60 years ago today - Feb 13, 1960

[J. Reuben Clark]
President [BYU] Wilkinson called me on February 12, 1960 (in the evening, as I recall) and brought up several matters, as follows (this is not the order in which he brought them up, but the order in which I jotted them down afterwards): ...

2. Junior Colleges. I said that we were much interested in that, but I was tremendously interested in it personally because of the enormous expense that was involved in the junior college program. I suggested that he go a bit slow on that, thought he is, as I assume, preparing to discuss it with the Presidency. ...

4. " Dope Ring:" We discussed the question, which was the first one brought up, of the "dope ring" in the school down there and the information which had come to us. I told him that in talking to him I was not pretending to say how the Brethren felt nor what might be done, but that personally I was extremely anxious that we should not put ourselves where we could be accused, however unjustly, of sanctioning or failing to go forward where criminal conduct was involved, and therefore I felt that we should, as soon as the facts justified it, call in the Federal authorities.

I repeatedly said in this conclusion I was only representing myself and certainly not Brother Moyle because he was looking at it from the standpoint of the public prosecutor, to which Brother Ernest immediately replied, that as a public prosecutor, he could determine whether or not we could prosecute, but that we were not in that position. In this connection he referred to the stealing in the Temple which he knew we had been soft-pedalling, and I said, personally, my feeling was much the same there. I said that all soft pedalling seemed to me to be entirely out of place and seemed to me unwise where we had called in civil authorities to make an investigation where they wished to prosecute.

[The Diaries of J. Reuben Clark, 1933-1961, Abridged, Digital Edition, Salt Lake City, Utah 2015]

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