“As a member of the Guilford Community I strive to be honorable in my actions through the Core Values and my experiences.”

This line forms the opening statement of Guilford’s social honor code, a document which strives to embody and affirm the school’s values of integrity, diversity, equality, and justice.

The idea of having a social honor code which would reflect the Guilford community’s commitment to the unwritten Quaker values which have guided the college since its founding has been touted as a possibility for many years. However, it only achieved fruition in January when the “Community Agreements Initiative” was drawn up in Community Senate.

“Guilford has wanted to have an SHC for quite some time, the ball just never got rolling … one of the reasons was because there was always a sense of what it meant to be part of the Guilford community and how we live together,” said sophomore and Co-Outreach Chair Ruth deButts.

However, incidents in the recent past, including the bias incidents in Fall 2010 seemed to indicate that the sense of community was not as clear as some people believed.

The process of creating and drafting the social honor code involved discerning exactly what the code would entail, and how it could accurately reflect Guilford’s value system.

“There were many questions when drafting the SHC … some of which were how were we going to make it solid enough that there wouldn’t be too much room for interpretation of what exactly is socially honorable but flexible enough that everyone would agree with the document,” said deButts.

Although Community Senate’s social honor code committee was largely responsible for drafting the document, it was also a result of widespread student input about what aspects would contribute the most to the enhancement of the Guilford community.

The final draft of the social honor code was completed by April 20 after several months of work by the social honor code committee.

Despite the optimism for the potential of the newly drafted document to improve the quality of life for students on campus, enthusiasm and awareness of the document is far from universal.

“I get the sense that many people on campus are apathetic about the existence of the social honor code,” said sophomore Connor Bayne.

“People who actively involve themselves in or pledge to follow the social honor code are most likely the people who are honest to begin with,” said sophomore Mandy Meng Lu.

Although support for the social honor code is not all-encompassing, there is recognition of the potential for it to impact the ways in which the Guilford community defines itself as an institution.

“I believe the social honor code has tremendous potential to give weight to student voices,” said senior and Clerk/President of Community Senate Yahya Alazrak.

“I think the social honor code can go two ways — either as this thing that fell apart, or something that provided the foundation of institutional changes at Guilford,” said Alazrak.

“I absolutely believe that the social honor code is necessary to hold community members accountable for their actions,” said sophomore and Academic Affairs Chair Lyes Nazim Benarbane, who was involved in the formation of social honor code.

There seems to be an acknowledgment among students that implementing the social honor code will be a gradual process with results that remain to be seen.

“One of the things I think it’s going to do is to hold people to this higher standard … and it’s not going to be this immediate thing where everyone is singing Kumbaya around a campfire overnight,” said sophomore William Millman.

“It’s more of a transitional, long-term goal and represents taking a step in the right direction,” said Millman.