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The Graduation Pledge of Social & Environmental Responsibility: An Effective Tool for Education and
Action on Human Rights
May, 2006
by
Matt Nicodemus, Executive DirectorGraduation Pledge Alliance-Asia, Taipei, Taiwan
Presented at the International Conference on Human Rights Education
in a Diverse and Changing Asia, May 22-24, 2006, Soochow University, Taipei, Taiwan.
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EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: Signers of the voluntary Graduation Pledge commit to consider social and environmental responsibility in their future choices of work and their on-the-job choices. This paper discusses how the Pledge can play important roles in educating students about human rights and preparing and supporting them to protect and promote human rights throughout their careers. ABSTRACT: Since its inception at Humboldt State University in northern California in 1987, the Graduation Pledge of Social & Environmental Responsibility has been a way for students at a growing number of campuses worldwide to voluntarily commit themselves to social and environmental responsibility in their future choices of work and their on-the-job choices. The non-partisan, non-sectarian Graduation Pledge has drawn strong support and involvement throughout its existence, not only from the many thousands of graduates who have signed it, but also from educators and community members who readily perceive how it encourages students to explore and discover their deepest values and then manifest those values in one of the most important arenas of life: their work.
This paper examines the many powerful roles the Pledge can play in educating students about human rights and preparing and supporting them to protect and promote human rights throughout their careers.
Beginning when they enter a school with an active graduation pledge program, students can be introduced to examination of central questions regarding human rights, social-environmental responsibility, and their mutual relationship. They can throughout their studies refine their personal answers to those questions, and see more clearly how they will be faced with myriad future professional situations in which the social-environmental choices they make may impact the human rights of many people, including themselves.
Students contemplating the pledge promise can be informed about the wide range of resources available to support their conscientious career and job decisions, and they can learn about inspiring cases of other principled individuals, including pledge signers, and organizations that have made a difference for human rights. They can also study different potential employers' human rights records and find out how to investigate other employers and improve employers' human rights performance.
The actors assisting students in their process of self-discovery and development of resolve to work responsibly can include all members of the campus community, plus a wide variety of people and groups from outside the
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school. At commencement, the combined influences of these various actors, along with students' own evolution of belief and vision, find expression in graduates making the lifelong pledge commitment. This oath-taking, even if done privately, within the students' minds, occurs in the context of a highly meaningful, widely accepted public rite of passage, which can more firmly imprint the pledge commitment into their consciousnesses.
After graduation, pledge signers have access to an extensive and ever-expanding network of fellow pledge takers, and to a vast array of people and organizations devoted to helping them live and work in ways that will preserve and strengthen human rights wherever they may be employed and whatever their job descriptions.
As more and more educational institutions make the Graduation Pledge option a part of their school experience, the world could gain an enormous human force for the advancement of human rights.
Matt Nicodemus, a co-author of the original 1987 Graduation Pledge of Social and
Environmental Responsibility at Humboldt State University and co-founder of the
Graduation Pledge Alliance (GPA), is executive director of the Graduation Pledge
Alliance-Asia in Taipei, Taiwan. Matt hopes that readers of this paper will want to
learn more about the Graduation Pledge, discuss it, study it, inform others about
it, organize or join a campaign for it, sign it, support it in other ways, or
combinations thereof. He can be contacted at [email protected]. Additional
information about the Graduation Pledge is available from the Graduation Pledge
Alliance at www.graduationpledge.org.
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Each year, well over one million students enter the workforce. Thinkof the impact on our society if even a significant minority of applicantsand job holders inquired about or attempted to change the ethical practices of their potential or current employers (Graduation PledgeAlliance, 2006).
Graduation Pledge Alliance brochure
Maybe I’m just one person, but who knows? If we all act as rolemodels, it could have an effect (Barnett, 1987).
Michele Van Hentenryck, 1987 graduate of
Humboldt State University and one of the first signers of the Graduation Pledge of Social and Environmental Responsibility
IntroductionOver the past half century, it has become increasingly accepted that the
continued existence and well-being of humanity and other species on Earth depend on the extent to which people everywhere, acting both as individuals and together in organizations, do so with a commitment to social and environmental responsibility (SER). Countless initiatives to increase public awareness of and action for SER have been taken in all sectors of society, and in today’s climate of numerous severe damages and profound threats to life on Earth coexistent with enormous hope and potential for significant improvements in the world, an urgent need exists for everyone to learn more about SER and discern the many ways we can, with our continuing life choices, help make those improvements. Northern California writer Wendi Grasseschi notes:
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Responsibility is the ability to respond. Inherently, to respond means to act,to create, to change. But responsibility also implies an awareness of the impacts of one’s actions, and it is this concept that is finally becoming partof the global community’s consciousness. The days of action without thoughtare obsolete in this increasingly closely knit world (Grasseschi, 1992).
Also obsolete is the notion that human rights issues are distinct from environmental issues. Scanning almost any day’s news headlines provides convincing evidence that human rights abuses can both directly result from environmental problems, as in recent cases of Taiwan citizens’ health being threatened by secret, illegal river dumping of highly carcinogenic industrial waste, and also produce eco-destruction, such as that seen in most war zones. Global warming is a phenomenon which poignantly illustrates this deadly two-way dynamic, with the world’s poorest people often being forced to burn foraged wood for cooking and home heating while at the same time being the ones put most at risk by temperature increases that will come from all the carbon their survival fires put into the atmosphere. If, as one popular dictionary (Collins Cobuild) states, “Someone’s environment is…all the circumstances, people, things, and events around them that influence their life,” then our social and environmental concerns, and the actions for justice and planetary survival which flow forth from them, must be inextricably linked.
Since its inception at Humboldt State University (HSU) in northern California in 1987, the Graduation Pledge of Social & Environmental Responsibility has been a way for students at a growing number of campuses worldwide to voluntarily commit themselves to social and environmental responsibility in their future choices of work and their on-the-job choices.
The Graduation Pledge in its current form reads as follows:
I pledge to explore and take into account the social and environmental
consequences of any job I consider and will try to improve these aspects of
any organizations for which I work (Graduation Pledge Alliance).
At schools where the Pledge is offered, graduating students are given the opportunity to voluntarily accept and commit to the Pledge at or around the time of commencement. Over the years, pledge signers have included college and university graduates, recipients of advanced academic and professional degrees,
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and students completing community college and high school.Successful graduation pledge campaigns have been initiated on around two
hundred campuses, including schools in the United States, Canada, France, Australia, Singapore and Taiwan, and new pledge efforts are presently being considered for the Philippines and India. The over one hundred educational institutions with active pledge programs span a range from the some of the most famous, elite academies to small, relatively unknown schools. At many of these campuses, faculty members, administrators, and staff have joined in pledge activities and shown visible support for pledge takers at commencement.
The non-partisan, non-sectarian Pledge has drawn support and involvement throughout its existence, not only from the many thousands of graduates who have signed it, but also from educators and community members who readily perceive how it encourages students to explore and discover their deepest values and then manifest those values in one of the most important arenas of life: their work. In 1988, addressing the first group of Stanford University students to be offered the pledge option, then-university president Donald Kennedy pointed out to graduates that the Pledge
. . . asks that we consider outcomes – not that we declare allegiance to some normative standard it supplies. It should be as acceptable to the political conservative as to the liberal, because it does something we all need to do
moreof – that is, it helps us focus on the consequences of what we do, urges us toestimate them, and urges us to try to decide whether they are acceptable(Kennedy, 1988).
