every student has upon leaving grade school, goes through a transformation during high school. While it still expresses itself in a love of reading and a willingness to try new experiences, I believe it also becomes the foundation for academic integrity. By the end of grade school, learning was for me a “good,” a value that I prized. Saint David’s helped me feel the goodness of learning by making it an emotion. Therefore, I was open to the lesson that cheating and plagiarism were offenses against a good that was meaningful to me. Through our love of learning we have reason to honor learning, and are motivated to take the time and do the work that honors learning. Academic integrity becomes a part of who we are, and a part of the legacy of Saint David’s, through such innocuous moments as the enthusiasm and joy of a boy going through those front doors at the beginning of the day. I was no angel while I was a student at Saint David’s. I know I caused my share of headaches. And now when I see
how kindly my students treat me, there are days when I want to shout out to them, “No, you are not supposed to be so good to me. I’m the one who was such a pain to my headmasters when I was a student.” Such is God’s grace. And such was God’s grace to me in the midst of the full throttle life of Saint David’s in the 1960s, where the shirttails dangled behind us as we raced off to the next adventure in learning. ? Rev. Luke (Leo) Travers, O.S.B., Headmaster of Delbarton School in Morristown, New Jersey, is a graduate of Saint David’s, class of ’71. He is a member of the Board of Trustees of the New Jersey Association of Ind