Integrity is not cliché.

I'm an RA and a member of the Student Life Committee, so following the rules is something I've kind of committed by sophomore year at Dordt to. For those of you not sure of what these two roles include, I'll give you a short explanation.

RA stands for Resident Assistant. I'm a member of the Residence Life Staff, a student staff committed to promoting community growth, Christian life, and respectable morals on campus. This means that my lifestyle ought to reflect all of these. My actions should be admirable and fall in perfect line with Dordt's campus guidelines. Now of course, I'm still a sinner. I still fall completely short of the unattainable perfection. I still turn in assignments late every once in awhile and skip class because I was "sick" much too often. And I should work on these, because really, they aren't reflective of the Christian lifestyle one should live.

The Student Life Committee is basically the committee that decides whether or not to kick people out of Dordt. It sucks. Really, I kind of hate the committee. I leave every meeting feeling crappy because I just had a part in messing up someone's life plans. Fortunately, there's definitely some reassurance and hope in our committee's purposes for kicking students out. Never, EVER do we kick some one out simply because they have messed up one to many times.

When we dismiss students, we dismiss them because we see their absence from Dordt as being better for them. We see it as the place God may be calling them to be in order to reflect on their past mistakes, learn from them, and hopefully grow into a better son or daughter of God. Realizing that we may have messed up their plans but instead are (in a way) forcing them to follow God's plans for their life is just as reassuring as it is when we do not end a meeting with a student dismissal.

Because of these two campus involvements, it's probably now pretty obvious why my upstanding conduct is important. The writing of this blog comes from thoughts on both a few recent Student Life Committee meetings and a conversation I had with a classmate after an English course today. Because the meeting information is confidential, I can't share any of those details, but I can share about the conversation.

My fellow English major and I were discussing summer plans, and she was commenting on her desire to find a cheap place to live while working one of many possible jobs in Northwest Iowa. Unfortunately, she was unsuccessfully finding a place to live and planning on living on campus instead. When I mentioned to her that you could only live on campus if you worked an internship or worked on campus, she became frustrated. Neither of those were included in her job possibilities, and she had no intention of adding them to the list.

"Oh, I'm sure there are ways around that," she said. "I'll just claim that my job is an internship, fudge a few of the hours, and get the free housing. I'm sure people do it all the time."

I held my tongue, but her few sentences really irked me. The hard part is that I'm sure similar words have come out of my mouth more than a few times. People skip class all the time. The professor won't care. I'll just say I wasn't feeling well. Heck, I remember doing this last week. Ironically enough, I'm supposed to be in photography class right now as I type this. (That's a class I'll give you a million excuses to skip, though, especially when I'm pass/failing it...)

Anyways, the overuse of excuses and support like above point to a lack of integrity in our current society. In middle school, I remember the greatest example of integrity being Abraham Lincoln. We studied how his policies and treatment of others made him a perfect example of a man who lived a life of integrity. We were encouraged to "do what is right, even when no one is looking." Integrity is not just for old, dead presidents. Integrity needs to still be alive today.

I wonder how many of us can actually say we ever consider this. Is everything we do right, regardless of whether it will be noticed by others or not? Is our integrity deep enough that we will even pick up the gum wrapper that missed its target of the garbage can? I imagine most of us can remember the last time we didn't portray a character of integrity, but can you remember a time that you did?