Sometimes things aren’t lost and found but just, as the expression goes, “hiding in plain sight.” This has been an academic year at Denison in which all of us in the campus community have had to reckon with a hidden-in-plain-sight experience. What has been right in front of our eyes if we’d only open them to see? Nothing less than the expressions of core values crafted over the years to remind each of us of our obligations as members of this learning community.
Perhaps key items have been so much in front of us that while we’ve seen them, at least some have taken them for granted and forgotten their import. This could be the case for our “Campus Compact,” which crowns the opening page of our Denison Student Handbook, and, consequently, is the first thing new students should see as they begin their orientation to college life in Granville. The Campus Compact boils down to just one short statement: “Denison University is a community where individuals respect one another and their environment.” Simple concept, but it’s our challenge to live out. Our Campus Compact actually comes with some explanatory material to help us figure out how to bring it to life. This material reminds us that for all to be able to live, learn, teach, and grow on our campus, our community must be characterized by respect, consideration, and trust. “Civility is the cornerstone of our community,” it says. “We respect individuality. We celebrate diversity as a strength from which we grow and learn from one another.” A “compact,” of course, is more than a list on a page—at least it should be. It is intended to be an expression of the obligations that we have toward one another.
If the Campus Compact is front and center in the Student Handbook, the Denison Mission Statement—periodically reviewed, updated, and approved by the Denison faculty and Board of Trustees—is right at the beginning of the annual Denison University Catalog. Maybe it is so up front that many rush right over it in haste to get to the descriptions of departments, majors, and course requirements, but it contains important concepts that are meant to characterize our learning community, too. “A firm belief in human dignity and compassion unlimited by cultural, sexual, religious, or economic barriers” is lifted up as a defining Denison value. “The University provides a living-learning environment sensitive to individual needs yet grounded in a concern for community, in which the principles of human dignity and ethical integrity are paramount,” the Mission Statement reminds. And to make certain that no one mistakes the point of mutual respect, the faculty added a codicil as recently as 2006 that explains: “Through our pedagogies, we set out to realize the transformative power of education. Engagement with and challenge from multiple, differing perspectives are incubators of critical thinking and social responsibility…The lesson that even one’s own most cherished beliefs cannot be immune to questioning is crucial. A classroom marked by homogeneity of experience is one where such a lesson cannot be easily grasped.”
Hiding in plain site. That’s a discovery we made with some surprise and some pain this year. We certainly aren’t unique among colleges to have made it. In fact, it’s a discovery you’d rather make than not. But it came about when a number of our students noticed a disconnect between our professed community values and repeated episodes of incivility creating an atmosphere where individuality—whether of race or nationality or sexual orientation or gender—was not respected. They raised the challenge to individuals, to the community, and to the institution itself to rediscover the values “hidden in plain sight” and make them live. Hard lesson. But a good lesson, too. A lesson not just for college, but for life.