Three months after edited R-rated movies were pulled from BYU's Varsity Theater, a poll shows a large majority of students favor a return engagement.
A report by the Student Advisory Council submitted to BYU's administration found that 89.5 percent of students polled in an informal survey said they would watch an edited R-rated movie at the theater. Eighty-one percent of non-students polled said they would enjoy seeing such a movie.And, on a separate question of whether edited R-rated movies should be shown at the theater, 85 percent of students and 81 percent of non-students answered in the affirmative for a variety of reasons.
R-rated movies had been shown in their edited forms at the Varsity theater since the early 1980s. Since that time, many students and local residents saw the theater as the only place they could watch an R-rated flick in a PG form.
However, the movies were pulled from the theater at the beginning of the current semester in response to some complaints by students and faculty members.
The Student Advisory Council surveyed almost 2,500 students and non-students in two separate polls about the policy, said Kamie Hobbs, Student Advisory Council chairwoman. Two hundred thirteen people were contacted in a telephone poll, and 2,124 filled out surveys at a booth set up on campus.
"The survey was held in response to the experiment the Varsity theater wanted to conduct," said Hobbs. "It has been heavily debated and we decided to make it one of the issues we involved ourselves in."
The report was recently presented to the BYU administration, and officials have been studying the situation since.
"The Student Advisory Council presented their findings to the President's Council, and it will be considered along with other surveys conducted by the Student Life office," said Brent Harker, BYU spokesman. "Right now, we're just waiting for information."
"The students were in favor of showing those movies," Hobbs said. "The students feel they are able to see those movies and follow the commandments and the prophet's counsel. They basically said, `Hey, there are no good reasons not to show those movies.' "
Hobbs said she felt the administration responded favorably to the council's survey and she expects it to be a factor when the three-month-old policy is considered for change.