Words to Live By

By STEPHANIE OLSEN Colorado Daily Staff Writer
Sunday, April 10, 2005 10:00 PM MDT

Words like "honor," "integrity," and "respect" are ones CU-Boulder students, faculty, and staff will start noticing more and more as they walk around campus.

The Colorado Creed, a statement of social responsibility at CU, was created by a group of students in May of 2004 and will be introduced to the campus on Monday.

"That's one of the biggest things of the Creed is that there's so much credibility to it because it's from students for students," said Beau Beckley, a sophomore business major at CU and one of the creators of the Creed. "It's not something overlaid by faculty."

The Creed incorporates seven guiding principles to live by. Those principles are: Act, Honor, Have Integrity, Respect, Accept, Contribute, and Be Accountable.

The actual Creed states, "As a member of the Boulder community and the University of Colorado, I agree to: act with honor, integrity and accountability in my interactions with students, faculty, staff and neighbors; respect the rights of others and accept their differences; contribute to the greater good of this community. I will strive to uphold these principles in all aspects of my collegiate experience and beyond."

The Creed will make its presence known on campus in various ways. Brass building plaques, bearing the Creed's statement, will be erected at various locations on campus, one location being the UMC.

Additionally, stone sidewalk slabs stating the words, or principles, of the Creed will be placed in high-traffic areas.

On Monday at 1 p.m., Beckley and others will introduce the Colorado Creed by unveiling the first stone, which will read "Integrity."

It all started when the Princeton Review ranked CU as the number-one party school, and bad press started circulating.

"We were all just really tired of defending our degrees and defending our school to our friends and family," said Beckley.

Beckley said he met with Ron Stump, vice chancellor for student affairs, and introduced the idea of a "social responsibility code."

Stump connected Beckley with some students who were part of "Debunking the Myth," a student group formed to disprove the Princeton Review ranking.

There are seven students involved with the Colorado Creed, including Beckley. The other six are Sarah Miller, a junior business/art history major; Alicia Anderson, a junior business major; Chris Deardorff, senior business major; Molly McKellar, a junior philosophy major; Jason Griffith, a freshman political science/journalism/philosophy major; and Jeremy Durham, a senior philosophy major.

"We all had the same ideas and values, but we really didn't know exactly what we wanted as a whole," said Beckley. "Through Ron Stump, and coming together, is how we formed the Colorado Creed."

Beckley said one of the goals of the Creed is to change the culture at CU.

"The majority of students here are really tired of having all these false images of the school," said Beckley. "There are 25,000-plus students and it's tiring when two or three events ruin the image of all of those students. So the biggest goal of the Creed is really to change the image of this school and set an example of a university where families and prospective students can see students taking initiative and really changing it."

Miller said the group hopes when students walk over the stones on campus reading words like integrity, hopefully he or she will remember to live the Creed.

"A lot of the principles you see are acting with honor, integrity, accountability, and just basically reminding people to consider the consequences of their actions before they take action, keeping in mind being respectful of others and also contributing to the community to make it a better place and keep up the great place that it is to live," said Miller.

Miller said the group will concentrate on introducing the Creed to the incoming freshman class, because it is something that has to be integrated from the beginning when students come to school at CU.

Miller said the Creed will be presented at convocation and maybe at the summer orientation session.

The University of Colorado Student Union (UCSU) has endorsed the Colorado Creed program, according to Joe Neguse, a tri-executive for UCSU.

"We think it is great," said Neguse. "We encourage all students to go out and try different things to make our university better in a lot of different ways, going out and being proactive and bringing positive aspects to our university, and I think that is exactly what Colorado Creed is doing."

Contact Stephanie Olsen about this story at 303-443-6272 ext. 125 or at olsen@coloradodaily.com.