The Office of Student Conduct staff set up a table at the Student Union in order to inform students about the campaign for Know the Code. The campaign’s goal is to help students become more aware of the Code of Conduct standards and University Policies.
Courtesy of Antoinette Alack

This semester, the Office of Student Conduct staff is trying its best to engender a desire to follow the Student Code of Conduct within students.

This code is an agreed upon standard for all university pupils. The Office of Student Conduct is a division of Student Affairs, which has a purpose to “[work] with students to encourage honorable behavior that models the Student Code of Conduct.”

This ideal is what the office’s new Know the Code campaign centers around. According to itself, the campaign shows students that knowing and adhering to the Student Code of Conduct helps students “conduct themselves in a manner which supports the educational mission of the university.”

“A few years ago people asked, ‘What do you do at Southeastern?’ I told them, ‘I work for the Office of Student Conduct,’ and almost every person said the same thing, ‘I did not know there was an office like that on campus when I was a student,’” said Antoinette Alack, assistant director of the Office of Student Conduct. “I knew then that the office needed to be promoted in some way, thus the Know the Code campaign was established in 2008 to educate the campus community on the Code of Conduct standards and University Policies.”

Alack detailed the amount of work that went into spreading the word all over the Southeastern campus.

“Beginning the first week of each semester our outreach efforts to inform the public include; attending SOP (Summer Orientation Programs), mass student e-mail notices, placing ads on the webmail page and passing out our Know the Code awareness cards in the Union with a quick access (Quick Response) code,” said Alack. “The code makes it easy for a student to scan with a smartphone and immediately get directed to the policy.  Also, when a student enrolls in classes they are prompted to review the Student Handbook and check off that they read it before registering for classes.”

According to Alack, the campaign has had a notable effect on campus behavior. 

“Not only did we reduce our recidivism rate (the act of a person repeating an undesirable behavior) from 5 percent to less than 2 percent, we increased students’ awareness of their student rights and their knowledge to file a complaint in time of need,” said Alack.

Many students never read over the Student Code of Conduct through undergraduate and graduate years. Alack urges this to be corrected, as knowledge of the Student Code of Conduct can benefit not only their academic life, but one’s personal life as well.

“It is important that students understand that there is a Code to follow. College is the time to rise to the next level from adolescence into adulthood focusing on achieving a degree while being responsible,” said Alack. “Understand that college is fun but there are rules to follow.”

For more information on the Know the Code campaign, visit the Office of Student Conduct in Mims Hall room 211.