testimony of God the Eternal Father, His Son Jesus Christ and the Holy Ghost; whether they are striving to deepen their testimony of the Restoration; and whether they are striving for moral cleanliness in thought and behaviour. The framing is deliberate — President Reese described the wording as accommodating students at different stages of testimony development, asking about striving toward a testimony rather than asserting one.
One caution if you are researching this yourself. The four Church Educational System schools share the code but not every administrative detail, and their websites are easy to confuse. BYU–Hawaii, for instance, publishes an endorsement rule taking effect in July 2026 about expired endorsements requiring two levels of ecclesiastical sign-off, and calls its enforcement body the Office of Honor. BYU in Provo calls its equivalent the Honor Code Office. Do not read a policy detail off one campus's site and assume it governs another.
What happens if someone is reported
This is the part almost nobody outside the university can describe accurately, and it is all published.
Anyone may make a report, and the conduct in question may have happened on or off campus. The person reporting is asked to identify themselves. Reports go to the Honor Code Office, which at BYU sits in the Wilkinson Student Center and takes reports in person, by phone, by email or online.
The university may choose to investigate, at its discretion. The published process is explicit that this investigation is separate from any civil, criminal or ecclesiastical proceeding — a distinction that cuts both ways and that a lot of secondhand accounts collapse.
At the end of an investigation, the assigned representative reviews the facts and findings with a supervisor, and an outcome is selected from a defined ladder: no action, counsel and education, referral to a responsible person or agency, warning, probation, suspension withheld, suspension, or dismissal. Note that the list starts at "no action" and that most of it is not disciplinary.
A decision letter follows, summarising which provisions were alleged to have been violated, the findings and conclusions, the recommended action, any conditions for reinstatement in good standing, and information about the student's right to pursue an administrative review. Students may request to review their own file — including the decision, the final report and investigation notes — and may seek correction of records they believe are inaccurate or misleading.
The process is owned by the Student Life vice president, the General Counsel's office may advise, and BYU's published version carries an approval date of 28 October 2019 with a revision dated 26 December 2024 — a separate document, on a separate revision cycle, from the code itself.
It is not only students
Worth stating plainly, because most coverage frames the code as a student rule: the commitment is made by faculty, administration, staff and volunteers as well. Employees accept it by taking or continuing an appointment, and there is a parallel dress and grooming policy for employees. When people at BYU describe the code as something the whole campus signed up to rather than something imposed on the young, that is the structural fact they are pointing at — whatever anyone thinks of how it operates in practice.
How it got here
A short, factual timeline, because the recent history is the reason so many accounts conflict.
February 2020. Following the release of a new church handbook, CES updated the Honor Code and, in doing so, removed a section headed "Homosexual Behavior." The university announced the update without specifying what had been cut. Students found out by comparing versions, and the campus spent two weeks in genuine uncertainty about whether same-sex dating was now permitted.
March 2020. CES issued a clarifying statement that same-sex romantic behaviour was not compatible with the code's principles. The clarification drew protests, including sit-ins outside the Honor Code Office, and drew equally strong support from other students. The episode is the reason the current document states the point explicitly rather than by implication.
August 2023. The Church Board of Education approved a coordinated rewrite of three things at once: the student ecclesiastical endorsement, the Honor Code, and the dress and grooming standards. The stated aims were to adopt a principle-based approach, to unify dress and grooming across all CES campuses, and to align the endorsement interview with the ecclesiastical responsibilities of church leaders. The changes took effect on 30 August 2023. BYU's president, C. Shane Reese, described the endorsement rewording as accommodating students at different stages of testimony development, with questions framed around striving toward deeper testimony rather than asserting whether a student has one.
December 2025. BYU's published policy carries an approval date of 30 August 2023 with a revision dated 5 December 2025, and the parallel dress and grooming policy at BYU–Hawaii records the same date. We were not able to find a news release explaining what the December 2025 revision changed. That is worth knowing on its own terms: an explainer written from the 2023 announcements is describing a document that has moved since, and the current text on the university's policy site is the only reliable version.
What it means if you are not a student
If you are visiting campus. Nothing is enforced against visitors. Campus is open, the museums are free and worth your time, and nobody is going to stop you for a coffee cup. Dressing on the modest side of your usual is a courtesy, not a requirement.
If you are a non-Latter-day-Saint student. You are held to the same code, endorsed through a different route, and — per the code's own framing — expected to participate in your own faith community rather than someone else's. The practical experience varies enormously, and international students in Provo covers some of it.
If you are a landlord or an employer. The housing policy is the one that touches you. Approved off-campus housing carries contractual obligations that ordinary rentals do not.
If you are a parent deciding between schools. The code is a genuine differentiator between BYU and UVU, which sits four miles away, has no honor code of this kind and enrols more students. BYU vs UVU sets the two side by side.
Where to check, and why it matters
Everything above reflects the text published on BYU's policy site as of publication. Two habits are worth adopting if the details matter to you:
Read the current policy, not an article about it — including this one. The document is short and public, which is exactly why third-hand summaries of it are unnecessary and unreliable.
Check the date on whatever you are reading. Between February 2020, August 2023 and December 2025, this document has moved three times in six years. A confident explanation with no date on it is a warning sign, and a great deal of what circulates about the BYU Honor Code is a description of the 2019 version being passed off as current.
For the wider picture of the university this code belongs to, see the BYU guide and the BYU student guide; for what the first semester is actually like, the survival guide.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the BYU Honor Code?
Does the Honor Code apply to non-Mormon students?
Does BYU still require men to be clean-shaven?
Are shorts allowed at BYU?
Can you drink coffee at BYU?
Who enforces the BYU Honor Code?
What is an ecclesiastical endorsement?
What does the Honor Code say about LGBTQ students?