During the first pandemic summer and soon after George Floyd’s murder, the BYU football team held a players-only meeting.
The college students wanted to add messages to their uniforms or warm-up clothing like other teams and players. The issue was agreeing on a message to meet the moment without adding to the controversy swirling around Black Lives Matter, Blue Lives Matter or diversity, equity and inclusion.
“With their own inspiration, they came up with what was a perfect solution,” former BYU President Kevin Worthen said Tuesday during a panel discussion of past and present university presidents.
That fall, the football team wore, to national acclaim, warm-up shirts that said “We are one” on the front and “Love One Another” on the back.
“It was a great example of people receiving inspiration following gospel principles here on campus,” Worthen said.
BYU has become a unique “leader among the universities of the world” for four chief reasons, said members of the panel, which included contributions from all six living BYU presidents.
- The inspired religious leadership of its sponsor, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
- The application of gospel principles by BYU leaders, faculty and students.
- Character is placed above learning.
- People who share characteristics of gratitude, mission and service.
“What a privilege to have the Lord be the leader and a prophet to take care of his desires,” said one of the former presidents, Elder Merrill J. Bateman.
They also shared memorable stories.
The forum was billed as a BYU 150 Presidents Panel, part of the school’s celebration of its 150th anniversary.
Presidents Dallin H. Oaks (1971-80), who is now the president of the church, and Jeffrey R. Holland (1980-89), now president of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, participated through video clips from a recent interview.
Four other presidents spoke together on stage at the Marriott Center:
- Elder Bateman (1996-2003).
- Elder Cecil O. Samuelson (2003-2014).
- Kevin Worthen (2014-2023).
- Shane Reese, who became president in 2023.
President Oaks and President Holland each shared gratitude that their own undergraduate educations at BYU set forever their courses in their careers and their family and spiritual lives.
“It places,” President Oaks said, “the highest priority for its students and its faculty and its administration and its position in the community to furthering the ideals, the teaching and the values of the gospel of Jesus Christ.”
Worthen shared three key observations about why he finds BYU special.
One came from the way serving as president became “an opportunity to see the heavens open up, not only for me, but for members of the President’s Council, for faculty, for students being directed by Heavenly Father.”
Inspired leadership and gospel principles provide steadiness to the university, he said.
Worthen said President Henry B. Eyring — a counselor in the First Presidency and member of the church board of education — told him he would face moments of “apparent crisis” but be at peace because of the course that was set and maintained by the leaders who had gone before.
The second was the light BYU students and faculty bring to campus because they live the gospel of Jesus Christ, what the Book of Mormon calls the Plan of Happiness. Visitors regularly commented on that light. One asked if the university had a “happiness initiative.”
Third, he said he found that — as he did as a boy who thought BYU was as cool as Disneyland — BYU faculty regularly had remarkable stories about what brought them to the school. He said it reminded him of 2 Nephi 1:6, which says that “there shall none come into this land save they shall be brought by the hand of the Lord.”
Elder Bateman, who like Elder Samuelson is an emeritus General Authority Seventy, said he had studied BYU’s various departments and found that over the past 57 years, “almost all of them have improved their position in the United States by double.”
“I’m so proud of you, for what the faculty and staff and students are doing,” he said.
One of his favorite memories as a BYU president was a sacred one. He said the Marriott Center became an extension of the Palmyra New York Temple for two hours when the temple dedication was broadcast to 20,000 students there in 2000.
He said the massive arena was completely silent in the half hour leading up to the dedication.
“Near the end and following the dedicatory prayer,” he said, “20,000 students who were here stood and with white handkerchiefs waving, repeated the Hosanna shout ... The sea of handkerchiefs were like fields of grain waving in the wind.”
Elder Bateman said when the dedication ended, he stood and excused the students to leave for their classes. No one left. After waiting, he stood and excused them again, and they left reverently and slowly.
“Brigham Young University is a great university,” he said, “but more than that, it’s a great temple of learning.”
The panel’s moderator, academic vice president Justin Collings, quoted the late BYU president Franklin Harris, who said the university must put character above learning.
Reese said all BYU presidents look to the university’s students “with such a great sense of hope.”
He asked students to take away three lessons about vital, shared characteristics.
One, he asked them to cultivate an incredible sense of gratitude for family members, past teachers and faculty members who help them.
Two, he said they should develop a clear sense of BYU’s mission and see themselves in that mission.
Three, he asked them to develop “a deep desire to love to serve our Master, Jesus Christ.”
Elder Samuelson shared the story of building the Gordon B. Hinckley Alumni and Visitors Center, for which three donors pledged to raise all the money on one condition — that it be named for the president of the Church of Jesus Christ.
The church had a firm policy against naming buildings for living leaders, so Elder Samuelson approached church leaders with trepidation, but President Hinckley and the Board of Trustees unanimously agreed.
Some 70,000 people donated to the building’s construction and ground was broken on President Hinckley’s 96th birthday and it was dedicated on his 97th.
The panelist presidents received a long-standing ovation at the end of the forum.
The event also honored the late President Rex Lee (1989-95) and the first ladies who attended — Janet Lee Chamberlain, Sharon Samuelson, Peggy Worthen and Wendy Reese, as well as the late Marilyn Bateman.