Around the same time, the New York-based Council on Economic Priorities praised the Humboldt State University pledge organizing pioneers:
In a society that too easily seems to accept material gain and profit as themajor symbol [sic] of success, it is heartening to know that many of today’s
youthare judging success by more meaningful standards. As the Council points outin our research, all citizens should make corporations more responsive to thesocial concerns that affect all of us. Actions such as yours will help create the environment to make that happen (Ihne et al, 1988, 24).
News of the Graduation Pledge has traveled far and wide, carried by pledge
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takers andactivists, the hundreds of thousands of guests attending graduation ceremonies featuring pledge distribution, and numerous news media reports. The Pledge idea has been described in various books, and has been recognized with several important awards.
Most meaningful, though, in the growth of the Graduation Pledge, have been the pledge signers themselves, their inner explorations, their investigations of potential employers and possibilities for making a positive difference in and through their work, and their myriad different socially and environmentally responsible choices at work, choices which have expressed their true dedication to ideals and to the practical ideas which can embody them. Those choices, some major and risky, others smaller but no less significant, have made real impacts, on pledge signers’ employers, on the social-environmental consequences of those employers’ activities, and on everyone who is moved by the pledge signers’ examples.
This paper examines the many powerful roles the Graduation Pledge of Social and Environmental Responsibility can play in educating students about human rights and preparing and supporting them to protect and promote human rights throughout their careers.
The Graduation Pledge and human rights in academic educational settings
Beginning when they enter a school with an active graduation pledge program, students can be introduced to examination of central questions regarding human rights, social-environmental responsibility, and their mutual relationship. They can throughout their studies refine their personal answers to those questions, and see more clearly how they will be faced with myriad future professional situations in which the social-environmental choices they make may impact the human rights of many people, including themselves.
Prof. Howard Stauffer, a mathematician at Humboldt State University who himself has turned down highly lucrative and interesting work because of its military implications, discusses the Pledge with students in his classes each semester:
I tell them about my confrontations with questions of ethics and suggest thatthey will likely face similar challenges. . . . it is not my place to tell them whattheir ethical position should be, but rather to warn them that they will likely be confronted with the issue in their jobs. I urge them to begin thinking
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aboutthe issue and take a position (King et al, 1993, 3).
Another HSU teacher, Prof. Bill Devall, author of Deep Ecology – Living as if Nature Mattered (Peregrin Books, 1985), invited student and community pledge activists to speak to his Critical Thinking classes, assigning students to write follow-up essays expressing their reactions to the pledge idea and describing how they would go about checking into the social-environmental consequences of a job opportunity in their field of interest (GPA, 1988, March; Ihne et al, 1988, 5).
Here in Taipei, at Soochow University (SCU), where a pledge program was unofficially initiated last spring, students, one faculty member, and representatives from Graduation Pledge Alliance (GPA)-Asia have begun discussions with the staff of the Human Rights Program (HRP) on campus to explore how information about the Pledge could be integrated into various HRP classes already being taught at the school. At nearby Chinese Culture University (CCU), a number of teachers bring guest speakers in to address students about the Pledge and their responsibilities to society. One of these teachers, Teresa Wu, regularly urges her pupils to pay attention to and question the many kinds of discrimination they may witness in their future employment. “If you see people mistreated in your office or if your company is doing something harmful to the environment, you must come out and say something rather than just pretend that it doesn’t exist,” said Wu, director of CCU’s Language Center and founder of her campus’s GPA group, in one interview last year (Shih, 2005).
But it’s not only via teachers’ instruction that the Pledge can have an impact in the classroom. On various campuses, pledge activists make guest presentations about the Pledge in many different kinds of classes. Students, too, have given in-class speeches on the topic, sometimes using information they’ve obtained from their campus pledge group (GPA, 1988, March). Students acting with pledge-motivated responsibility have been the instigators of some important learning and change experiences. In the Zoology Department at HSU, philosophy major Lindamarie King and other pledge supporters found an alternative to animal dissection by purchasing videos, laminated pictures, and plastic models to use in preparing for exams (King et al, 1993, 2), while over in Chemistry, senior Bill Ziemer’s questioning of what was being dumped down laboratory sinks after experiments and where it was going led to a department-wide meeting, resulting in revision of waste management and disposal policy and new, more ecologically sound student lab reporting requirements (Ihne et al, 1988, 5).
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Recently, Scott Seider of the GoodWork Project reported fascinating results of his study of students at Harvard College who performed 10-20 hours of community service work each week (Seider, 2005). He found that while most of the subjects in his sample were predisposed, through one or more means, to public service, “it was these students’ unanticipated participation in a framework experience that led to the development of a worldview in which service-work came to be seen as important, meaningful, and, for many of these students, a moral obligation” (21). A “framework experience,” in Seider’s model, is “an experience that shapes an individual’s view of community and the role that he or she can assume within that community” (20). Class offerings grounded in education about responsibility and rights have the potential to serve as such framework experiences for students, as did a freshman course, “Personal Choice and Global Transformation,” for one student, who explained, “It wasn’t all that thematic or academic in a sense, but it was inspirational and sort of allowed people to think broadly about what they wanted to see happen in the world, which I think there should probably be a place for that in the University” (22). Listening to another of Seider’s interviewees recount her transformative involvement in Harvard’s annual student-run First Year Urban Program (FUP) (a four-day “service orientation program” that takes place before the University’s regular first-year orientation week) opens our eyes to the real potential for graduation pledge-related study and discourse to effect deep changes in participants:
The most important part of FUP is the discussions, and the issues that are brought to light….I was so angry when I read about stories about prisons andabout how people are treated, and how in many ways the system is wrongand no one is doing anything about it….It was amazing because I hadn’t eventhought about some of this stuff. I hadn’t thought about how oppressionpermeates our lives in ways we don’t even think about. And FUP made mereally, really angry. I left FUP saying oh my gosh, I really have to do something (18).
In Appendix 1, I have included a list of SER learning targets for use in the design of academic activities and assignments. Appendix 2 presents excerpts from a recent proposal for a comprehensive social and environmental responsibility program at CCU.
Learning about the Pledge and human rights outside the classroomStudents contemplating the graduation pledge promise can be informed
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about the wide range of resources available to support their conscientious career and job decisions, and they can learn about inspiring cases of other principled individuals, including pledge signers, and organizations that have made a difference for human rights. They can also study different potential employers' human rights records and find out how to investigate other employers and improve employers' human rights performance.
The GPA’s website, www.graduationpledge.org, is one place many people go to get the latest information on responsible career-building and tips on making changes within the organizations they will be or are working for. Psychology professor Neil Wollman, GPA coordinator and senior fellow of Manchester College’s Peace Studies Institute, which sponsors the GPA, claims that their online collection of socially responsible jobs, internships, and volunteer programs (http://www.graduationpledge.org/jobs.html) is one of the best around. Wollman has made special effort to balance the resource, listing links to organizations across the political spectrum. One of his group’s next big projects will be to assist in creating an online community especially for people who’ve made the pledge commitment.
