Professor Brown: Susanna Maxon and Lane Dill are here to represent the Student Honor Court.
Ms. Maxon: Hi, I'm Susanna Maxon. I'm Chair of the Undergraduate Honor Court. I'd like to introduce to you Lane Dill, who's a member of the Honor Court as well. And we're not going to take very much of your time. But I just wanted to let you know a little bit about our mission this year as we approach ways that we can help improve the academic climate at UNC. And we want to play our part in this grand goal, to change the academic integrity on campus, and we want to do our part to nurture the intellectual climate here. My main goal is to make the Honor Code one of the strongest parts of the University. To make a reason, one reason, that people would want to come here. A lot of you'll hear about a lot of other universities, and you'll hear about sports, and you'll hear about maybe the location, but I want also people to talk about, when they talk about Carolina, that we have a really strong tradition here of student self governance and a really strong Honor Code. And this is something that we can be proud of, and rest our work on.
Briefly, I want to recap a few of the steps that we've taken so far to slowly change the culture of academic integrity on campus and to kind of rework the vision and ideal of academic integrity into something that's a lot more positive than it might have been in the past. Instead of being focused on as a punitive thing, we want it to be something that we can feel pride in, that every time we make positive decisions, that we're really working to strengthen the entire University. And the flip side, of course, is that every time someone makes a poor decision, they're really undercutting the base of our University. So I have worked with the Admissions Department to include a greater emphasis on the Honor Code in the publications that are sent out to all the guidance counselors across the state and also across the nation. We're working with tour guides to include a greater emphasis on the Honor Code. And Carolina Contact. We're going to go and try to attract students in that way as well. Some of you have seen, perhaps, the Honor Code plaques that have been put up in Davis Library and the Undergraduate Library. Also in Steele Building and I think a few other administrative buildings. And we're working to get more plaques. Just to kind of reinforce this culture of integrity. Then I've also just taken some small things to make the Honor Code ubiquitous. We have Honor Code pencils now. Student Stores is printing the Honor Code on receipts. The Honor Code is heavily emphasized in the Carolina Week-by-Week. We have some tee-shirts running around. But the most important thing, and the reason I'm here today, is that we need you to serve as the vital link between what we say and what actually happens. And, you know, I could just be saying a lot of nice ideals up here, but the cooperation between the faculty and the Attorney General's staff and the Honor Court is just absolutely essential. And I would just ask for your faith in us that we will do our best, and that we can work together to promote this. Because I think there're a lot of students, myself included, that really care about this as a positive way that we can help our University. And so, at this point, I've asked Lane Dill to come and talk with you a little bit about some of our plans to work with the faculty. So I'd like to introduce Lane.
Ms. Dill: Thank you all for letting us come today. I'm going to be heading a committee this year on faculty relations. As Chancellor Hooker and Aaron and Susanna have all stated, we're all in this together working to promote community and to promote the intellectual climate. The promotion of honor on campus is both an intellectual activity as well as something that needs to be done. And what I mean by saying that is that, we as the Honor Court are trying to define honor. We're trying to define how that works into our everyday lives. We need that, we need to educate students on that, and we need your help in doing that. You all have been here for longer than we have, and we need your input as far as what can be done in the classroom to promote honor, and how we can define it to student in a way that is clear, concise, and right to the point. We want students to be thinking daily about what honor is, and what their daily actions have to do with honor. To that extent, we'll be sending members of the Honor Court and the Attorney General's staff to talk with specific professors about the influence of honor in the classrooms. We've asked these members of the Honor Court to go to the professors that they know well, that they feel like they can have an intellectual conversation about what honor is and how we can implement it in the classroom. So, what we really would like to ask is for you to encourage these students and help us out in determining exactly what we can do to promote honor in your classrooms. We'll be looking at syllabi statements. We'll be looking at introductions in classrooms, and any other ideas that you might have. So, please, let us have your cooperation so that this could be a mutual effort to promote the intellectual climate as has been stated before, we would really appreciate it. And if you all have any comments or suggestions, we would love to hear them. Thank you very much. [applause]
Professor Brown: You'll also notice a letter back there from A.P.P.L.E.S., the coordinator for A.P.P.L.E.S., who is also thanking faculty for being involved in that. That's our service learning project on campus, and it's quite extraordinary as well. More than a thousand 300 students have contributed more than 50,000 hours of community service through A.P.P.L.E.S. in just the past five years. And this is a student-initiated, student-funded organization, program. They pay for it by their own fees, and help run it, and quite a wonderful program. There's also a flyer back there to nominate our best students for the 1997 All USA Academic Team. So I encourage you to pick up a flyer and get that to your best students so they can apply. And one last invitation. And that is that on Wednesday I will be going to a public hearing about the attributes we'd like to see in the next President of the UNC System. And this is the one opportunity faculty have to contribute to this process. The faculty are involved only in a first-level committee. And then there are two more committees that do not include faculty. So if any of you have special characteristics that you'd like to see in the next President of the System, I will be happy to hear those and convey them. Or, if you'd like to go testify yourselves, I'll be happy to give you information about where to go and when to be there. Any comments, questions, celebrations, concerns you want to talk with me about before we move on?
Now, it's my pleasure to introduce Joe Ferrell, who is the new Secretary of the Faculty. I am pleased to have him with us. And he also has agreed to be our parliamentarian. Now I don't know about you, but parliamentary rules sometimes scare me, and it is my commitment in this body that we use these rules only to facilitate and move communication. And so I do not want to have us use these rules to stymie, confuse, obfuscate. So Joe and I are in partnership about that.
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