WHEN you arrive at the University, all kinds of people and groups introduce you to the culture of the school. The honor code, social life and academics are all detailed in various presentations or meetings. These events and messages attempt to shape where this community will stand on the moral spectrum and what virtues new students ought to live by. Though this effort has its limits, the question still lingers: How ambitious do we want to be?
One of the most laudable groups looking to influence this choice is One in Four, a student-run effort to reduce sexual violence and improve security for members of the community. One in Four aims to dispel myths about rape, attempts to build empathy and hopes to encourage respect for romantic relations. The organization stops short, however, of targeting the deeper problems of our prevalent sexual culture.
One in Four is effective in improving the general understanding of sexual violence and in reducing the rate of offense, yet the problem extends beyond more than simply violations of consent. Students exist in a society of confused consent and high-pressure expectations and use alcohol as an excuse for misconduct. One in Four says respect is one way to redress this problem. But how can respect for one another be reconciled within a social context that is fundamentally alien to this concept?
Although respect is partially effective in averting these concerns, it breaks down under the twin burdens of evil: human nature and destructive social conventions. A dark part of human nature - most often expressed in men - and social customs fail to restrain and may even excite sexual violence. Learning to respect is an attempt to build such a custom but is undercut by a desperation to be inoffensive. To be emotionally resonant and change people's behavior, customs must be strong codes that gain esteem from stricture. Anything wholly inoffensive will be wholly uninspiring. Even though it is worth recognizing the moral worth of respect, there is no transcendental sense of goodness in its fulfillment. Obeying the customs of respect activates no sense of ourselves as profound moral beings.
Despite the incomplete success of this modern innovation of respect, we are hardly without weapons in the fight. After all, we have two crucial traditions to draw on: honor and chivalry. The first of these is anything but unfamiliar to the University; honor defines us and can help us improve as individuals. In the sexual sphere, its applicability should be uncontroversial, expressed in a commitment to truth and forthrightness. Honor, properly understood, should eschew the use of alcohol as a tool to facilitate unwise decisions by either party. Those expressing discomfort should ask themselves whether alcohol is really a good idea.
Chivalry goes further than honor. It specifically calls on men to exercise restraint and deference. It is the more controversial, exciting visions of patriarchy and control; yet its suitability to the task at hand is unparalleled. Even if males are inherently apt to dominate and be selfish, they also contain finer characteristics, including the much-maligned impulse to protect and, even more fundamentally, the wish to think good of oneself.
Chivalry harnesses these powerful instincts and codifies them as a restriction on human evil. As a system, it is messy and can easily fall into condescension and a sense of superiority. However, its flaws are surely better than the moral abyss it fences.
Treating people with respect, honor or chivalry is expressed in a thousand actions, great and small, everyday - not just on Friday nights - and is taught both explicitly and subtly by presentations or quiet words among friends. The University has a responsibility to teach students, as parents do, to be good human beings.
Messy as the concepts of chivalry and honor may be, they are houses built by the better angels of our human nature and history. These traditions of the heart speak to our desire to be good in a way that legal rules and an amorphous "respect" cannot. We should shelter in these ancestral homes more often, and as guardians of the community, all student groups should lead us to the door.
Roraig Finney is a Viewpoint writer for The Cavalier Daily.
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