Another organization that has evolved directly out of pledge-related endeavors is the Sustainable Careers Institute (SCI) (www.sustainablecareers.info), directed by educator-consultant Melissa Everett. Everett, author of Making A Living While Making a Difference: The Expanded Guide to Creating Careers with a Conscience (New Society Publishers, 1999), has created Good Work Central, “a wide-ranging library and collection of links on work ethics and options, education, and career counseling to create a society that is more democratic, just, humane and ecologically sustainable” (Everett, 2006). The SCI also “promotes a new work ethic for a new era” through providing training and resources on education and career options to institutions of higher learning. Everett has traveled extensively to supply school career center staff across the U.S. with the sorts of information that are increasingly demanded by their socially and environmentally concerned counselees.
Much of the most personally impacting activity to educate and support those considering the pledge takes place on the campuses where the Pledge is offered. This is where conscientious students have the chance to interact more directly with each other and with other people who want to help them live out their promises. Sophomore Liz Hoffman devoted one of her weekly columns in the University of Pennsylvania student newspaper to introducing the Pledge to her schoolmates and showing specific ways students could put it into practice
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(Hoffman, 2006). The Campus Times at the University of Rochester carried a story last spring describing pledge education work of the student group Grassroots, whose members were cooperating with the school career center to compile and make available job search resources. Grassroots member Aadika Singh stated, “The pledge is not just for seniors or just for graduation. It’s for all students to consider and reflect upon at all times” (Buitrago, 2005). The article noted that the group was planning to hold a panel discussion featuring “employed members of the university and the Greater Rochester community”, who would address “issues of social and environmental responsibility in their work.”
One of the most memorable events I remember from my own work with the Pledge in its early years at HSU was a very well-attended April, 1988 public forum, “Careers & Conscience: Examining Military-Related Occupations.” Not only did the forum bring together four panelists who had made very different career choices (one nuclear weapons designer and another who had quit such work, a Navy Pentagon spokesman, and a radical physicist who refused to train students who might do military work), but its entire organization, a joint effort between members of the GPA, Student Citizens for Social Responsibility, and the College Republicans, expressed a common assumption that “each speaker honestly believed believed that his choices were socially and environmentally responsible”; the three and a half hours of passionate, mutually respecting discussion we all engaged in demonstrated “a special spirit of cooperative search for truth” that is often lacking these days when widely disparate viewpoints meet on campus (Elias, 1988; GPA, Ihne et al, 1988; King et al, 1993).
Like the members of Grassroots at Rochester and GPA at HSU, Irish-born literature major Sinead Walsh, the lead organizer of Harvard pledge activities in 2000, arranged for several panels of speakers from a number of cause-oriented groups to appear on campus (McCarthy, 2001). The added twist was that students desiring to take the Harvard pledge were required to attend at least one of the three forums. Aware of how easy it could be for some graduates to sign the Pledge and then soon forget it, Walsh and her colleagues also prepared smaller-sized pledge cards that could be carried in signers’ wallets and distributed advice books full of useful information and advice for job and volunteer service seekers (Pope, 2000). “We’re aiming to give seniors practical, every day ways to help in work life,” she explained (Reiter, 2000).
At Stanford and at least several other schools, pledge activists have done their own investigative homework and drawn on the resources of a variety of issue-oriented organizations on and off campus to gather and make available different news and views about the social-environmental performance of
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companies and other employers. Students for Informed Career Decisions, who coordinated the Stanford pledge program in 2001-2002, posted on their website detailed suggestions for how to research potential careers and employers, and what they had found out about “25 companies that commonly recruit on college campuses” (Students for Informed Career Decisions, 2002). Speaking to the Washington Times, SICD head Ned Tozun expressed his feeling that “the pledge is especially relevant at Stanford, since many of us will end up becoming influential individuals with the potential to make a significant impact, whether it be positive or negative” (Duin, 2001). A decade before, the University of Colorado pledge group created a leaflet, “Thinking about the Graduation Pledge of Environmental and Social Responsibility,” which was handed to graduates when they picked up their pledges at cap and gown distribution (UCSU Environmental Center, 1992). Above a list of resources available at the university to assist investigation of the policies and practices of prospective employers, the leaflet suggested that
You can think of fulfilling the commitment of the pledge as involving two
separate tasks: First, there is looking within yourself. You might identifywhat personal principles are important to you. Then consider how theseprinciples manifest on a company level, both in relations within the companyand the relations the company maintains with the larger community andthe environment….Second, there is looking outside yourself by
undertakinga concrete investigation of companies for which you may consider working.
One observation made by numerous student pledge advocates is that their study of and reflection on pledge information, their involvement in organizing campus activities and events, and their interactions with older, experienced and highly committed pledge group members have greatly enriched and strengthened the inner sentiments which first led them to join in work on the Pledge. This echoes opinions expressed by the Harvard students GoodWork’s Seider believes had a “framework experience” in FUP, including Louis, who recalled,
Before FUP…I’d say that I was taught to think about community service asan extracurricular activity….It was not presented as a framework of thinking.And, I think, that’s what FUP really did for me. I saw people that wereintegrating their studies and their service, their activism, and how they
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engage with this community….And it was just really powerful for me(Seider, 2005, 20).
If we can manage to involve students earlier in examination of social-environmental responsibility issues and get them helping schoolmates to do the same over a longer period of time before graduation, then that pledge organizing itself can dramatically develop and amplify their intentions to do their very best for the world.
Of course, the large majority of heart- and mind-expanding discussions about the Pledge do not take place in classrooms or at public events or freshman orientations. Instead, they occur among students in smaller, more personal contexts, among friends, over dormitory dining tables, in conversations with classmates, or during phone calls home, for example. In these settings, students can relax and be themselves, which is essential if they are going to get in touch with their deeper values, hopes and perceptions to the degree required for making a lifelong commitment to responsible work. The most effective graduation pledge promotion gives students ‘big’ questions that they can explore, both alone and in social situations, to better understand themselves and others. “Talking to friends and colleagues is a great way to actively reflect on the pledge and to support mutual efforts to develop commitments to social and environmental responsibility,” claimed the writers of the aforementioned leaflet for University of Colorado graduates (UCSU Environmental Center, 1992). Presently, our Asian regional office of GPA is developing and beginning to distribute draft bilingual versions of “Questions to Explore in Social and Environmental Responsibility (SER) Work Discussions” at pledge-active schools in Taiwan (see Appendix 3). This fall, we will conduct a pilot project to assist the formation of peer discussion-support groups on some of these campuses; the groups will give participants the chance to examine pledge-related topics in a series of informal conversations.
The Pledge in graduation activities
The pledge statement is kind of what education is all about. We becomeeducated men and women so we can go on and act in a socially and environmentally responsible manner (Barnett, 1987).
Former HSU student body presidentMark Murray, 1987 pledge signer
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I think any graduate could go along with that feeling and be proud to(Ihne et al, 1988, 25).
