NEWS

The "Enduring Values" conversation among the current and former Davidson College presidents. (l-r) Bobby Vagt, Tom Ross, Doug Hicks, Carol Quillen, and John Kuykendall. (News of Davidson photo)

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The Duke Family Performing Hall on the Davidson College campus was abuzz with laughter and happy voices on Thursday evening, February 26. The sell-out crowd in attendance was waiting to hear a “Conversation Among Five Presidents” of the college, including one current president and four who have retired. Altogether, they represent over five decades of leadership of the college, and their collective wisdom was on display.

Anthony Foxx, the chair of the College Trustees, opened the evening by celebrating the D.G. and Harriet Wall Martin Institute for Public Good, introduced today with $47 million in funding. He stated that the intent of the Institute is to “develop effective, ethical citizens and leaders who build community and solve important problems in our society and our world…The promise of the Martin Institute builds on the college’s primary purpose…to assist in developing humane instincts and discipline in creative minds for the purpose of leadership and service.”

Anthony Foxx, chair of the Board of Trustees. (News of Davidson photo)

Foxx went on to thank the spouses of the presidents for their unfailing support, all of whom made the college even stronger. He then paraphrased an old saying, “A Davidson President needs no introduction.” In chronological order of service, Foxx named the presidents, past and present: John Kuykendall, Bobby Vagt, Tom Ross, Carol Quillen, and the current president, Doug Hicks.

The curtain opened to reveal the participants comfortably seated on stage with a backdrop of bookshelves holding Davidson memorabilia. Hicks then became the moderator of the conversation, and he began, “This is our idea of a big reveal. I hope you like it!”

Hicks said that there was no script but that they would have an honest conversation about “Davidson’s values, how they have remained consistent throughout the generations, and how we have faced changes in society and in the academy, as well.”

John Kuykendall was the president during Hicks’s time as a student, and Hicks started by asking Kuykendall to reflect on Davidson’s values, especially the Honor Code. Kuykendall began by thanking all present for a wonderful day with the announcement of the Martin Institute for Public Good. He told the crowd that when he began college in the fall of 1955, Davidson was “about 850 students, all male, all white, almost all from the South. It was a fairly cloistered situation…a little village community.” Kuykendall  was instrumental in separating the Honor Court from the Student Government Association, removing any “conflict that might exist between the political side and the judicial side.”

Rev. Dr. John W. Kuykendall (News of Davidson photo)

With his mandate of six votes, Kuykendall separated the entities, and he believes that the Honor Council has continued to be a serious enterprise. Kuykendall holds that an honor code “can exist in three different ways: as a matter of chivalry - sort of noblesse oblige that this is what we do because we are gentlemen; or discipline, as at a military academy. But at Davidson, it has a distinctive root…as a part of our Reformed Theology that says that there is room for growth and development and through the grace of God to become better people.”

Kuykendall realizes that the Honor Council of today might be faced with different problems than they faced in 1955. He quoted James Russell Lowell in that, “New occasions teach new duties,” but the underpinning of the Council remains the same.

With the exception of Quillen, all the presidents are Davidson College graduates, and each in his own way feels that the college changed the trajectory of their lives. Though not a graduate, Quillen believes that her tenure as president changed her, too, especially her ideas of leadership and service. She became aware that the environment here was different than other places in which she had taught and served.

Dr. Carol Quillen (News of Davidson photo)

Quillen’s evolving understanding of leadership was guided by the college’s statement of purpose that says, in part, “The primary purpose of Davidson College is to assist students in developing humane instincts and disciplined and creative minds for lives of leadership and service. In fulfilling its purpose, Davidson has chosen to be a liberal arts college, to maintain itself as a residential community of scholars, to emphasize the teaching responsibility of all professors, and to ensure the opportunity for personal relationships between students and teachers. Further, Davidson believes it is vital that all students in every class know and study under mature and scholarly teachers who are able and eager to provide for each of them stimulation, instruction, and guidance.”

That statement helped her learn all the ways that distinguished Davidson. It was her “North Star...Davidson takes seriously the idea that we are grounded in a tradition that asks us to be attentive…and that tradition helped me to build a community of trust…The honor code is about building a community where people can expect to trust each other. And in a learning community where we are asking students to take huge risks, question their assumptions, present new ideas, speak when you’re not sure, find new avenues of inquiry, we’re asking them to take huge intellectual risks. That’s why we’re here in this educational community. You have to have trust. And the Honor Code creates that kind of foundation for trust.”

