About the Community Pledge

BUILDING A COMMUNITY OF RESPECT

There are more than 24,000 graduate and undergraduate students on the Stony Brook campuses. Each student has been selected for their academic excellence and their unique experiences. Each student comes from a different background and is pursuing different educational goals.

As a campus community, we have a responsibility to respect each student, faculty and staff member as a human being and an individual, so that each one can achieve their goals. It is in our personal and academic interests to learn from one another, and this can only be achieved by listening and communicating with each other in respectful ways.

How do we demonstrate that respect? Civility is the language of respect. Civility refers to a set of organizing principles, rules, and societal norms that govern our behavior as members of a community. On campus there are layers of these expectations, including the Code of Conduct, the Terms of Occupancy for Residence Halls, class ground rules, and the Community Pledge, not to mention a lot of good common sense.

Civility, n.
1. The rules and norms that guide our respectful interactions as participants in a
diverse community.
2. Polite, courteous, and considerate behavior or speech appropriate to community
interactions.
(Adapted from the Oxford English Dictionary Online, accessed March 2011)