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Man with a beard (symbolic picture): "New, more humane politics that allow beards on campus"
Photo: g-stockstudio / iStockphoto / Getty Images
He's fed up with these old regulations: A retired US professor wants students to be allowed to wear beards again.
Warner Wordsworth has therefore started a petition against the beard ban at a university run by the Mormom Church.
The university in the state of Utah requires students to show up to lectures with a clean shaven or at most a small mustache.
The rules of the university say: “Sideburns shouldn't reach under the earlobe or on the cheek.
Mustaches, when worn, should be trimmed neatly and should not protrude above or below the corners of the mouth.
Men are expected to be clean-shaven, beards are not acceptable, "as the" Inquirer "reports.
Long beards only for hippies?
Wordsworth wants to counter this with his petition "Bring back the beard".
The Brigham Young University regulation dates back to the 1960s.
Back then, long beards were still associated with the hippies.
Their movement contradicted the teachings of the Mormon Church.
The only exceptions are granted for religious reasons, such as for Muslim students.
In exceptional cases, beards may also be worn for medical reasons - for example, if the person concerned suffers from ingrown hair.
Wordsworth shows no sympathy for the antiquated regulation at his college: "We need a new, more humane policy that allows beards on campus," he wrote in his petition.
Beards were wrongly associated with left-wing, pacifist views by university management in the 1960s.
Almost 700 signatures collected so far
The facial hair is "clearly prophetic".
Beards have been worn by "righteous men" over the centuries, beginning with the forefather Adam.
So far, Wordsworth has collected almost 700 signatures with his petition within a month.
The university has around 36,000 students.
kha / AFP