For many Samford students, the Honor Code only comes up at the beginning of the semester, when syllabi are given out. Many teachers have their students sign the Honor Pledge on the last page for a grade. The Honor Code is often forgotten as soon as the signature is on the paper. Members of SGA hoped to remind students of the code during their most recent event, Honor Week.
Adopted in 2020, the Honor Code is a relatively new part of Samford University. It was created to have a set-in-stone guide for student conduct each year. SGA Chief Justice Libbie Winkelman explained why the Honor Code was important to her and her committee.
“The Honor Code is a guiding light for conduct at Samford, so I look at it this way: we’ve all been placed here for a reason,” Winkelman said. “The Lord has brought us to Samford for whatever reason that may be. Some of us know when we get here, some of us figure out while we’re here. It’s just one of those things of holding ourselves to a standard that we know we’re going to thrive academically, personally and spiritually.”
Honor Week was an opportunity to make students more aware of the Honor Code by having open conversations about it on campus. From trick-or-treating on Halloween to giving out doughnuts, SGA used this event to discuss what the code is and what it is meant to do.
“We wanted to keep it really low-key so people would come up and want to interact with us, and I think we really achieved that this week,” Winkelman said. “[Trick-or-treating] was just a really good one-on-one conversation with students. I had a lot of good conversations with like undergrads and grads about the Honor Code Manual.”
Each year since its creation, the Honor Code has been reviewed for necessary changes or additions by the Honor Code Manual Revisions Committee. As Samford grows, the code of conduct must grow as well. This year, the main objective was to change the Honor Code so that it encompasses everyone, undergraduate and graduate students alike.
“It’s one of those things that [we are] just trying to make sure that if we are holding undergraduates to this standard … we are holding the graduate students to that as well,” Winkelman said.
Though this is the main focus, other revisions are currently in the works. The committee is looking for changes that will benefit Samford University as a whole. Each of the proposed revisions were presented during a live stream hosted by SGA.
SGA hopes that hosting events like Honor Week will help students become more comfortable with approaching them with questions about Samford’s code of conduct.
“Promotion for the Honor Code is something that I, my committee and I, are really trying to push, just having conversations with students and having them feel like they can come up and talk to us about things,” Winkelman said. “We don’t want it to be a scary thing, and we want people to ask those questions.”
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