A Black student at a Mormon university in Hawaii said he has been told by staff to cut his shoulder-length hair because it does not adhere to school policies, he said.
Kanaan VyShonne Barton, a student at Brigham Young University-Hawaii, told the Salt Lake Tribune he has been engaged in a battle with the school since September over the length of his hair, which he has refused to cut.
The university requires students to follow an “honor code”, which states hair should be “neatly trimmed”, although the code has no official guidance on length.
“Regardless of the length of my hair, I am spiritually involved. I am actively going to church,” Barton told the Tribune.
“I am doing well in school work. I am doing everything else. But my locs mean something to me. They are culture. They are family.”
He added: “I shouldn’t have to cut my hair to get an education here.”
BYU–Hawaii is a satellite campus of the Utah-based Brigham Young University, and is owned and operated by the Church of Latter Day Saints. Students are required to avoid sex “outside marriage between a man and a woman” and “same-sex romantic behavior” is prohibited. Alcohol and caffeinated beverages are also not allowed to be consumed, while students must follow rules regarding “dress and grooming”.
“Hair should be clean, neat, modest, and avoid extremes in styles and colors,” the BYU rules state.
“Men’s hair should be neatly trimmed. Men should be clean shaven. If worn, mustaches should be neatly trimmed.”
Barton said Jonathan Kalaonalani Kau, the vice-president for student life, told him in a meeting in November that he should cut his locs because they are “a distraction” and that Barton was “trying to push his own agenda and be defiant”.
BYU-Hawaii did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
As a compromise, Barton said he has begun to fold his locs so they fall above the collar, the Tribune said. He told the newspaper the locs are important to his family and background as a Black American of Afro-Guyanese descent.
“It’s a style that has been passed on for a long time,” Barton said. “People take pride in growing them. And I am one of those people. In my perspective, my locs represent strength and courage, as well as freedom.”
In 2021, BYU published an internal report which found that “many Bipoc [black, indigenous, and other people of color] students at BYU feel isolated and unsafe as a result of their experiences with racism at BYU”.
BYU was named after Brigham Young, the former president of the Mormon church. As president, Young formalized a ban on Black people from serving in the priesthood.
In 2013 the church said it now rejected previous teachings.
“The church disavows the theories advanced in the past that black skin is a sign of divine disfavour or curse, or that it reflects actions in a premortal life; that mixed-race marriages are a sin; or that blacks or people of any other race or ethnicity are inferior in any way to anyone else,” the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints said in a statement.
“Church leaders today unequivocally condemn all racism, past and present, in any form.”