Every year, the Sunday before classes start, each member of the first-year class attends the Honor Code signing ceremony. The signatures of the Class of 2020 will soon be hanging up in Chambers, a daily reminder of our newest members and the changing Davidson community.
I am a senior. It still sounds weird, and I am hoping that the mixture of excitement and anxiety that this first week has brought will subside at least a little. So on Sunday when I returned to the Honor Code ceremony three years after I signed it myself, I didn’t think I was doing anything more than supporting a friend who was giving a speech. But sitting in Duke Family Performance Hall, I was reminded of the blur that was my own Honor Code signing ceremony. As a first year so much was on my mind. I valued the Honor Code, but I didn’t yet appreciate it.
Christian Baker (one of the student solicitors) introduces himself to the first-year class.
As I listened to members of the Honor Council introduce themselves, I noted the other things that make them who they are, besides the simultaneous prestige and weight that comes with being an Honor Council member. They are athletes, artists, writers, fighters, winners, losers, and fellow Davidson students. That was lost on me as a first-year. It’s understandable; I had almost no concept of what it meant to be a part of the Davidson community. But Sunday, I swelled with pride when Christine mentioned, “Our Honor Code at Davidson is our most prized and promotable tradition because it creates a culture of Honor.” And when she admitted that, “even in my most broken moments at Davidson—when I had no strength or motivation to study or ask for help—I have chosen to turn in a blank test and fail, multiple times, because I knew that the weight of an F was much lighter than the weight of me breaking my integrity.” She was relatable, honest, and spoke from her heart. She made me proud to be a Wildcat and proud to have my Honor Code signature hang on the wall of Chambers. Over the years the Honor Code, once a distant and purely conceptual set of rules, has come to represent (to me) everything we are as a community and where we place our values. It’s not perfect, but neither are we. Much like learning more about ourselves over the four years at Davidson, we also come to know what honor means to us, and most importantly honoring ourselves and our time at Davidson.
Left to right Honor Council leadership: Defense Advisor Rachel McKay, Vice-Chair Ethan Faust, Student Solicitor Srish Sharma, Student Solicitor Christian Baker, Defense Advisor Jocelyn Kennedy, Dean Shandley, Chair Christine Choi
Click here to see the full video of Christine Choi’s speech, “Honor Yourself” from the Class of 2020’s Honor Code Signing Ceremony.
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