Institute impact — Program is prominent part of student life at U.

Young adults lounged with laptops, iPods and textbooks on the sofa chairs arranged plentifully throughout the building. While two students discussed the war in Iraq, two others sat at a table conversing with the full-time missionaries.

Contrast that with the previous night, when three young men took the stage to perform Weezer's "Buddy Holly" with the help of the "Rock Band" video game. It was part of a fraternity- and sorority-sponsored carnival for Rush Week. Also spotted were a mechanical bull and an inflatable slide that nearly scraped the cultural hall ceiling.

Two nights later, there was a stomp. On Sunday, six stakes met throughout the institute building and the two stake centers adjacent to it, all of which constitute 31 acres on South Campus Drive.

Welcome to LDS U.

If there is one thing the student leadership and faculty at the Salt Lake University Institute are adamant in agreement upon, it's that the University of Utah can be a haven for students who are members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

"People will tell you sometimes that the University of Utah is a place that's not really very friendly to LDS people, and that's not true," said Russel Lindsay, interchapter president for Sigma Gamma Chi, an institute-sponsored fraternity.

"If it was in the past, it's not now."

In fact, "friendly" is just the type of atmosphere that institute leaders have labored to create. Their hope is that the classy brick building with white trim, located just across the street from the Huntsman Center, represents a spiritual and social retreat for students. And by all indications, their efforts have been realized. From firesides in the chapel to fussball in the game room, the institute has become an integral part of the university experience for a significant number of LDS students on the hill.

The interior of the institute building is like a muscled-up version of the average LDS meetinghouse, with multiple chapels, two gyms, countless bishop's offices and hallways that seem to never end.

The program itself is also large-scale. According to the Church Educational System Web site, the Salt Lake University Institute has the largest institute enrollment in the church (7,090). Twenty-nine full-time and 30 volunteer instructors combine to teach 250 classes spread throughout 25 classrooms. Faculty meetings resemble an all-star gospel doctrine class, with instructors discussing the scriptures, applying principles to classroom situations and engaging in thoughtful discussion complete with some gentle disagreement.

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