Larry Murray, father of Mark Murray
The actors assisting students in their process of self-discovery and development of resolve to work responsibly can include all members of the campus community, plus a wide variety of people and groups from outside the school. At commencement, the combined influences of these various actors, along with students' own evolution of belief and vision, find expression in graduates making the lifelong pledge commitment. This oath-taking, even if done privately, within the students' minds, occurs in the context of a highly meaningful, widely accepted public rite of passage, which can more firmly imprint the pledge commitment into their consciousnesses.
The word “graduation” is derived from the Latin root gradus, meaning step or pace. “Commencement” is the time at which something begins. For students finishing their studies and stepping into the next phase of their existence, taking a lifelong oath to respect the Earth and its people can be extremely meaningful. In a paper presented at the 4th National Conference on Ethics in America in 1993, GPA-HSU member Lindamarie King argued that Pledge oath “gives students the chance to consciously orient themselves to seek responsible livelihoods just as they are graduating and facing critical employment choices” (King et al, 1993). Receiving her CCU bachelor’s degree in English last year, Theresa Pi, a returning student, reflected,
I hope by taking the pledge, a little seed of conscience will be planted in my heart which will grow and give me the courage to do the right thingsfor our society and the environment. As a mother, I look forward to making the world a better place for my children (Nicodemus et al, 2005, 4).
Dr. James Dalton, instigator of the new pledge project at Bloomsburg University in Pennsylvania, said recently that the purpose of the Pledge was “to remind us all to honor our values, to continuously consider the social and environmental consequences of our choices, and to improve the social and environmental aspects of our workplaces, communities and society” (Eby, 2006). Looking back on his 1989 graduation from Manchester College, William Benysh, a biology teacher at Wabash High School in Indiana, stated,
I feel now the Graduation Pledge was a great statement of optimism
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and an acceptance of the responsibility of adulthood….I took those words seriously. It's strange to think back on the impact that the Graduation Pledge and the mind-set that I had at the time has had on me. Social and environmental responsibility is a way of life I have chosen(Graduation Pledge Alliance, 2005).
Unlike Benysh, who appears to have grown into his commencement declaration, another Manchester graduate, Dana Nixon, knew she was driven to service when she made the pledge commitment in 1996. “Once your eyes are open to injustice, they can never be closed,” she commented (Graduation Pledge Alliance, 2005). Someone else whose pledge-signing reflects a lifestyle he’s already practicing is Brett Siegel, 38, who got his philosophy degree from Broward Community College in South Florida just last week; Siegel already purchases only food that’s locally grown, conserves fuel, and has left jobs when he wasn’t satisfied with his employers’ ethics (James, 2006).
Just as pledge signers differ in their perceptions of the graduation promise, the ways in which the Pledge option is presented to students vary from campus to campus. Some schools have special gatherings for pledge-taking, such as Duke University, where each April the Community Service Center hosts an event for graduating seniors “who wish to affirm their commitment to achieving high professional standards” by signing the Pledge (Duke University Community Service Center), and the University of Virginia, at which a small ceremony was staged for the thirty 2001 graduates who made the promise (Duin, 2001). The first unofficial pledge distribution at CCU, in 2004, took place in just one English instructor’s senior-level public speaking class, a route followed the next year by Prof. Cynthia Yu at nearby SCU, who handed out pledge cards to her advisees at the annual spring teacher appreciation dinner put on by graduating English majors. TAS student organizers, unable to obtain administrative approval for including the Pledge in their June, 2005 commencement, were allowed to set up a table just outside the school cafeteria where the post-ceremony reception was held; there, graduates could pick up pledge cards and supplementary materials, sign their cards, and leave personal contact information. Many pledge programs also provide the opportunity for students who aren’t able to take the Pledge in person to do so online.
However, from the beginning, most pledge campaigns have set as their objective the achievement of maximum integration of the Pledge into their institutions’ official graduation ceremonies. At HSU, our original concept for the Pledge was derived from several preceding initiatives, including one by upstate
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New York citizens who passed out to high school graduates ‘diploma’ leaflets describing military service choices they’d face, another by University of California-Berkeley physics students seeking a departmental graduation ceremony pledge to avoid military-related work, and the oath at one point required of all science and technology graduates from the University of Zagreb in Yugoslavia, which committed them to use what they’d learned only for constructive, humane purposes (Ihne et al, 1988, 2). The peacemakers who conceived these inspiring projects had all chosen commencement as the time and place where they could make the strongest impact on young people. For our own pledge, we envisioned an abundance of exquisite moments, and further exquisite developments following them, that could occur if the Pledge were central to the graduation ceremony, and we found that a majority of HSU students and faculty agreed with us. By the next spring, knowing of that support and having found even more on other campuses led us to make this statement in the graduation pledge organizing manual we produced:
Why is it important that a graduation pledge option be incorporated in
commencement ceremonies? The main reason to push for a pledge option
is that many students who choose the pledge want to do so in front of their peers. If the graduation ceremony is for the students, then the studentsshould play a role in creating and re-creating the celebratory rites of their educational passage. This idea is already embodied in the custom on many campuses where student bodies assist in the selection of commencement speakers and awards….Because the ceremony represents for many a symbolic point of entry into the outside, “real” world, signing the oath at such a unique and momentous time may deepen the penetration of commitment into a signer’s consciousness. This ‘reinforcement’ of thepledge is enhanced by the ceremony’s displaying that our educators granta place of significance to questions of responsibility in life decisions (Ihneet al, 1988, 3).
Marylyn Fletcher, principal of Arcata High School in 1988, when students there followed our lead (both schools are in the same town) and successfully campaigned for the Pledge to be offered, thought the timing of the pledge-signing was right:
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Graduation is a time when students think about their future, about whatthey believe in, what they think about their place in the world. This is an act of thinking. And that makes it a worthwhile project (Ladd, 1988).
The same year, students in the Coalition to Humanize MIT wrote an open letter to then president Paul Grey, in which they urged Grey’s administration to allow the Pledge into MIT’s commencement exercises. Pointing out that the school’s education reform was “beginning to devote more attention to the social impacts of technology in the curriculum,” they asked, “What better place is there to reinforce the message of responsibility than the graduation ceremony?” (Cowan et al, 1988). Bob Caylor, editorializing for the Fort Wayne, Indiana Post-Sentinel, expressed the same idea, perhaps more forcefully:
….the Graduation Pledge, or some variant of it, is a ritual of passagethat, when encouraged by a college or university, sends a valuablemessage: Work has great meaning, and any work has effects far beyondthe person paid to perform it. That sounds like a better way to send graduates into the world than most commencement speeches(Caylor, 2004).
Examination of rituals gets us into the realm of anthropology, a field in which I have no formal training but much pledge-connected interest. Not long ago, I asked a couple of local anthropologists for some brief analysis of the ritual aspects of the Pledge at graduation. Both of them, teachers at National Taiwan University, were very busy, but one, Prof. Wang Mei-Hsia, e-mailed a short explanation which I was thrilled to read:
Concerning rituals, anthropologists focus on the following issues: how a person can refresh him/herself, how a community can be redefined and how new cultural concepts can be incorporated into society by meansof ritual practice (Wang, 2006).
