Reevaluating Your Values and Codes of Conduct

I imagine each of your campuses has a values statement that highlights what you aspire to be and how you want to live your values.  I also imagine many of your campuses needed to rethink their values in light of Black Lives Matter, the pandemic or anti-Asian violence.  How did your campus navigate using terms like ‘people of color’ and BIPOC or anti-Asian or AAPI? 

For some campuses, their values statement provides organizational clarity in moments of crisis.  While others might need to reevaluate their statement to address incongruence between its aspiration to living their values through the code of conduct and what is actually happening in the community.  This means that we need to turn our values into behaviors and actions that positively impact the language we use, how we treat each other, how we see the world, and what is unacceptable.

Why are values so important?

Values guide our strategies, policies, practices and behaviors. They send a consistent message to our colleagues and other stakeholders. They remove ambiguity. They define what is important to us.  Researchers such as Collins and Porras have found that values can inspire discretionary effort, particularly when there is a good ‘cultural fit’ between the organization and its workforce. But we must see the relevance of the values to our interconnectedness for this to happen. We must know what the values mean in practice. People pick up on signals, both big and small, about how to behave, so any behavior that is inconsistent with the values should be stopped.  Recruitment, onboarding and community dialogues help to reinforce the values and build understanding of them.

But, having values isn’t enough, particularly if we want to create the inclusive communities with a sense of belonging that we’re striving to become. To outline how to live our values, we need a code of conduct that serves as an official commitment to the communities we serve about the behaviors we expect. You know the saying, ‘are you walking the walk and talking the talk?’

Tips for your campus code of conduct

How can your campus code of conduct be integrated into your community, that is proactive and supports a healthy culture?  I offer a few tips below.

• Outline a code of conduct that flows from and advances your mission and values.
• Assess your campus’ risk.
• Engage a committee of stakeholders to review its relevance and resonance to social or racial justice.
• Incorporate how to exercise good judgment in decisions and actions:i.e., respect; diversity and inclusion; anti-discrimination, harassment, and bullying; handling conflicts of interest; health and safety; and political activity.
• Publish the code of conduct information in different formats and languages to make it easier to retain and be able to recall important code concepts.
• Create interactive content to provide easy access to information and training.
• List how to report violations, including phone, web, text and anonymously.
• State the possible sanctions for unacceptable behavior.

If you find your campus is trying to embody the values, policies, and practices that are discussed here.  Please look to your values statement and code of conduct as a place to start.  Our campuses must be blended voices of various stakeholders bound together for a common purpose and woven together as the fabric of community, regional and national reflection and discourse.  How else can we put our values into action?