Honor Council Response

The Devils' Share: The Podcast of Duke Magazine

In Duke Magazine's Summer 2018 issue we covered the Duke Honor Council, a student organization working, as it has worked for years, to create an atmosphere of honor on the Duke campus. The piece inspired a response by an alumna, who shared with us a noteworthy expression of honor by an athlete and further tales of Duke's earliest run at an honor council. Transcript: TRACK We’re an alumni magazine, so we hear from alumni. It’s a treat. Sometimes they tell us amazing stories. Here are a couple that came in response to our piece in the Summer issue about the Duke Honor Council. ACTUALITY For saved messages, press 1. Saved messages “Hi I read your wonderful article in the duke mag today i graduated in 1956 and I thought you’d be interested in a story” In those days we helped tutor the athletic folk and there was a young man who was a football player who was injured and out that year. TRACK Actually he was a baseball player -- this would be William Donigan, who lettered in baseball and soccer after transferring to Duke from Notre Dame. ACTUALITY Anyway we helped to tutor him and he took a lot of the classes we took and one of them was Greek architecture, which didn’t come easy to him. SO the boys made up a cheat sheet and gave it to him the day of the test. And we went in, we all had our blue book, and at the end of the test And we said how did you do? And he said I turned in an empty blue book. We said you turned in an empty blue book? And he said yes I looked around the room and i was so honored by going to school with people like you, I couldn’t cheapen it by cheating. TRACK Your storyteller by the way is Maryann Stevens -- Maryann Dumont, if you knew her when -- and reading about the current honor council brought up those old memories. ACTUALITY I’ve told that story to all my children, my grandchildren, other people’s children, other people’s grandchildren, a truly truly wonderful young man. He did marry coach Murray’s daughter Cissie, and invited us all to the wedding. It was just a wonderful story, and you know, we always did have really outstanding people at Duke TRACK No doubt. Still on the topic of the honor council, in the story associate provost Noah Pickus described the importance of ritual -- things like public signings of the honor code -- to the success of an honor culture. As Stevens recalls, Elizabeth Hanford Dole clearly thought so when she stumped for an honor code during Stevens’ student years. ACTUALITY “I also remember and I believe it was Liddy Dole when she was coming to all the dorms, we came in after the dorm was closed, we came into the parlor and no lights were on it was just candles and she talked about what we should do about having an honor. And i do remember a couple of us said we would be glad to talk about it, but turn the lights on and ditch the candles. Anyhow I do remember so many wonderful wonderful things at Duke.” TRACK No doubt! Maryann has stories about meeting Eleanor Roosevelt, about serving in the White House visitors office under two presidents, and about writing “Breathing Easy,” a book about raising her asthmatic children. From our perspective, the point is: we love hearing from Maryann and people like her. From her perspective, the point is … ACTUALITY Going to Duke was just one of the most wonderful times of my life and I thought I’d pass those remarkable stories along. Bye bye. You have no new messages. To send a message, press... TRACK Well, press 919-684-2863. Tell us a story and maybe we’ll share it.