A People of Integrity
Gus Jordan
September 2003
With your matriculation to Middlebury College you have chosen (and in some sense we have chosen you) to associate yourself with two and a half millennia of something called liberal education. This type of education can be identified by two central goals: first, to excite in you a love of learning that lasts a lifetime, and second to enable you to dedicate that love to the enrichment of society. If you are not excited by what you learn here, and if you do not translate that excitement into the betterment of the world around you, then we together will have failed. But I assure you of this: we will not fail.
We will not fail, in part, because of what you are about to do now. I would not be exaggerating to suggest that the task you undertake this morning is in some essential way extraordinary. It is counter-cultural. In response to student cheating, many colleges and universities require students to show their ID’s before entering examination rooms, where their pictures are compared to their faces, and their names to the class roster. Backpacks, cell-phones, pagers and PDA’s are removed from their possession. Students’ papers are routinely compared to Internet paper mills to check for plagiarism. Exams and labs are proctored. Out there, student surveillance is becoming the watchword of the day, but not at Middlebury College.
What you are about to do sets in motion a wholly different kind of academic experience. What you are about to do links you to a long and proud history of emphasis on personal and community honor. Before you stands a code of ethics that establishes how we – the students and faculty of this college – shall behave together in our shared academic adventures. Few adventures are of greater merit; few codes are of greater significance to life at Middlebury College.
In a moment you will sign your name in a book and thus publicly and permanently proclaim that you will uphold the highest of intellectual ideals. Do so, however, with due deliberation, for there will come moments in the weeks, months, and years ahead that will sorely test your commitment to this code. The moment may occur at 3 o’clock in the morning as you struggle to complete a paper, or when you realize you have five assignments in four courses due tomorrow morning and a lacrosse game tonight against Amherst (and believe me, Middlebury/Amherst lacrosse games are not inconsequential events). Sweat will drip from your brow and your chest will tighten and your breadth will quicken. How will you do it all? These moments will test you, and they will test the code you sign today, and they will test the college you have chosen to attend. But this test of integrity is a more consequential and informative indicator of who you are becoming than any exam you will ever take, or game you ever play.
If you hold fast to this code through such moments then you and your peers and the rest of the world can be forever confident that your diploma represents something vast and significant.
We are many things at Middlebury College, but among our most important assets, beyond even the fact that we have the best students and faculty and staff in the country, is that we are to our core a people of integrity. Today, with some sense of moment, we invite you to join us. Welcome.