DukeEthicist: students, change-makers, visionaries

Do you have a responsibility as a student to bring about campus change, and do certain circumstances or contexts influence the extent of that responsibility?

There is a difference between responsibility and opportunity. As a student, you certainly have an opportunity to bring about campus change. If the nearly and seemingly infinite resources available at students’ fingertips are not evident, you’re missing something. That said, do you have a responsibility to utilize them? Probably not.

But here’s the question: as a Duke student, do you have a responsibility to bring about campus change? Here’s where it becomes more complex. And the complexity is not intended to yield a self-righteous conclusion, but rather to assert a significant distinction between our mission and that of other schools. Knowledge in the service of society, preached and practiced year after year at Duke, is the mission of the university. While our explicit responsibility is the pursuit of knowledge, we must consider the purpose of that goal. To that end, we certainly have the responsibility to assign a higher end to our intellectual or academic endeavors. The size of the impact does not matter—the impact itself is what counts. Campus change does not need to consist in vast systemic reform or a reversal of founding institutions; it could be as simple as the adoption of a different mindset. Perhaps the responsibility itself is to understand that you have one.

The Duke Ethicist is a project of the Honor Council which responds to ethical questions posed by the Duke community. Our purpose is to provide a medium through which students may anonymously seek advice or spark dialogue. Got a question? Send it to dukeethicist@gmail.com, and look out for a response on our blog.