The Honor Committee has worked this semester to launch a new outreach campaign called “Everyone is Honor,” designed to expand University participation in the honor system. The program is a central part of the Committee’s plan this year to make the honor system seem more accessible and friendly to students.
Third-year College student Martese Johnson, the Committee vice chair for community relations, has been heavily involved in planning the effort and said the campaign aims to emphasize students' role in the honor system.
“This year we really realized that there is a disconnect in some aspects between Honor and the larger University community,” Johnson said. “The big idea with ‘Everyone is Honor’ is that we want students at the University, regardless of what they’re involved in, to understand that Honor is as much their system as anybody else’s.”
In Honor Committee meetings, Committee Chair Nicholas Hine, a fourth-year College student, stressed the need to increase the participation of the community in the honor system and better the perception the system has among students. Hine said the committee must work to better the image individuals have of honor and show them they are as much the honor system as the Committee is.
“We don’t own the system,” Hine said of the Committee.
Connecting students with the system will be an important way to bridge student relationships, Johnson said.
"By building that connection, we think that it will increase positive relations between individuals and the honor system, as well as between [the Committee] and other organizations that represent communities at the University," he said.
The campaign will manifest itself in the coming weeks and continue through the rest of the year.
“We’re still working on the specific details, but hopefully in the next month or so we’ll have it rolling,” Johnson said.
The campaign will consist of casual outreach events, educational events and roundtable discussions. The Committee will also distribute T-shirts at many of these programs, part of what Johnson described as the Committee’s goal to “make Honor fun.”
A large part of the campaign will be recognizing honorable actions.
“With the ‘Everyone is Honor’ campaign we will be highlighting students who commit honorable acts throughout the University,” Johnson said. “We’re going to make a shirt that says ‘Honor Gear,’ ask them come into the office to speak with us and congratulate them personally.”
The campaign has previously been called “Honor is Everywhere,” but the Johnson said the rebranding better reflects the Committee's intentions.
“Every group at the University is a part of Honor and we want them to realize that,” Johnson said. “When we talk about reaching out to different organizations and minority groups we mean reaching out to the Law School as well, reaching out to Darden. … Once again, everyone is honor, which means the undergraduate student body as well as the graduate student body, [and] the faculty too.”