Quillen believes that we are always striving to live up to those foundational values, and that there is always more work to be done, that it is an ongoing project to live up to those ideals.

Hicks talked about the Davidson Trust, begun in 2007. The president at the time, Bobby Vagt, and the trustees realized that college was becoming more and more expensive, putting it out of reach of many of the very students who wanted to and deserved to be at Davidson. Hicks turned to Vagt and asked how this bold program came about.

Robert F. "Bobby" Vagt (News of Davidson photo)

Vagt answered by saying that “students were carrying more and more debt. The heroes of this story are the Trustees. The topic came up with the Trustees, and it was all about what we were at Davidson. How could we not make it perfectly possible for any student who wishes to be here to be able to afford it? The conversation grew up around that and we talked about how to alleviate debt in little steps. But then we got serious and that’s when we screwed up our courage, knowing it would be a risk.

"Can we afford it? But we looked at our alumni body and what they have supported in the past. We believed in them. On that day, when we voted on creating the Davidson Trust, it was a unanimous vote. There were 42 Trustees there, and there was not one dry eye in the place. It was the right thing to do.”

Hicks said that, along with the Honor Code and creating a trusting environment in which every student can grow and succeed, the Davidson Trust has been a key moment in the life of the college. It’s a huge commitment, but he believes that it has made a difference for the college, putting it in a stronger position because of the students who can come here without fear of crushing debt. Hicks then turned to Tom Ross and asked him to reflect on the values he learned as a student and saw in his tenure as president, and how those values played out in his roles as judge, university president, and nonprofit leader.

Ross said, “I thank the college for this day. Sitting in the audience, listening to the creation of this new Martin Institute for Public Good, I found it to be as exciting as anything we have talked about tonight for this college. I think it can be one more thing that sets us apart from everybody because it is who we are in many ways. We believe in service. We believe in the commitment to each other and to humane instincts, in the ability to talk to one another without yelling and screaming and being divisive."

The Honorable Tom Ross (News of Davidson photo)

Ross came to Davidson in 1968. “I was probably one of the last ones they admitted. So, it was a place where I was a little bit out of place, to be honest, academically and socially. I did not do well to begin with. A faculty member, I think, saw a little bit of potential in me and changed my life forever. And when I was here as president, I came with the Davidson Trust having just passed and our best estimate was that it was going to take $70-100 million of endowment. Last year alone, we spent $80 million, so we had a just a little underestimate of its cost. I was fortunate to be a part of the Board of Trustees that day that it passed, and I had a tear in my eye, too. I came at a time when this school was facing real challenges financially, with the 2008 recession. We were trying to get the Trust up and running, and I will never forget how this college came together as a community to pull through it. We committed that our students would get the same education in the middle of a recession as they might have gotten during a boom time.

“We also committed that we were not going to lay anyone off, that we were a family and were going to stick together. One of the enduring values of this place is that it is a community that cares about each other. Also, athletics brought us together…and the honor code grounds us in a life of integrity and honesty and leadership.”

Hicks spoke about a mentor and advisor who told him to get the broadest education possible because everything about a Ph.D. drives you to narrowness. Only “broad thinkers can address issues in society and in education.”

Davidson College current president Rev. Dr. Doug Hicks. (News of Davidson photo)

For Hicks, being president of Davidson College is his dream job. “I get up every day, at a place where I walked past Phi and Eu Halls 40 years ago – almost 40 years ago – okay 40, and see this alumni base remain so committed to what they do, one of the most engaged in the country. We have the resources of the people and the campus and alumni and the admission pipeline and finances. The library renovation and now the Martin Institute of Public Good allow us to make a real difference. For me that Statement of Purpose is a big deal and it drives me every day.”

According to Hicks, “Davidson is about the people. They even showed up to hear five presidents talk!”

Hicks drew the conversation to a close, and the audience gave a standing ovation to those five presidents. It was a memorable night, following an important day in the life of Davidson College. The Public Good is not an abstract concept. It is now a topic that will be defined, refined, and defined again through leadership, conversation, teaching, and integrity, without fear or favor, in a community of trust in a little college town set amid the farm fields and forests of North Mecklenburg.

See our album of photos and videos here.