BuddyPress.org

In searching for a solution to my problem of unwanted sidebars I found https://codex.buddypress.org/developer/theme-development/a-quick-look-at-1-7-theme-compatibility/ which provides instructions of how to insert BP specifications into a child theme.

To get the results you want, you need to first create a child theme for your main wordpress theme. Then you put the specifications that apply only to the BuddyPress portion of the site into the child theme. You would need to do this:

So if we want to remove the sidebar for BP pages but not for all WP ‘pages’ or call a specific BP sidebar get_sidebar(‘buddypress’), we could take a copy of page.php and rename it to ‘community.php.’ and have BP use this file for all it’s requirements, as can be seen from the order above the first two files will not be found but the third will be and therefore used.

And so will I – to solve my problem.

@chase8705
You should always use a child theme instead of modifying the theme directly because if you update that theme then it will overwrite any modifications you made but if you made a child theme then the update will not effect modifications and all mods in the child theme will be preserved. Please see:
https://codex.buddypress.org/developer/theme-development/a-quick-look-at-1-7-theme-compatibility/
and
https://codex.wordpress.org/Child_Themes