Although BYU is held in high regard by many employers, there is a good deal of antagonism toward BYU both from inside and
outside of the Mormon community. The LDS Church's racial policies attracted a great deal of protest in the 1960s, with African-American athletes frequently boycotting athletic events at which
BYU competed. (The most notable examples of this were a football game forfeited by the heavily black University of Wyoming team in 1969, and the refusal of Texas El-Paso long jumper Bob Beamon--who set a world record in the long jump at the 1968 Olympic Games in Mexico City--to participate in a track meet against BYU in the spring of that year.)
While the LDS church's 1978 renunciation of its previous doctrines on race eliminated most of this hostility, traces of lingering
resentment against the school remain in many African-American communities.Some of the most vitriolic opinions about BYU are held by LDS students at colleges and universities elsewhere in the US, proud
to be in "the real world" instead of immersed in BYU's "bubble" of shallowness, focus on appearances, and casualness toward
marriage. (The fiercely secular University of Utah, in
particular, is perceived as the nearly complete opposite of BYU, and is renowned as an outpost of leftism in the nation's most conservative state.) BYU students and alumni often contribute (with varying levels of
knowingness) to this perception, displaying chauvinistic attitudes toward even the most elite secular universities such as the
Ivy League schools, and often adopting the much-despised Utah practice of
referring to areas outside of the mountain West as "the mission field". The nonchalance of many BYU students toward the weekly
(and sometimes even more frequent) visits by the LDS Church's General Authorities is also a source of frustration for students in
places where such visits occur once or twice a year, if at all.On the other hand, many visitors to BYU, and the Utah Valley as a whole, report being surprised at the genuinely wholesome
environment. Very few BYU students consume alcohol, tobacco, and illegal substances; crime is low, with violent crime being
virtually nonexistent. (Provo and Orem are, however, major centers of methamphetamine manufacturing and distribution, perhaps owing to the drug's popularity among Utah teenagers
and the proximity of Interstate 80 and Interstate 15.) The Princeton Review has
rated BYU the "#1 stone cold sober school" for several years running, an honor on which LDS Church president Gordon B. Hinckley has often commented with pride. The school's
straight-laced reputation is a major selling point in athletic recruiting: as non-LDS players (particularly African-Americans
from inner cities) have become ever more important to the school's teams, BYU's
wholesomeness is often attractive for parents who have raised their children in conservative environments.