PROVO — More than 300 Brigham Young University students, staff and faculty staged a peaceful two-hour protest on campus Wednesday to question the record of Vice President Dick Cheney.

Cheney is scheduled to speak to be BYU's commencement speaker on April 26.

"Replace Cheney with President Hinckley 4 commencement," read one sign, referring to the leader of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

German professor Rob McFarland held another sign that proposed a new presidential ticket for the next election: "Cheney and Voldemort in 2008."

McFarland earned a degree at Cal-Berkeley, where protests have a lot more bite and happen almost daily.

At BYU, a private, religious university, protests are rare; on-campus demonstrations require administration permission.

"It's very kind of BYU to provide this kind of venue where without vandalism and slander we can share ideas," McFarland

The relative tameness of the protest was intentional.

The BYU College Democrat club sponsored the event with permission of the dean of student life. The president of the club, Diane Bailey, asked the dean's office to help her police the event.

"I told the dean I wanted help to make sure causes against our church did not hijack our event," she said.

That led to a couple of scenes where administrators pointed out questionable signs for Bailey. She asked four protestors to put away their signs.

One of them, Tom Doggett, created an involved sign with pictures of Cheney, President Hinckley, deceased former LDS President Spencer W. Kimball and Elder Russell M. Nelson of the church's Quorum of the Twelve.

The sign mimicked the Sesame Street song, "One of these things is not like the other. One of these things just doesn't belong."

"I love the prophet and apostles," said Doggett, a BYU graduate whose wife attends the university. "I'd rather have them come speak at commencement."

While the message didn't attack the church, a condition agreed upon by Bailey and BYU, some might take it that way, she said.

"If you put up pictures of the prophet or First Presidency at a protest like this, the automatic assumption for some is that it's an attack," Bailey said.

She had another reason for objecting to the sign.

"We want to let our community know you can be a faithful Mormon and be against the Bush administration. Signs like that convey the idea that liberalism is something to be afraid of and it's not."

Bailey carried her own sign: "Faithful Utah Mormons Against Cheney."

The student Democrats hope the strong-but-organized showing proves to the university's administration that it can handle another protest on the day of Cheney's speech.

A relative smattering of people could be found at a simultaneous rally sponsored by the College Republicans club. Several hundred students stopped by the simultaneous rally to grab cookies and pick up blue armbands in support of Cheney.

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E-mail: twalch@desnews.com