Honor and academic integrity were the focus of a campus conversation co-hosted by the Deliberative Citizenship Initiative (DCI), Honor Council, Student Government Association (SGA), and the Office of the Vice President of Student Life. Over 50 students, faculty, and staff gathered to deliberate about how a more robust culture of academic integrity can be created at Davidson. Held on Thursday, March 27 from 5:00 to 7:00 PM in the Lilly Gallery, the event complemented the Celebration of Honor held earlier in the month.

As participants got their plates of food provided by Much Ado Catering, the forum began with a presentation about the honor code from the Chair and Vice Chair of the Honor Council. Participants were quickly invited to dive into roundtable discussions guided by the DCI’s fellows and a deliberation guide written by the event’s student organizers, DCI Senior Fellow and Co-Convener LJ Phillips ’25 and DCI Fellows Isabella Neri ’27 and Cavan Klein ’27 (shown left).

You can check out the deliberation guide below, which provides some useful background about the nature of academic integrity, Davidson’s Honor Code, current perceptions of campus academic culture, and ideas for improving that culture in the future.

The organizers of the event – LJ Phillips ’25, Isabella Neri ’27, Cavan Klein ’27, and DCI Faculty Director Graham Bullock – have collated, analyzed, and discussed the input that participants provided via the survey we distributed after the event. They endeavored to capture the participants’ thoughts and suggestions in the document below, “Campus Conversation Report: Resources for Continued Engagement on the Honor Code.”

Like the DCI’s pathways guides that the DCI distributes after each of its deliberative forums, the report includes ideas for moving forward on the topic of the event. Options for learning more and getting more connected and involved with regard to the honor code are included for your consideration.

This document has been shared with the Honor Council, Student Government Association, the Dean of the Faculty’s Office, the President’s Office, and the Dean of Student’s Office as they consider different ways to build a more robust culture of academic integrity at Davidson. It has also been shared with attendees of the honor code forum. Our hope is that it stimulates further discussions and well-considered actions that address the concerns and questions that have been raised about academic integrity within the Davidson community.

Check out the report below!

Earlier this spring, a representative from Davidson’s student radio station, WALT, reached out to the DCI about hosting an hour-long show on the station. It could highlight the work of the DCI, discuss the challenges and opportunities of deliberation — whatever we thought might be interesting to WALT audiences. If it went well and people were interested, it could serve as a pilot for a regular show in the coming academic year. Several DCI Fellows were interested in trying it out, and so they quickly pulled together a plan at the end of the semester — actually, for a show that was broadcast on the last day of the semester, and it went really well. Especially for the first time the DCI hit the radiowaves!

DCI Fellows Grace Zagoria ’27 and Zak Abdulahi ’27 served as hosts of the show. They talked about their own experiences facilitating conversations as part of the DCI’s Forums and D Teams, and they interviewed several other fellows about their experiences. Fatima Mukasa ’28 talked about how much she enjoyed serving as a fellow as a first-year student and as an international student from Uganda. And Valeriia Kruzhkova ’26, a junior from Ukraine, also talked about her experience as both a fellow and senior fellow with the DCI.

The hosts also interspersed some of their favorite music throughout the show, along with some fun banter among themselves along the way. Check out the full episode below, and let us know if you think we should do a regular show at dci@davidson.edu:

Every spring, the DCI Fellows implement personal deliberation projects in which they organize deliberations on topics they are interested in. This year DCI Fellow Bosisso Charles Takougnadi (aka TBC) had a big idea for his project — he wanted to partner with the history department to host a forum on historical narratives and contested histories.

This would be a challenging enterprise for a history major, but even as a biology major, TBC was undaunted. He reached out to the chair of the History Department, John Wertheimer, and they worked together to design an innovative event titled, “The Power of Historical Narratives and Contested Histories.” This panel-based deliberative discussion was designed to explore the ways historical narratives are constructed, contested, and interpreted in contemporary society. The event focused on how history is told, who gets to tell it, and how differing perspectives shape our understanding of the past and present.

