Current Release: April 28th, 2009 | Vol. XXX Iss. 10

Photo By Ed Phillips

Wesleyan expresses instituional values through new school creed

By Vickie matthews

vamatthews@vwc.edu

Across from what is known as the  Fish Bowl in the Battan Center, you may have noticed something new hanging up on the wall this year. Virginia Wesleyan has a brand new creed display for everyone to see. What most don t know, is that it s also in our weekly planner on page 49.

The idea for the creed came from a compilation of over a hundred students and faculty, including Lina Green and Dean Buckingham, who were unhappy with the way students were vandalizing the campus and abusing alcohol.

 Kids were upset by the disrespect to each other and the community, Green said.  So we came up with the creed to make a statement the students would uphold to.

Green and Buckingham put together several focus groups consisting of athletes, honors and scholars, members of the student government, Greek organizations, new students, and upper classmen. They broke the meetings down into six group meetings that lasted about 75 minutes each. At the meetings Buckingham discussed what a creed might look like based on the VWC mission statement, community standards of affirmed behaviors, and the honor code.

The creed s opening paragraph comes from the honor code. Throughout the rest of the creed there is italicized print which means it came from the other two documents (affirmed behaviors and the mission statement). The rest were statements made by the students.

 We had the frame work, Buckingham said.  It was just about how we could take those three documents and capture this place.

After the creed was written it was placed around campus and in the planners that are given to students every semester. It was also brought before the upper classmen and the freshmen that came for orientation this year.

 During orientation we talked about the creed with the parents and new students, Buckingham said.  We hope it will become apart of the fiber of this institution.

The upper classmen even had a meeting with Villages III and IV about the creed.

 There will also be other ways we will talk about it to students this year, Buckingham said.  The student government will have an open forum about it.

Green feels this will take a while to catch on.

 When residence halls prohibited smoking everyone was upset, but now it s a way of life, Green said.  My hope is that they will take it seriously instead of just seeing it as a paper on a wall. It s a way of life and a way you will behave as a whole and well rounded person.