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From The Wall Street Journal to "The Daily Show," it's the question still creating a buzz across the nation: Did Brigham Young University go too far when it punished star basketball player Brandon Davies for having premarital sex with his girlfriend?

Or, as Ashby Jones, lead writer of the Journal's Law Blog, put it: Did BYU do the right thing "for behavior that might seem perfectly normal in the vast majority of college settings?"

Yes, say several experts.

"I give the school credit," said Donald McCabe, a business professor and expert in academic integrity at Rutgers University. "They laid out their rules, they were violated and they stuck to their guns. The student was forewarned and he knew what the penalty would be, and he took his chances."

The university, owned by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, announced Tuesday that Davies, the starting center on the nationally ranked Cougars and a church member, has been suspended from the team after violating the school's honor code. Davies' status at the school is under review.

BYU's conduct code is recognized as one of the most stringent in the nation. The university requires its 34,000 students to meet dress and grooming standards — beards and extreme hair colors and styles are taboo — and abstain from alcohol, tobacco, coffee and premarital sex.

"This is who we are, and most people that come to this school, hopefully all, understand that it is one of the reasons they come to BYU," Tom Holmoe, athletics director, said Thursday during a news conference. "We understand that people across the country might think this is foreign to them, and might be shocked or surprised. But we deal with this quite often."

In fact, just last year BYU lost two star athletes because of honor code violations: Harvey Unga, who set a football record for rushing, and Keilani Moeaki, a women's basketball player. The two, who had dated, both voluntarily withdrew from the school.

Spokeswoman Carri Jenkins said that in the past decade, the university's Honor Code Office had contact with between 1.5 percent and 3.5 percent of the student population, mostly for minor infractions involving clothing and grooming violations.

"It's very rare that a student is suspended, and particularly rare for a student to be dismissed," Jenkins said. The university's goal is to work with the student through education, communication and counseling so he or she is eventually able to graduate, "even if it means a little bit of time away."

The conduct code "may not always be understood or agreed with," Jenkins said Thursday, but it "is applied fairly to all students."

The emphasis on social and moral behavior in BYU's honor code is unusual, but it is not unique.

Oral Roberts University, a Christian college in Tulsa, Okla., also requires students to abstain from using alcohol and tobacco or engaging in "any illicit, unscriptural sexual acts," including "sexual intercourse with one who is not my spouse through traditional marriage of one man and one woman."

Baylor University, a Christian college in Waco, Texas, expects students to acknowledge that "human sexuality is a gift from the creator God" and its purpose is "procreation of human life" and strengthening the "marital bond in self-giving love."

Michael Josephson, an ethicist and founder of the Josephson Institute, called BYU's actions commendable.

"It's very important that we acknowledge and appreciate [BYU was] willing to assert that rule even though it has a significant impact on their athletic team's performance," Josephson said. "That's the religion, that's what they believe, and too many people are willing to compromise on beliefs to get other results."

For the LDS Church and BYU, the challenge may be "consistently adhering to this in a society where premarital sex is so accepted," Josephson said.

According to the 2010 National College Health Assessment, about 69 percent of 95,712 students surveyed at 139 schools said they had been sexually active in the past year.

Premarital, consensual sex might not get a student-athlete booted from a team elsewhere, but other problems sometimes do: cheating, breaking the law, harassment. Among recent examples: Washington State gave a one-game suspension to basketball player Klay Thompson after he was cited for marijuana possession this week and was still mulling further sanctions.

Many schools consider athletes public ambassadors and hold them to stricter standards than the student body, said Marie Hardin, associate director of research at Penn State's Center for Sports Journalism.

"At a lot of institutions, coaches have so much to do with that," she said. "Here, it's a case where a student-athlete is being held to the same standard all students are held."

And that, Hardin said, is "just common sense."

In a 2006 study of Big 10 athletes, Hardin found that when student athletes do run afoul of school policies, they are subjected to "saturation" media coverage that skews public perception of their behavior. Her study found less than 1 percent of Big 10 athletes got in legal trouble, which is "much lower than people might think it is."

"When people think about student-athletes, they might be prone to associate bad behavior with [them], and that may not be accurate," she said.

Tribune reporter Jay Drew contributed to this story.