While the 1,600 first-year students had privately signed a copy of the honor code as part of the admissions process, they did it again publicly last Thursday when they filed out of Duke Chapel following convocation. It was the university's first Undergraduate Honor Code signing ceremony. The public request for freshmen signatures was an initiative by the Duke University Honor Council and Kenan Institute for Ethics. Any first-year students who missed the signing ceremony will have the opportunity to add their names during honor code orientation sessions to be held in freshmen residence halls next month. To make room for subsequent classes' signatures, the parchment pages will be bound at the end of each school year and stored.
Convocation is the one moment that the entire class is in one place.
We thought it was important for them to ponder individually and as a class to uphold academic integrity. The initiative stemmed, in part, from an ongoing pilot project coordinated by the Center for Academic Integrity, a program affiliated with the Kenan Institute for Ethics. Officials from the 12 universities and colleges taking part in the program, including Duke, met in April to discuss, among other topics, effective ways to raise the campus profile and awareness of existing honor codes. The dialogue dovetailed with a proposal by a Duke student in the Honor Council to stage a public signing ceremony.