Last fall when the final version of the strategic plan was published it listed five core values of Davidson College, and noted that those five values are expressed in the College’s Statement of Purpose:
It is worth noting that the five values listed in the strategic plan are certainly in the Statement of Purpose, but it would be possible to generate a different list of values by looking at the Statement. (The pursuit of truth, for example, is clearly emphasized in the Statement but isn’t made explicit in the list of five given in the Strategic Plan).
In any case, we aren’t trying to reify these five values—we’re interested in discussing how well we’re living them, and whether we should be emphasizing them.
To that end we tried to invite everyone in the College community to talk about what they thought Davidson’s core values should be. We tried to make this a completely open process, and everyone who wanted to be interviewed got interviewed, with one major exception. Many trustees asked to interview when they were on campus for their annual meeting, but the meeting got cut short because of a nasty snowstorm and most of the trustees had to leave early.
Please feel free to explore the site and watch the 36 interviews in their entirety. You will notice that each video has a comment option. We welcome your comments and hope to begin healthy dialogue on these issues right here on this site. You can respond to other people’s comments as well.
Enjoy!
Dr. Paul Miller, Dr. Paul Studtmann, Jeff Tolly ’10
Lots of thoughts in response to this, which are hard to organize quickly what with several topics and so many perspectives compressed together.
Mainly I am struck by how earnest the video is and the interviewees are. If not a value, then earnestness comes across as a characteristic. Maybe that’s an editorial decision/influence, but in any event it smacks true to an alumnus like me.
The musings on confederate heritage are hilarious, and of course specious at best. Sorry to offend commentators, though I am sure no offense is taken.
The best insight we could get into our institution would be to compare this to a similar project at another one. That exercise would certainly bring to light by contrast which core value distinguish us truly.
That the best example of hypocrisy at the college is ambiguity over the alcohol policy seems unlikely given the nature of the world, but if it is the case, it is surely a great great to Davidson’s integrity that it is all that comes to mind. The no-debt policy and the commitment to it has to make your chest puff out a bit as an alumnus. Go alma mater, go!
To offer my own thoughts, and not to comment on the strategic plan at all, I would just say in a knee jerk that emotionally the ideas of “learning” “community” and “service” resonate with me as true values you just breath in on campus.
In a phrase, at its best, Davidson was for me “Learning among others.” The experience of “learning among others” brought me to reflect deeply on what Rob Spock finished with “deciding how we want to be in this world.” That question and that focus cuts to the real meaning of life.
In spite of the deficiencies Davidson has–not the focus of discussion here–I felt empower by the learning, instructed by “learning among others” in a community interested in learning, and as a result, being debt free, I left feeling a great deal of autonomy–to pick up on another word from the video–intellectually and economically.
With and without logic or reason, I’m extremely and eternally grateful to and loyal to the school.
Thanks for the video!
I don’t think the professor @ minute 23:37 ever had any fun as a student or young adult. Loosen up man. Drinking a beer isn’t dishonorable.
These kids can be drafted to fight and defend the country but you get all upset when they enjoy a cocktail?
This teetotaler academic is divorced from reality. Don’t ruin the social environment at Davidson. It’s fun, open and safer than other schools that force drinking underground and off campus.
John
Davidson Alum