This statement resonates deeply with the perspectives and passions which drove the 1987 campaign for inclusion of the Pledge in HSU’s commencement and our subsequent efforts to more fully integrate the Pledge into the school’s graduation ceremonies, and which continue to underlie the graduation activities of pledge promoters and signers around the world. Any commencement is a richly complex social happening, replete with human connections and the potential for inter- and
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intrapersonal communication. Furthermore, graduation ceremonies are not isolated packages of experience; they exist over time, being built up to, occurring, and afterwards living on in participants’ memories.
We thought carefully about all of this at HSU, and attempted to ensure that awareness and appreciation of the Pledge would be woven throughout the whole fabric of the graduation process. This included carrying out extensive on-campus publicity in the month or so before commencement (including encouraging faculty and students to discuss the Pledge in their classes), getting graduation speakers to mention the Pledge in their commencement addresses, providing rainbow-colored ribbons for pledge signers and supportive faculty and staff to pin onto their caps or gowns, passing out informational leaflets to all guests at the ceremonies (suggesting they ask their graduating loved ones what the Pledge meant to them -- eventually, the university administration also inserted a brief description of the Pledge in the commencement handbook), visibly offering pledges to graduates as they descended from the stage after receiving their diplomas and providing a table at one side of the stage for those wanting to sign the pledge publicly, interviewing graduates and guests at post-ceremony receptions, and working to get extensive local, state, regional, and national media coverage of HSU pledge activities and GPA’s grand movement-building endeavor.
All of these elements of our early organizing are still present in the words and deeds of today’s pledge programs, and in the minds of many pledge signers. Jonathon T. Jacoby, leader of the 1999 Harvard pledge project, e-mailed to a reporter one year later that he felt “apublic display of Harvard students’ desire to make a positive impact upon society and the environment could go a long way in raising awareness of the kind of citizens we ought to be” (Reiter, 2000). Of his own pledge-taking, Jacoby said, “It gave me an opportunity to communicate to my peers in a formal, public manner that I intend to live according to my own ideals of social justice.” In 2001, at the University of Maryland, where students couldn’t convince the school to permit green ribbons to be worn during ceremonies, ten pledge signers planned to don them anyway, and more than a hundred students signed a petition for the ribbons to be sanctioned in future graduations (Duin, 2001).
Green ribbons will also be a prominent feature of commencement at Tufts University near Boston, according to this year’s co-coordinators of the Tufts University Pledge, seniors Negar Razavi and Karen Lin. “We are hoping that the Class of 2006 will leave an amazing and important legacy by being the first class to really rally behind the Graduation Pledge,” according to Razavi, who added, “We are looking to get as many of our classmates to sign the pledge as possible”
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(Dince, 2006). Razavi and Lin see that pledge signing will not only help produce more socially and environmentally conscious individuals, but also have an influence on those not taking the Pledge. “We hope [students] will educate their family and friends about the commitment they made through the Pledge,” said Lin. I join Lin and Razavi in their hopes for big success for the Tufts Pledge, and I dream, as we did back in 1987, that with more and more successes in an increasing number of locales, the not-too-distant future will see it be the norm for students to receive and thoughtfully sign responsibility pledges at commencement.
Following through on the pledge commitment
It’s just something you sign and keep as sort of your memento, along with your pictures and diplomas, to remind you. It’s to make you say, ‘Hey,I think about what I’m doing’ (Gordon, 1988).
Peter Blando, former editor of the California Aggie at
the University of California-Davis
Casting our feeble votes every few years no longer suffice[s]; it’s timeto vote with our lives (Hamilton, 1987).
Shawn Hamilton, 1987 graduate of HSU and member
of Citizens for Social Responsibility
The thesis of this essay is that the Graduation Pledge of Social and Environmental Responsibility can make a difference, a substantive difference, for the preservation and advancement of human rights worldwide. And while my exposition so far demonstrates the Pledge’s potential, through its consideration and personal adoption by signers, to be a force for those rights, unless it can be shown that pledge takers actually follow through on their graduation oaths, then I and other pledge proponents are advocating a gesture that is moving, certainly, but essentially hollow, and it would be socially-environmentally responsible for us to stop spending our valuable time and energy, and the Earth’s resources, to promote it.
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Fortunately, and compellingly, there is a long, documented history, going back to the spring of 1987, of graduates whose actions, motivated by their pledge promise and sometimes emboldened by the knowledge that they were part of a wider community of conscience, have clearly bespoken their deeply held principles. Let me share some of their stories.
Even before she received her diploma, HSU engineering graduate-to-be Michele Van Hentenryck faced a hard career decision. Michele was offered an interview for a summer internship with renowned multinational contractor Bechtel Corporation. Many in her position would have jumped for the opportunity faster than you could say “plum job,” but Michele, who happened to count as a neighbor and friend one of the students campaigning for the first pledge, thought she should first look more closely at the company. She wasn’t happy about what she found; “I didn’t like that they work with the weapons industry and that they’re not very open about their dealings,” she told one interviewer, adding, “Maybe I’m just one person, but who knows? If we all act as role models, it could have an effect” (Barnett, 1987).
Tina Garson, another HSU student worried about doing military-funded work, checked on levels of defense department support in each of the psychology graduate programs she was considering (King et al, 1993), while University of California-Berkeley physics major Eric Kostello, who “couldn’t sustain a division between a me that goes to work for money and the me that is a citizen,” acknowledged that signing the Pledge might heighten the dilemma he was already starting to encounter (Seligman, 1988):
So many areas of physics have applications that concern me….If you look at who is interested in astrophysics, they are interested in developing
radiation detectors and ‘Star Wars’ weapons. That is a fascinating field, but there is this dual nature.
Like Garson and Kostello, Harvard “pledgee” Rochelle Mackey began her investigation of possible future career paths before leaving school, looking at “tons of different jobs because I had no idea what I wanted to be doing” (Butler, 2001). Finally, she settled on a job with Booz*Allen & Hamilton, the management and technology consulting firm, that would have her working with federal agencies. "Government, obviously, is something that touches all of us, and through consulting I can try to improve how it's run," she said. And Mackey’s reasons for choosing Booz*Allen? "I was definitely looking for certain qualities in a
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workplace: that it place priority on having some form of public service, and not be superficially committed,” she recalled.
Rose Burkholder, a rural Indiana native who graduated from Manchester in 2004 with degrees in finance and sociology, grew up in difficult economic circumstances, an experience that left her with ”a lot of compassion for the underprivileged in our society” (Jacobson, 2004). Burkholder wanted to “serve as a link between the underprivileged and the opportunities they want to have in society – going to college, developing job skills,” and she didn’t want to “be in a position where the organization I worked for was taking advantage of the employees.” Although her finance studies had conveyed the lesson that most companies focus on “maximizing shareholder value,” frequently at the cost of employees’ jobs and standard of living, Burkholder had her own priorities, pointing out, “Often change comes from the bottom up, not the top down.”
