Berkeleyan

‘Principles of Community’ up for your consideration
Via online survey, campus input is being sought on values statement

04 March 2004

For more than a year the campus has been developing, at the request of Chancellor Berdahl, a comprehensive statement on the values that students, alumni, faculty, and staff at UC Berkeley share as a community. Campus leaders and constituent groups — including the leadership of the Berkeley Division of the Academic Senate, the Graduate Assembly, the ASUC, the Chancellor’s Staff Advisory Committee, and the Council of Staff Organizations, among others — have provided guidance and feedback on the principles to be included.

The campus community as a whole is now invited to offer input on the “Principles of Community” statement-in-progress. A draft version, reproduced below, may also be found online (http://osr2.berkeley.edu/survey/poc.html), along with a brief survey for each of four constituencies — faculty, staff, students, and alumni. Respondents are invited to weigh in on what they believe is essential to include in the statement, and to provide detailed comments on the draft language developed to date.

Institutions often develop principles of community as a means to establish and convey commonly held values, behavioral expectations, and benchmarks for more formal codes of conduct and administrative and personnel policies and procedures, says Elizabeth Gillis, coordinator of the Campus Community Initiative. They are not usually documents with legal standing, but help to set a tone. UC’s Office of the President has such a statement, she notes, as do other UC campuses and many academic institutions outside the UC system, though often in connection with student life exclusively. The Berkeley statement is being crafted to apply to the entire campus as an overarching set of standards.

Chancellor Berdahl issued a CalMail message this week announcing the survey. “The ‘Principles of Community,’” he wrote, “promote the kind of good citizenship for our community members that goes hand in hand with Berkeley’s mission of fulfilling its public trust through teaching, research, and public services.”

Members of the campus community have until Friday, March 19, to reply to the survey. Responses will help form Berkeley’s final “Principles of Community” statement, which the chancellor is expected to approve and finalize by the end of spring semester.

Principles of community (Draft language)
As a vital and diverse educational community, the University of California, Berkeley strives to transform the lives of all it touches. Here, students, staff, and faculty dedicate themselves to personal and academic excellence and share a passion for critical inquiry and discovery. Berkeley takes pride in being a safe place for the formation and expression of ideas, providing a rich learning environment and community life rooted in the diversity of its people.

The University uses its academic strength to improve everyday life, connecting the individual and the community and emphasizing service to others as a way to contribute to a better world. Both service and community are principles that focus much of our campus research and guide our efforts to create a living, learning, and working environment that reflects and enhances the University’s heritage of excellence.
As a campus community, we are committed to:

• Honesty and integrity in teaching, learning, research, and administration
• Civility in our speech and interactions
• Mutual respect for the dignity of all individuals
• Engagement through leadership and participation
• Open access to opportunities for learning and development
• Caring and support for all campus-community members