Campus honor

A column written by David Rademeyer appeared in The Chronicle entitled "T-Shirt Ethics" (April 10) in which Rademeyer attacks the Honor Council and the new Duke Community Standard. The DCS recently was passed by student referendum, receiving 74 percent of the vote. As the chair of the Honor Council and one of the co-authors of the new DCS, I would like to address some of the issues raised by Rademeyer, explain what the Honor Council does on campus and illuminate the process that ultimately resulted in our new Community Standard.

The Honor Council is an entirely student-run organization whose purpose is to promote academic and social integrity. We do so in myriad ways, from panel discussions to dorm presentations, teaching house courses to advertisements around campus, promotions to providing a student voice-often against the administration-in campus discussions of integrity-related issues. Honor today is a nebulous concept, and it is the task of the Council to both raise awareness of such issues and to translate the ideas and values espoused in the DCS into practical, tangible expressions. To that end, the Honor Council recently held a panel during Honor Week that discussed the role labels play in the lives of Duke students and hosted a mock hearing of the Undergraduate Judicial Board.

Rademeyer claims the Honor Council is primarily an anti-cheating organization. We certainly are that. In an academic community, the integrity of one's work is fundamental to the academic pursuit of increasing knowledge, and cheating is not only unfair to one's peers, but also prevents learning from occurring. Although, as Rademeyer states, many of our ethical beliefs, including that cheating is wrong, come from our upbringing, college presents us with new ethical challenges, and the Honor Council helps Duke students face those challenges with greater confidence. For instance, our website (www.duke.edu/web/honorcouncil/) contains many resources for avoiding cheating and plagiarism.

But to reduce the Honor Council to an anti-cheating organization both neglects the many social-integrity programming efforts we initiate as well as our broader and ultimate goal of encouraging a climate of ethical reflection on campus. The chair of the Honor Council speaks at Convocation and each freshman's first act as a Duke student is to sign the DCS because the college experience should not merely be about gaining the basic skills necessary to secure a job; it should also be about understanding how to function honestly in a community and how to live ethical lives. The DCS is an aspirational document, and signing it indicates a commitment to join this community of ethical aspiration. The values in the DCS are intended to guide the University, but they are also intended to be reflected upon and striven toward. That we often fail to live up to our goals is not an indictment of the values themselves but rather suggests that we, as a community of individuals, have work yet to do-in fact, I believe it is this process of earnestly striving toward values always slightly beyond our reach that makes life meaningful.

Rademeyer also claims that the new DCS is virtually the same as the old one. In certain respects, he is correct. The core principles, although reevaluated by its authors, largely are unchanged. Yet several critical revisions were made. The language of the new Standard, for example, was rewritten to empower students by stressing personal accountability.

The key difference, however, is the addition of "I will act when the standard is compromised" as the third bullet of the Community Standard pledge. It reflects Duke's "Obligation to Act," which was changed from the "Obligation to Report" two years ago. Though Rademeyer was correct in saying that students were once required to report instances of cheating, the "Obligation to Act" invites students to pursue other avenues, such as confronting those they suspect of wrongdoing.

Rademeyer claims he would never report a friend-undoubtedly a common sentiment among some students-but wouldn't you hope of your friends that they would confront you when you were on the verge of making a questionable ethical decision? The beauty of the "Obligation to Act," and the new DCS that clearly states it, is that it advances student ownership of the community. Perhaps not surprisingly then, the new DCS was written by a committee overwhelmingly composed of students. Ultimately, when students discuss the DCS, even if they take issue with certain elements, ethical reflection happens. Though Rademeyer's critiques have some merit (his mere lack of knowledge about the Honor Council serves as legitimate enough criticism), that the Honor Council provoked this consideration of the DCS is precisely what we hoped would occur.

Jonathan Schatz is a Trinity senior and chair of the Honor Council.