Grace Yu, another of Teresa Wu’s students who signed the first CCU pledge, applied her responsible-work thinking when confronted with an issue common in Taiwan language schools: differing pay for foreign and local instructional staff. “When I found that foreign teachers got higher salaries than Taiwanese hires,” Yu said, “I took the initiative to ask my boss why he didn’t comply with the principle of ‘equal pay for equal work,’ and he explained it to me” (Shih, 2005). Yu’s approaching her supervisor may not have brought about any alteration of pay scales, but it did help her to understand and feel better about the existing salary policy, and it may also have put the boss and her fellow employees on notice that she was watching company activities with an eye toward fairness.
One of my own personal on-the-job attempts to bring about increased awareness and positive change took place when I was working as a technician at a chemical testing laboratory in Humboldt County, California in the early 1990s. Having heard a long series of complaints about the company expressed by many of my fellow lab workers, I invited all non-management staff over to my home for a meeting at which people could feel comfortable to say what was on their minds, both criticisms of and kudos for the way our company was being run. We wrote up a report of the session and gave it to management, who were far less than pleased that we’d gathered outside of the office. In fact, we found out later that I and several other employees who had spearheaded the unauthorized communication effort were put on a ‘hit list’ for firing, though I quit over the owners’ treatment of my own supervisor before they could lay me off.
The above cases, just a sampling of the sorts of personal accounts we regularly hear from pledge signers, can serve to display some of the interesting and important aspects of work lives lived as if they really mattered for a better
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world. They show the mix of ideals, investigation, and initiative-taking that characterizes pledge adherents. But they also evidence the real challenges faced when trying to harmonize one’s values with one’s work-related decisions. How can individuals sustain their ethical effort as they move further and further away from the commencement-day strains of “Pomp and Circumstance”? How can they find nourishment, shelter, and growth during their career journeys, and how can they pass on to others some of the wisdom they’ve gained along the road?
After graduation, pledge signers have access to an extensive and ever-expanding network of fellow pledge takers, and to a vast array of people and organizations devoted to helping them live and work in ways that will preserve and strengthen human rights and environmental sustainability wherever they may be employed and whatever their job descriptions. Among these sources of support, many are familiar – family, friends, professional associations, religious organizations, and social-environmental change groups, to name some – but others are more novel, including specially trained responsible-work career counselors, personal focus groups, and cyber-communities. Into this last category fall some of the most exciting experiments, campus-based online networks for graduates who make the pledge commitment. Tufts ‘pledgeucators’ (my term) Razavi and Lin hope that with the contact network they’re creating, pledge takers “can reach out to one another over the years and continue to try to encourage each other to make positive contributions to the world around us, and to sometimes make the hard decisions to follow the path that we know is right, as opposed to the path we think we’re expected to follow in life” (Dince, 2006). The excellent website of the Graduation Pledge at Middlebury College (GPMC) encourages visitors to join a moderated listserve “created exclusively for Midd grads who have signed the Graduation Pledge” (GPMC). “Share your ideas and hear about ways in which others are incorporating the Pledge into their daily lives and work environments,” continues the invitation. Also highly evolved and informative is the website devoted to the UBC Sustainability Pledge, a program of the Office of Student Development at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver (UBC Sustainability Pledge). All campus pledge activists could profit by studying this stylish, user-friendly site, which introduces its multiple offerings with the following announcement:
The importance of the Sustainability Pledge is more than to See it and Sign it. At UBC, students, staff and faculty are encouraged to really Live the
Pledge by continuing our commitment to a better world through our everyday
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actions. You can find articles, job and volunteer opportunities and information about actions, events and other resources in the "Live it" section of this site.
The site also includes a counter to track the total number of UBC pledge signers, which, as of March this year, was 1185. At CCU, the campus GPA’s website is being improved to include a discussion board allowing pledge signers to post questions, answers, and other information for each other.
ConclusionsAs more and more educational institutions make the Graduation Pledge
option a part of their school experience, the world could gain an enormous human force for the advancement of human rights. Since its earliest days, when it encountered excited enthusiasm and ardent support for the Pledge among people throughout the HSU campus and surrounding community, the Graduation Pledge Alliance has operated with firm conviction and explicit prediction that the Pledge, “if acted on sincerely and consistently by large numbers of people, will likely result in fundamental improvement of our global condition” (Ihne et al, 1988, 6). This outlook is shared by numerous activists in the rapidly expanding network of pledge schools, and by an even greater number of pledge signers. Witness some of their statements:
As people graduate and move into the workforce, they have the power to decide in what directions companies will move. They can decide how theresources of the Earth are husbanded, and the type of Earth future
generationswill inherit (Li, 2005).
Taipei American School senior and 2005 pledge campaigner Yanlin Fu
Raising the level of consciousness regarding social responsibility willempower students to make decisions in the workplace that will lead toa better world (Mo, 2005).
Yao Chung-kun, professor and chairman,English department, Chinese Culture University
The consequences of our occupations are profound. As we graduatesmake the transition from academia to the “real” world of working andpaying bills, habits and patterns will be formed that will define our lives
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for many years. If we make a commitment now – while we are in theprocess of establishing our routines – to be socially and responsible citizens and workers, we can build a strong moral foundation that willhelp guide our future decisions (Goshen College Student Senate).
Student Senate website, Goshen College,Goshen, Indiana
The world is in need now, and students across the country are responding.At Evergreen, we hope that our example will mean all the difference tothe children who must inherit what we leave (Ihne et al, 1988).
Environmental Pledge Alliance, EvergreenState College, Olympia, Washington
Though a mere gesture, this could be instrumental in helping heightenpeople’s awareness of the harmful goings-on in the world. There are,of course, too many horrible conditions on this planet, all seeming sooverwhelming that one often feels helpless….Yet, this is where it starts,at the very basic of actions (Stewart, 1987).
Christine Stewart, junior in sociology,Humboldt State University
By emphasizing issues of social responsibility, the graduation pledgehelps catalyze a change in the nature of an individual’s attitudes(UPI, 1988).
Diane Honigberg, 1988 Stanford GPACoordinator
If…companies lose one or two of their top Harvard recruits over thesesocial and environmental responsibility issues…I think they would seriously reconsider what opportunities they do provide (Pope, 2000).
Sinead Walsh, 2000 Harvard graduate andpledge organizer
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Such optimism is by no means unfounded. Historically, the Graduation Pledge was born and continues to sprout at a time when the confluence of numerous forces has produced conditions – and young people – that call out for real betterment of our personal and collective lots. William Ihne, who was part of the Pledge’s creation and co-founded the GPA at HSU, writes about some of those conditions, and the pledge phenomenon’s growth, in his essay, “Starting a Campus Tradition: A Graduation Pledge of Responsibility”:
Keep in mind that in the late 1980’s, there were many issues being raisedon university campuses. We were in the middle of a nuclear arms race,with a huge hole in the ozone. There was talk about the U.S. havingtraded arms for hostages in Iran, and massive species extinctions in theforecast. On and on continued the list of concerns: global warming, destruction of the rain forests, nuclear testing, toxic waste, U.S. supportof wars in Latin America, apartheid in South Africa, and in our ownArcata backyard, a Texas oil tycoon was quickly liquidating the largest private holdings of ancient old growth redwood forest to pay for hiscompany takeover. There were a lot of issues, like today – amind-boggling amount for any young person. I think it’s hard, foryoung people, especially, not to care or to feel something about theworld’s plight, and painfully difficult to accept that we are each a part of the destructiveness (Ihne, 2005, 5).
