To the hordes of BYU-Idaho freshmen, I give you a word of warning: Stay away from the drama. Run away from it! Drama here is like the deadly fried chicken wing. If you bite into it, you will choke on a bone and you will die. That’s a promise.

I thought that by leaving high school I would be abandoning the islands of pettiness, materialism and popularity. As it turns out, if you allow it, BYU-I can be no better than one gigantic pimple: the drama appears, it festers, it oozes and then it pops. Yuck!

What perhaps makes it worse is that at BYU-I there is an Honor Code that only proves to magnify this Latter-day soap opera.

Now don’t mistake, the Honor Code is excellent. It only becomes a drama when infractions of the Honor Code are discussed with people other than the person who broke the code and the dean or bishop.

Don’t get me wrong. It’s fun to talk about other people and their sins! I love hearing stories about how other people fail — it makes me feel better about myself. But isn’t that kind of attitude best left at high school?

The sad reality is that there may not be much that separates us from them. Let’s compare.

HIGH SCHOOL: Dating is the dominating force that binds all things teenage together.

BYU-I: Marriage is the dominating force that binds all things in Rexburg together.

HIGH SCHOOL: Walking around the halls you might hear some juicy gossip.

BYU-I: Just go to the library. Students gladly broadcast their personal, most intimate secrets while chatting away on their cell phones, completely oblivious that strangers are listening to their conversation.

HIGH SCHOOL: You argue with your siblings for borrowing things from your room without asking.

BYU-I: You learn to lock your doors and hide things around the apartment, hoping your neighbors will just give up trying to “borrow” your stuff.

HIGH SCHOOL: “Will you go to the prom with me?”

BYU-I: “Will you go to the temple with me?”

And so it goes on and on. And why wouldn’t it go on? Compared to the major metropolises in America like Ogden and Rigby, there apparently isn’t much to do around Rexburg except talk about other people.

These conversations about other people are a circus. They range from who broke the law of chastity to who wore flip-flops on campus. They vary from important things like the principles portrayed on the show What Not to Wear, to things like last week’s devotional.

So what should we do about it? Well, there are some very basic questions that I’m surprised the Admissions people aren’t asking to weed out the drama queens and kings. Here are some examples of additional questions that they should put on the admission forms:

“Why did Rachel and Ross break up and do you care?”

“Can you hum the theme song to 90210?”

Lastly, “If you could be Kevin Arnold or Winnie Cooper from the show Wonder Years, who would you be? Or would you rather be punched in the face?”