Is BYU really a college?

If you follow Sportscenter as faithfully (it's the ubiquitous noise in our apartment) as I do, then you've surely heard of the recent plight of former BYU starting center sophomore Brandon Davies.  Davies was the third leading scorer on the #1 seed bound team and the team's best rebounder.  However, Monday he was dismissed from the team for violating his school's 'Honor Code'.  I'm not particularly worried about BYU baskteball because I have my own team to cheer for in the tournament so I could care less that without Davies they were dismantled by unranked New Mexico yesterday.  I am thinking about the honor code and what place it has in today's society.

The immediate question I ask is: Who actually follows this honor code?

If you ask a BYU student or alumni I think you'll get the surface answer.  Everyone follows the code, everyone makes a commitment when they arrive for welcome week their Freshman year.

Really? Not one student drinks pop or tea or coffee?  I don't drink coffee very often and I've stopped purchasing pop just because it's expensive, but I still drink it when I get the chance.  However I find it impossible to believe NO ONE is drinking coffee in Provo.  Many people I know live and die by their morning coffee.  If those students can do it, more power to them, and I have heard that the environment of BYU makes it easier to comply with the rules because it's a huge support group.

I understand all that but it still begs the big question, is BYU really a college?

How can someone follow the code
with girls like this at every game?

When one thinks of college you can't help but imagine huge parties, beer, girls in their underwear, drugs, all the stereotypical images that connote the word.  College is more of an experience these days than an educational experience.  I read a study in the Lantern that concluded students aren't actually learning very much more than how to drink and cope with other aspects of college life in their first two years of college.  Take that study with a grain of salt, I surely did, but regardless of it's accuracy, which is questionable at best, these lessons do have merit.  Although your mom probably wouldn't like it, she learned the same things in college, and her mother (maybe) before that.  To stay afloat in this society you need to have some of those basic social mechanisms that are best learned partying your face off every weekend.