Realizing responsibility

On Wednesday, President Brodhead delivered a convocation speech to the Class of 2020 in which he stressed the importance of being a citizen of Duke rather than just a student. He rightly noted that in addition to providing privileges and rights, citizenship carries the weight of responsibility to a community. Today, we explore three responsibilities of Duke citizens: contributing to the intellectual environment, ensuring that the campus’s conscientious diversity persists (and is strengthened) and promoting and honoring the community standard.

Students first have a responsibility to enrich Duke’s intellectual environment. As President Brodhead stated, this particular responsibility begins in the classroom with students deliberately participating in discussions, asking questions and sharing insights. It does not end in the classroom, however. Students ought to carry weighty discussions out of lecture halls and splice them into other conversations, whether dinner discourses or late-night roommate chats. Doing so not only forces them to think critically about what they have learned in class, but spreads that knowledge to their peers who might not have otherwise been exposed to it. Academic discussions need not dominate students’ lives, but by occasionally carrying them out with friends and peers, Duke students can serve their university well by maintaining an intellectual campus atmosphere.

In addition to their intellectual duties, Duke students also have responsibilities related to keeping the campus open to and welcoming of diversity. More specifically, as wewrote in March, students need to be conscientious about how they view the concept of diversity. It is insufficient for students to idly accept and ignore the fact that the student body is ethnically, religiously and idealistically heterogeneous. Rather, citizens of the campus must work to understand how their peers’ diverse identities have shaped them and ought to explore facets of those identities in an academically rigorous fashion in an effort to learn about different cultures. Upholding conscientious diversity has little to do with political correctness, but everything to do with making the campus understanding and accepting of all.

Students, third, have a responsibility to honor and upholdcommunity standards. In April, wecalled for Duke’s official community standard to be reinvigorated, strengthened and more strongly enforced. While a prominent and enforceable community standard cannot perform miracles, itcan serve as the moral touchstone of a university, guiding students away from misconduct and impropriety. Unfortunately, Duke’s Community Standard is neither strong nor easily enforceable. Strong community standard or not though, citizens of Duke are charged with a responsibility to take action in the presence of injustice, ensuring that their peers’ actions (as well as their own) abide by an ethical rule of law. That responsibility might manifest in direct intervention or it might take the form of a student filing a report (even anonymously) when they see something dishonorable occurring. A virtuous citizen owes it to his/her community to uphold justice; as such, Duke citizens ought to enforce a code of honor.

Duke University offers the chance for incredible academic and personal growth to its students, bestowing upon them a world-class education and copious opportunities that they can use to shape themselves during formative years. In order to ensure that those benefits persist, citizens of the institution must fulfill their responsibilities to keep the university great.

Editor’s Note: This editorial was written by members of staff, rather than The Chronicle’s independent editorial board.