This “Deliberative History Forum” — to our knowledge, the first of its kind at Davidson — was held on April 8, 2025, on the campus of Davidson College, and lasted approximately 120 minutes. The first 45 minutes was dedicated to remarks by a panel of Davidson history professors that included History Professors Jonathan Berkey, Jakub Kabala, Hilary Green, Dáša Mortensen, and John Wertheimer. The remaining 75 minutes was reserved for small group table discussions among the audience members. The panelists joined the conversations, which included approximately 30 students, faculty, and community members. The event was hosted in the New Football Stadium’s Gallery 18, which provided a communal space that worked well for both the panel and the small-group discussions.

The event opened with brief remarks from each panelist, who shared insights into how history can be framed through different political, social, and cultural lenses. Each discussed the forum’s topic based on their academic expertise, which ranged from the histories of the Middle East, medieval Europe, the United States, and East Asia. Their remarks helped set the stage for the audience’s deliberations together.

Following the panel, participants gathered around five tables for facilitated small-group discussions. Due to a shortage of DCI-certified facilitators, several attendees who had experience participating in D Teams stepped up to guide these conversations, which proved successful and enriching. Key topics of discussion included the role of historians in shaping public memory, how marginalized voices are often excluded from or misrepresented in mainstream narratives, and the impact of historical interpretation on present-day policies and identities.

Following the event, many expressed appreciation for the format and content of the event, especially the opportunity to engage with peers and faculty in meaningful dialogue. Participants also enjoyed the provided food (dinner from local restaurant Sabi), which helped create a welcoming and friendly atmosphere.

Overall, the project was a successful effort in fostering thoughtful dialogue on a timely and important subject. It demonstrated the value of collaborative, interdisciplinary events in building civic awareness and critical thinking among members of the campus community.

Luna Noguchi ’25 (DCI Fellow)

On March 5, the DCI invited students, faculty, and staff together to a forum entitled “Lessons of War, Prospects for Peace: What should we say about the legacies of World War II in the Asia-Pacific region?” It served to provide some historical background for the Ginkgo trees planted in Spring 2024 between Chambers, Wall, and the Library. Co-sponsored with the History Department, East Asian Studies Department, Political Science Department, and the Office of the Vice President of Academic Affairs (VPAA), the event presented the history of World War II in the Asia Pacific with attention to historical controversies, while encouraging reflection on the universal human cost of war beyond regional or political divisions. 

The Ginkgo trees were contextualized with informative presentations from Dr. Kristi Multhaup, Dr. Dáša Mortensen, and Dr. Keren Zhu. Dr. Multhaup, whose research focuses on memory, outlined the lasting memory of WWII in the Asia Pacific and her initiative to bring the Ginkgo trees to campus during her participation in the ASIANetwork in Japan in 2016. Dr. Mortensen provided a broad historical perspective of the war in the region, shedding light on the atrocities that occurred. Dr. Zhu gave a presentation on the causes and consequences of war through an international relations perspective. The presentations provided participants with a nuanced and inclusive understanding of the complexities of war. Participants also had the opportunity to watch a compilation of testimonials provided by survivors of WWII from across the Asia-Pacific region in a video created by Keya Zhou ’25, one of the event’s organizers.

In the second half of the event, participants — over dinner provided by local pan-Asian restaurant Sabi with support from the VPAA’s office — engaged in deliberations facilitated by DCI Fellows and guided by a deliberation guide (see below) developed by the event’s organizing team. The goal was to discuss the legacies of WWII in the Asia Pacific and foster meaningful conversation about the inhumanity of war’s moral atrocities. The forum was also intended to generate ideas for interpretive materials for the Ginkgo trees. As the discussions proceeded, fellows asked participants to write their ideas on post-it notes, stick them to a large sheet of paper, and explain their thought processes. Fellows made notes on the paper and moved the post-it notes around to indicate shared conclusions. Online participants shared their thoughts using Zoom’s whiteboard function in their breakout rooms.

Over 35 Davidson students, faculty, staff, community members, and alumni attended the event (24 in person and 14 online), and they included participants who had ties to countries throughout the region. The organizing team, which consists of Keya Zhou ’25, Luna Noguchi ’25, Flo Moser ’26, Romeo Norris ’27, Casey Scheiner ’28, Lily Ogawa ’28, and Dr. Graham Bullock, is currently in the process of collating and synthesizing the comments and ideas from both the post-it notes and submissions made to an anonymous online form that was shared with the participants. They will incorporate this input from the Davidson community into a proposal for how to introduce and contextualize the Ginkgo trees that have been planted on campus. Stay tuned for more info coming soon!