Mandatory Chapel, On Your Honor

I will be very interested to hear how PHC's efforts at enforcing mandatory chapel go this semester! In an e-mail sent out to all students at the beginning of the semester, the provost summarized the college's experiences with chapel attendance last year and explained the approach for this yea.

Previously, the college had tracked chapel attendance through students signing and turning in cards when they attended chapel. Due to the work-intensive nature of this system, this system was dropped last year. Students were put on their honor to attend chapel. The result was that, on average, there was 80% attendance at chapel. While most would agree that this is respectable number for attendance at essentially voluntary chapel, it does mean that 1 out of 5 students were NOT attending chapel on any given day.

This year, it has been specifically stated, that not only are students expected to attend chapel (as is mandatory by the college materials), but they are expected to turn themselves in if (when) they exceed the allowed number of misses. The provost illustrates this point with an example of honor from the Horatio Hornblower stories.

I am a big fan of C. S. Forester's sea-faring sagas featuring Horatio Hornblower, a major theme of which is an exploration of honor, that notion so important to our founders but almost forgotten in contemporary culture. In "Midshipman Hornblower," the young naval officer, about your age, is captured by the Spanish. As was the custom, he gives his word of honor that he would not escape, so that he was allowed to live freely in the town, rather than being locked up in a prison. A storm blows in, an incoming ship is almost wrecked on the reef, and young Hornblower heroically rows out to rescue the perishing. While doing so, he is blown out to sea, though, whereupon he is picked up by a British frigate. Hooray! He is rescued! But then he remembers his word of honor. He insists that the captain take him back to Spain, to the town he had promised not to leave, voluntarily going back to serve his term as a prisoner of war. THAT is honor, when someone keeps a commitment even to his hurt. I'd like to call you to that level of honor.

That level of honor is so foreign to our culture today, but I would love to hear at the end of the semester that our students do have that kind of honor!