Following their annual elections, Honor Committee representatives gather to select a new Honor chair during a spring retreat. This year, third-year Commerce student Faith Lyons, a Committee representative for the Commerce School, was selected as chair.
Lyons’ experience with Honor stems back to high school, when she served as the chair of her school’s honor system during her senior year. After entering the University, Lyons became involved with Honor as an educator, and later as a general support-officer.
“I got here and was really interested in the education part [of Honor] and talking to students about the honor system and making sure students understood both the system and the different benefits it [brings],” Lyons said.
While many students know the face and name of the Honor chair each year, less know the chair’s exact role within the University. To Lyons, the chair acts as a listener and synthesizer of ideas.
“[Being chair] is being the person who can listen and synthesize ideas into a vision and a mission for Honor of the year,” Lyons said. “The main thing is being those listening ears so the system itself is as responsive as possible.”
Although Lyons never expected her participation in Honor to result in her appointment as chair, she expressed unique ideas, enthusiasm and thoughts on how to improve the system throughout her time with the organization.
”I never expected to be chair,” Lyons said. “I have a lot of ideas and I was excited to share them and am very lucky to be selected by my fellow Committee members. I’m very excited about the term.”
Lyons is a Jefferson Scholar and an Echols Scholar, the former Student Council Director of University Relations, a member of Student Entrepreneurs for Economic Development and an avid volunteer, to name a few involvements. However, Lyons said she has stepped back from these activities to direct her attention to the Committee.
“She hasn’t done anything halfway which is something I really respect in her as a peer — that she can devote so much time to all of these organizations,” said third-year College student Caroline Herre, Honor’s incoming vice chair for education. “[As Honor chair], she certainly accepted all of its responsibilities by getting rid of everything she’s doing to focus on Honor.”
Lyons said she plans to make positive changes as chair through two major goals — accessibility and refocusing. During her term, she hopes to expand efforts made by past Honor chairs and implement ideas of her own.
“I ran on two ideas — one, putting Honor out there more and having Honor be more accessible to the community, and that is going to take a lot of different forms in our education and outreach events,” Lyons said. “[Two is] refocusing Honor on students and making the focus of everything we do the students.”
Coming from an education background, Lyons emphasized the importance of listening to external communities and allowing students outside Honor to take part in important conversations.
“Training as an educator, her focus has always been external to the vast majority of students who never see Honor,” Herre said. “That’s something that will really distinguish her experience, and I hope is something that translates into our term.”
Lyons said she plans to build Honor’s presence on Grounds by attending events and supporting different student groups — whether they are explicitly Honor-related or not. Through the engagement of support officers, Lyons said she hopes to bring Honor “back to the students.”
“[Faith and I] decided we must have our meetings in Alderman Café — not on the fourth floor of Newcomb, when we’re not talking about confidential Honor things,” Herre said. “We thought we should be someplace where people can see us, come up to us and ask us things. We’re trying to expel the ‘only hanging out on fourth floor of Newcomb’ rumors.”
While Lyons said she is looking forward to implementing her major goals, she also recognizes the challenges posed by the referenda passed during the 2015 election, and said she hopes to work with different student groups in new discussions.
“While we have a lot of ideas, it still is going to be very challenging to reach out to all the communities and get input and feedback to make some decisions, particularly about the referenda and how we interpret and work with those,” Lyons said. “We’ve all committed to the fact that we have a lot of learning to do, a lot of research to do and a lot of time spent reflecting on our system prior to making any decisions.”
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