The origination and popularity of the Pledge, in Ihne’s mind, came because “Somehow, the pledge simplifies things to ground level. Having it a part of the graduation ceremony draws attention to the fact that what you do, your actions and their resulting consequences, have an impact on society and the environment, and that impact matters” (5).
Teresa Wu has noted that many of her CCU students “feel lost, not sure what the point of material gain is.” Wu senses that the Pledge “brings some meaning back into their lives, and provides a focus for them to reorient themselves” (Li, 2005). Father Daniel J. Bauer SVD, who teaches English at Fujen University in Taipei and has a regular column in the China Post, opined several weeks ago that the symptoms of “graduation-itis” which seniors may be suffering as commencements approach, including “a slightly quickened heartbeat at moments of contemplation, insomnia, queasy stomachs, and varying degrees of restlessness, fear, or anxiety,” are altogether normal and have been observed
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among students for a long time (Bauer, 2006). The GPA’s remedy to “graduation-itis,” “a clear and positive focus when graduates (or people of an age, for that matter) consider a job or career,” is just what the doctor ordered, according to Bauer. Concluding his article, Bauer contradicted two perspectives about jobs that are constantly pushed on students here, that the most important feature of a job is either salary or reputation:
Many of us have known for a long time, however, that work oftensatisfies us deep inside ourselves not because of the salary or prestige it brings, but because it is work that allows us to do something that isgood and right, work that benefits society.
One tremendously hope-giving development, trend research indicates, is that more and more young job seekers and workers appear to agree with Father Bauer when it comes to choosing employment. The biannual survey of MBAs conducted by Duke University found that between 1989, when respondents named power, prestige, and money among their highest lifetime goals, and 1991, there was a reversal of students’ attitudes; the new most desired objectives listed were marriage, health, and ethics (Ross, 2000). Even back in the mid-1980s, when America was supposedly gripped by yuppie greed, a nationwide study showed college students rating salary fourth, behind career growth, happiness, and challenge, as a consideration in future job choices (Seligman, 1988). Sinead Walsh noted that many of her Harvard classmates felt guilty taking big-money investment and consulting jobs in a Wall Street environment where there was “this dichotomy between going into finance…and the idea that you can be a socially and environmentally responsible person” (Pope, 2000). At the University of Virginia, sophomore organizer Lyle Solla-Yates related that everyone he had talked to about the Pledge had been “extremely positive” about it, adding, “Social consciousness and environmental awareness has [sic] made a comeback recently” (Duin, 2001).
Though different cultures and countries are in different situations, the globalization of information through technology, trade, and travel has meant that developments anywhere which are seen by many to be on the leading edge of progress are reported and quite frequently embraced, and further advanced, by people in other parts of the world. Changes in student perceptions, aspirations, and actions taking place in one region can quickly be reproduced elsewhere, sometimes so widely and fast that we can’t grasp the entirety of the shifts. Simultaneously, computer-savvy youth,
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far more adept than most of their elders at conceiving and using digital communication networks, are at the forefront of many movements to expose and eliminate an expanding array of human rights abuses throughout the global village. All of the pieces are in place, and in many cases already being put together and utilized to dramatic effect, to realize the dream of a truly decentralized, democratic, multi-faceted, multi-focused and incredibly effective cross-borders community of social-environmental changemakers, a web of people committed to clean and compassionate living and concerted campaigning to end oppression and help heal the Earth’s critical ailments. The Pledge movement coexists with and is seen by many observers as reflective of some of the most significant contemporary change movements, including those for sustainability, ethical entrepreneurship, good governance, corporate accountability and transparency, global citizenship education, community service, and personal responsibility.
All, however, is not smooth sailing to a brighter future, we must admit. Collaboration between investigators at Claremont Graduate University, Stanford, and Harvard has, over the past decade, been studying how individuals and institutions wanting to do “good work”, “work that is at once excellent in technical quality and at the same time responsive to the needs and wishes of the broader community in which it takes place,…succeed or fail at a time when…1) material conditions are changing very quickly; 2) our sense of time and space is being radically altered by technology; and 3) market forces are unprecedently powerful powerful and few if any counterforces of comparable power exist” (GoodWork Project). An upcoming GoodWork Project book adds a fourth contextual factor into the equation, “a rapidly shifing political landscape” (GoodWork Project). While the GoodWork team has found some professions in which good work is more readily accomplished, they also report widespread belief among young workers “that they cannot afford at present to be ethical as well as excellent,” a “discouraging finding” which “underscores the need for educational experiences that foreground goodwork as well as for periodic booster shots, should the image of good work become blurred” (GoodWork Project).
How can we not but think of the Graduation Pledge at this point? This antidote to gloom and complacency will, say its promoters at Rice University in Texas, “remind you to not get too comfortable in your workplace, to keep an eye out for opportunities to improve social and environmental responsibility, and when such opportunities are within reach, to try your best to make the most of them” (The Graduation Pledge @ Rice). Michelle Maslov, an American history major set to work for a nonprofit group helping the poor after graduating from the
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University of Maryland, asserted, “For those who signed the pledge, the environment is always in the back of their minds” (Duin, 2001). CCU graduate Nell Lee, who first learned of the GPA when I spoke to her English class two years ago, told one reporter that she sometimes had difficulty fulfilling her pledge commitment in the competitive world of work but continued to try; one part of that effort was posting her pledge card on her office desk where colleagues could see it, another was joining former classmates to donate money to needy children (Mo, 2005).
These are the kinds of people who exemplify the beauty and the wonderful possibilities of the Graduation Pledge, they are the kinds of people who will surely help make the world a kinder, gentler place, and they are the kinds of people of whom there is no short supply. With that in mind, it is easy to see why the Graduation Pledge Alliance is working so hard to give such people at educational institutions everywhere the chance to discover and make the Pledge central to their lives.
AcknowledgementsI want to thank William Ihne, for his useful comments and enthusiasm during
the writing of this paper, Neil Wollman, who sent many of the news reports I have cited, and Teresa Wu, for her good work to link up graduation pledge organizing and human rights development.
Appendix 1Bringing social & environmental responsibility into the classroom – Learning goals for students, by Matt Nicodemus, Graduation Pledge Alliance-Asia, Taipei, Taiwan (Nicodemus, 2005).
The following are goals for student learning about social and environmental
responsibility (SER), with an emphasis on the issues and choices students will
face and/or are facing in their employment and careers. Educators can use these
goals as a guide when designing instructional activities and assignments.
1. Students are exposed to a wide range of values and views regarding SER.2. Students recognize that they already are operating according to a set of SER values and views, and discover a variety of ways by which they can become more conscious of and clear about them.3. Students learn that people's SER values and views can and often do change over time, and that examination of one's SER values, views, and actions is a lifelong process.
