WHILE I was sitting at the computer in the library last week, I looked down to find a most curious piece of propaganda. The mouse pad below me declared that "Honor is walking a friend home. Sixty-five percent of UVA students make sure if their friends have been drinking, they are not left alone with a stranger." The other mouse pad defined honor as a "keen sense of ethical conduct," citing that "81 percent of UVA students usually stop their friends who have been drinking from harming others."Furthermore, I found that according to their scientific survey, "84 percent of UVA students ALWAYS call 911 if someone they are with is showing signs of alcohol poisoning."
Later, I discovered that these titillating pieces of information are released by the Social Norms Campaign in the Office of Health Promotion. In case my first question is not predictable, I will spell it out: Are they serious?
Honor is not a valueless term to be defined on a whim by propaganda meant to encourage students to behave appropriately while they are drunk. Honor is a timeless and inspiring quality. It is different and entirely humane because it cannot exist in excess; one can never be described as too honorable. In that same vein, honor is also unique because it is rare and, when properly used, honor describes the highest and noblest facets of human life. Honor is the nobility of the soul and wholly inappropriate for laudations of drunken behavior. And so, with incredible irreverence, the Social Norms Campaign managed to cheapen honor for all University students.
Our very near and dear founding father, Thomas Jefferson, once declared that "for the support of this Declaration, with a firm Reliance on the Protection of the divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor." In the spirit of Mr. Jefferson, we ought to extol demonstrations reflective of his sacrifice and genuine display of honor instead of settling for cheap, insincere and insulting versions of what it means to be honorable.
I understand that walking a friend home after a long night of drinking is considered a decent act. It is also decent, however, to provide a condom for an eager comrade so that he or she can prevent sexually transmitted diseases, but neither of these activities signify the highest sense of honor. Instead, they merely describe courteous behavior and should not be included in definitions of what it means to be an honorable University student.
Caitlin Knotts, the social norms marketer for the Office of Health Promotion, said in response to my inquiry about possibly cheapening honor, that this particular campaign intends to, "highlight positive behaviors and gives students the freedom to make decisions based on their own values and interpretation of honor." And that is just the point: Honor is not based on some student panel's interpretation, or on my interpretation, or on the ethos of an entire age bent on justifying ignoble behavior.
While honor has become an elusive and rare quality, it was not once so unrecognizable that it would be celebrated in the context of intoxicated college students.
If 81 percent of University students can attain honor by stopping drunken friends from harming others, what does it mean to have honor in the highest sense? Essentially, those who refrain from drinking, treat themselves and others in an entirely respectful way, hold themselves to the most stringent academic standards, and have an elusive, but inspiring, quality in their soul are held no higher than the drunken student who takes they keys away from an even drunker friend. There is not room in the definition of honor for these two divergent lifestyles.
I hate to be so particular about word "choice," but in this case, true honor does not now, and never will, describe the lifestyle of drunken college students indulging in fun.
Anything that falls short of the highest ideals of the University should not be celebrated in pursuit of justifying irresponsible behavior. By attributing honor to that which is not honorable, the University Social Norms Campaign does us all a disservice. Indeed, just because drinking and unruly behavior are popular does not mean that the University is obligated to lower its standards.
Christa Byker's column appearsTuesdays in The Cavalier Daily. She can be reached at cbyker@cavalierdaily.com.
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