Being a student at a world-class institution confers privilege, prestige, and unique opportunity, but it also obligates you to meet a set of standards and to fulfill certain expectations. I ask only three things from you as a student in our academic community: scholarship, leadership, and citizenship. If you deliver these and hold to the values articulated below, your time at UCSB will be more meaningful and what you take away at graduation will be infinitely more valuable.
In an institution where the search for knowledge and truth is the primary goal, integrity in teaching, learning, research, and scholarship is paramount. Dishonesty undermines our common missions. This translates into the obvious: write your own papers, take your own tests, do your own work.
The real test of this value comes when we encounter people whose backgrounds, beliefs, and world views differ from our own. If your educational experience is all that it should be, you will graduate prepared to navigate a society that comprises many different kinds of people. You will also graduate having seen and understood different world views, and will perhaps expand your own. These are the key skills of the new century, and your education will be incomplete if you graduate without these abilities.
Our community requires the respectful exchange of ideas. People should be passionate about what they believe and how they express that belief, but they must also be civil in both word and deed. This principle is particularly important when a community encompasses people who have different backgrounds, world views, etc. I am not talking about political correctness, I am talking about basic respect — about how people treat one another, not about what people think or believe.
We should all serve the campus and community while we are here. Contributing to the community can take the form of simply being a good citizen, being considerate of neighbors, cleaning up the campus and community, volunteering at a school or social service in town, or helping to raise money for charity.