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4. Students see how a wide variety of issues and choices in the workplace and career face people who have particular SER values and views, and they understand that such issues and choices may be complex and interconnected. They discover how all workers at every level of an organization confront SER issues on the job, and can, with their SER choices, have positive impacts on the organization and the wider world. 5. Students understand that there is a range of options for effective action that a person can take when confronted by an SER issue pre- or during employment.6. Students are exposed to a wide spectrum of real-life cases where SER considerations were influential on people's life choices in job and careers. They learn that there have been individuals and groups of people throughout history who have faced SER-related issues and made choices to follow their consciences in work-related decision-making.7. Students appreciate how their SER choices, in concert with those of others, can have larger and wider positive impacts in the world.8. Students see that there consequences at numerous levels when someone does or doesn't act in concert with their SER values and views.9. Students learn that living in accordance with one's SER values and views requires significant commitment of time, energy, and resources, and involves both risks and rewards.10. Students come to understand what kinds of information and support they may need to more fully live out their SER values and views.11. Students explore how they can find information and support to make SER choices, and how they can inform and support others to be more SER.12. Students understand that the activities of both individuals and the organizations that employ them are heavily contributory to the worsening of numerous social-environmental problems, and to efforts to solve those same problems.13. Students find that there is now a strong, evolving global trend toward SER in all aspects and sectors of human society, with growing numbers of people trying to make their public and private life choices more in harmony with their deeply held values and beliefs. They also learn about the increasing number of organizations representing and/or assisting such people.14. Students appreciate the many exciting and beneficial ways in which they can integrate their personal exploration of SER into their school educational experience.
Appendix 2Excerpts from a proposal for a Social and Environmental Responsibility Program (SEREP) at the Chinese Culture University, Taipei, Taiwan , by Matt Nicodemus, Graduation Pledge Alliance-Asia, Taipei, Taiwan (Nicodemus, 2006). Note: “PCCU” is used here to denote the Chinese Culture University. Also, boldfacing has been
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added to the list of core concepts for sake of clarity.
This proposal envisions an important role in SER education for PCCU through the
creation of a vibrant, multifaceted, schoolwide Social & Environmental
Responsibility Education Program (SEREP). SEREP will take full advantage of the total spectrum of PCCU's excellent human and material resources and facilities to raise the levels of SER understanding and lifelong action, first and foremost in the university's students but also in the rest of the campus community, and, excitingly, in other parts of society in Taiwan and throughout Asia. This cutting-edge program will help provide PCCU students with the best possible learning and will serve as a powerful model for other educational institutions on the island and worldwide. II. Program Goals
The primary goals of SEREP will be to: A. Help PCCU students develop extensively their understanding of SER and empower them to make socially and environmentally responsible choices in all aspects of their lives after graduating;B. Provide students with the training and confidence needed to become socially and environmental responsible leaders within their various organizations, networks, and communities;C. Assist in building a campus-wide climate in which critical consideration of SER in making life choices is the norm;D. Offer a model of SER education that can inspire and be used by other institutions in Taiwan and around the world.
III. Core Concepts
SEREP will base all aspects of its work on a number of core concepts. Students graduating from PCCU who have participated in SEREP will be intimately familiar with these core concepts and will be able to bring them to bear in facing and making choices throughout the rest of their lives. The core concepts of SEREP will include the following principles:
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** Everyone's actions, from the smallest personal acts to the largest corporate
moves, have many different social and environmental consequences in the world, influencing other people, the actors themselves, and the rest of the environment. Having a better understanding of the extensive interrelation and mutual influences between humans and the rest of the global environment allows us to make better, more responsible individual and organizational choices.** The consequences of our actions can be positive and/or negative. Everyone has the ability, through many different channels and activities, to make improvement in their degree of SER and increase the total positive impact of their actions on the world.** Our choices regarding actions we take in the world are strongly influenced by
a complex set of physical and social-psychological factors, among which are our
values and social-environmental concerns and beliefs.
** Each person or organization develops and their own personal sense of what is
and isn't socially and environmentally responsible, and school can be an excellent place where people can help each other in their individual processes of exploring SER principles and practices.** People are happier, healthier, and more productive when they are making life
choices that harmonize with their deepest values and their social-environmental
concerns and beliefs. They are most fully alive when they understand more clearly their place and roles in the greater social-environmental ecosystem and maximally, responsibly manifest that understanding in their daily lives.** More of the world's problems can be effectively addressed when more of its
citizens are making life choices that resonate with their values and social-
environmental concerns and beliefs.
** Our sense of SER depends not only on having a sense of duty to act but, even
before that, on perceiving our "response-ability", the understanding of our
personal and organizational contextual positions and our ability to respond to
social-environmental problems in meaningful, effective ways.
Appendix 3Questions to Explore in Social and Environmental Responsibility (SER) Work
Discussions
by Matt Nicodemus, Graduation Pledge Alliance-Asia (Nicodemus, 2005).關於畢業生在職場中會面臨的社會及環境議題〈取自於畢業生委員會 Matt Nicodemus
What are my deepest values? What’s most important to me, for myself, for my family, for my friends, for my organizations and for my community? For the wider world?
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你個人的價值觀為何？對於自身、家庭、朋友、公司或是社區，什麼是最重要的？
What is the ideal world I’d like us all to live in? How would you describe it in detail? (Don’t let your imagination be limited here! Pretend we can have a fantastic, ideal world to live in.) 你理想中的世界為何？請詳盡的敘述。〈不要侷限你的想像力，就你所能的將它描繪的盡善盡美。
What are all of the problems getting in the way of me living in complete harmony with my deepest values? What’s blocking others from doing the same?在現實生活中有什麼問題會與你的價值觀衝突？
What are all the kinds of social and environmental problems I can think of? What problems are making our world not be my ideal world?還有什麼社會及環境問題可能會讓你的理想世界變得不完美？
How do different employers and individual workers contribute to social and environmental problems? How do/can they contribute to solving those problems?各行各業的雇主及員工能如何改善社會及環境上的問題？他們是如何解決的？
What would make an employer/job most attractive to me? Given my values and SER views, what about an employer/job with pluses and minuses. 麼樣的雇主及工作最吸引你？試著用自我的價值觀及對社會環境的影響來衡量它的利弊。
How can I balance the pluses and minuses when considering an employer/job?為了實踐自我的價值觀及信念，該如何選擇職業及雇主呢？
How could I choose a career/employer/job that would allow me to more fully live out my deepest values and SER beliefs? 工作上，面臨到對社會及環境造成影響甚至傷害的問題時，該如何解決才能劃下完美的句點？
If I face SER issues/conflicts on the job, how can I resolve them satisfactorily?就著對社會及環境貢獻而言，在台灣有哪些企業具有良好的形象及經營理念呢？
Which employers offering work in Taiwan are the best in terms of SER?你知道在哪裡可以獲得有關於社會及環境議題的資訊嗎？
How can I use my educational experiences to help me explore and answer all of these different questions? 用你本身所學及專長來改善並解決現有的問題呢？
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What other questions need answering if I am to be able to successfully pursue “good work?” 還有什麼問題是我在求職時需要知道的呢？
References
Barnett, M. (1987) Grads take pledge: Consider job effects. Union, June 10, 11B.
Bauer, D.J. (2006) Graduation Pledge is more than just a promise. China Post, “Commentary,” April 16, 4.
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