Month: October 2011

Stacy Crim, Ethics Hero…and the Hardest Choice

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

Last week in Oklahoma, Ray Phillips fulfilled a promise to his sister Stacy, taking home from the hospital 5-pound Dottie Phillips, born prematurely in September, to become the newest member of his family.  Stacy died last month of brain cancer, just three days after holding her infant daughter for the first and only time. Dottie was able to come into the world only because Stacy, 41, had made the choice to reject chemotherapy for her rapidly spreading cancer that was diagnosed after she learned that she was pregnant.

When life places one of us in a “Sophie’s Choice” dilemma like Stacy’s, no one has standing to question or challenge whether the ultimate choice is “right.” There is no right choice. Stacy was faced with deciding whether to sacrifice the unborn child she had never met, a child whom many in America choose to regard as a neither a life or a being with any individual rights, but rather only as an ephemeral potentiality made of cells, similar to a pay-off at the races or a stock dividend. Even those who take the opposite view, that Dottie was a human life even at the earliest stages of her development in the womb, would never assert that a mother would be wrong to choose life-saving cancer treatments for herself at the risk of the unborn child. In such a case the right to choose is nearly unanimously accepted, and it is the hardest choice of all. Continue reading →

An Ethics Question From Ethicist Peter Singer

/ Jack Marshall / 20 Comments

Princeton University philosophy professor Peter Singer is that rarest of species, the ethicist whose name many people actually recognize. This is because of his knack for raising important ethical issues in provocative ways, making enough people upset to create productive and sometimes transformation debate.

In a recent interview with the Carnegie Council’s Julia Taylor Kennedy, Singer touched on many of his most publicized themes, including global poverty. Here he poses a thought exercise designed to raise a question of conscience:

“I ask you to imagine that you are walking across some park that you know quite well, and in this park there is a shallow ornamental pond. Let’s assume that you know that it’s shallow, because on summer days you see teenagers playing in it, and it’s only waist-deep. Continue reading →

The Intern, The Lawyer and The Recycling Bin: A Cautionary Tale

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

We entrusted the job to our intern: what could go wrong?

Here is a story that should frighten all lawyers who employ non-lawyers to assist with various tasks in their practice, which is to say, every one of them. If you have a lawyer, or ever expect to hire one, maybe it should frighten you, too.

A young woman dumped documents containing private information from the clients of Ashley Bell, one of Gainesville, Georgia’s most respected attorneys, in a newspaper recycling bin at The Gainesville Times. The Times said that a majority of the documents remained in their original file folders, and no effort had been made to conceal the contents or redact sensitive information. The files included phone and Social Security numbers of former clients, information on juveniles and reports and evaluations conducted by the Department of Family and Children Services and Court Appointed Special Advocates regarding the physical and sexual abuse, which state law requires be kept confidential.  From the Times: Continue reading →

Quick Thought: Here’s a Potential Occupation For Jeremy Hollinger…

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

…after his school realizes that he has no business teaching special needs kids.

Or could it be that Jeremy has a soul mate across the pond…?

Unethical Quote of the Week: Rep. Jesse Jackson, Jr.

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

“I hope the President continues to exercise extraordinary constitutional means, based on the history of Congresses that have been in rebellion in the past. He’s looking administratively for ways to advance the causes of the American people, because this Congress is completely dysfunctional. President Obama tends to idealize — and rightfully so  — Abraham Lincoln, who looked at states in rebellion and he made a judgment that the government of the United States, while the states are in rebellion, still had an obligation to function…On several occasions now, we’ve seen … the Congress is in rebellion, determined, as Abraham Lincoln said, to wreck or ruin at all costs. I believe … in the direct hiring of 15 million unemployed Americans at $40,000 a head, some more than $40,000, some less than $40,000 — that’s a $600 billion stimulus. It could be a five-year program. For another $104 billion, we bailout all of the states … for another $100 billion, we bailout all of the cities.”

—– Rep. Jesse Jackson, Jr. (D-Ill.), telling the Daily Caller how he thinks unemployment should be addressed. Jackson inexplicably left out the part where Superman gives President Obama a magic lamp, and the President uses his three wishes to turn all his political opponents into beef jerky, banish the national debt, and make money grow from beans that get delivered to every American daily by a suddenly solvent postal service, transported around the country in Santa’s sleigh. Continue reading →

Comment of the Day: “Unethical Website—and Readers— of the Month: The Spearhead”

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

Bill Price, who operates the website I criticized in the post “Unethical Website—and Readers— of the Month: The Spearhead,” offers this response in the Comment of the Day. Among other things, he mentions some new revelations about Victoria Liss (whose story I wrote about here) , the Seattle bartender whose inept and excessive web-shaming brought infamy and abuse down on the head of the wrong man. It seems that she has wrongly accused men before. It’s not exactly a surprise. Bill post raises many issues, and I’ll have some responses at the end. Here is his Comment of the Day:

“Hi Jack, noticed the post, and have to say I’m a little disappointed.

“Your article on Amanpour was indeed quite good, and much appreciated. But I’d like to point out that The Spearhead is very lightly moderated, and therefore many of the comments are indeed very radical. Additionally, those who comment and rate the comments are the most radical of all — less than 5% of readers are regular commenters. This always happens on any politically oriented board with a large readership, so it should be no surprise. Continue reading →

Ethics Dunce: The American Cancer Society

/ Jack Marshall / 13 Comments

According to the Foundation Beyond Belief, a secular charity “funded by atheists, freethinkers, and humanists,” the American Cancer Society has rejected its offer to raise up to a half million dollars for cancer research through the American Cancer Society‘s Relay for Life program. The ACS declined to allow the Foundation to field a national relay team, though every other non-profit that has applied has been allowed to participate.

Talk about “beyond belief”: I have a hard time accepting this story as true, though it is being reported by respectable sources. Why wouldn’t the Society, whose mission is to help those with cancer, including helping them by finding a cure, turn down any group’s generosity, as long as its donation wasn’t going to be raised through illegal means? Bank of America, CitiBank, Goldman Sachs, Wal-Mart and other companies whose reputation is hardly without tarnish are among the ACS’s listed donors…and as we know, a lot of the people who run these companies worship Mammon, not God. Continue reading →

Comment of the Day:”Catawba Valley Community College vs. FIRE, Free Speech and Fairness”

/ Jack Marshall / Leave a comment

"Being courageous, challenging authority and exercising your right to free speech is no way to go through life, son."

Michael supplies an answer to my question, “What is going on with colleges and universities?” to begin the recent post about yet another example of a college trying to strangle inconvenient free expression on campus. Here is his Comment of the Day on Catawba Valley Community College vs. FIRE, Free Speech and Fairness:

“Colleges used to be run by faculty. Senior faculty members would be promoted to department heads, then deans, then provosts, and finally presidents. Their whole career, they would teach and be in contact with students. The faculty used to have a strong voice, including the ability to remove a sitting president if they felt it was necessary. Continue reading →

And You Thought Natalie Munroe Was An Unethical Teacher…Well, Meet Jeremy Hollinger

/ Jack Marshall / 20 Comments

Jeremy Hollinger, showing his compassion for his students' struggles

Remember Natalie Munroe, the teacher who blogged about how much she detested her high school students, calling them names like “rat-boy” and “jerkoff”? What, you may ask, could be more destructive to the necessary trust between teacher and student, or parents and the teacher to whom they entrust their student’s education, short of actual abuse?

How about a teacher ridiculing his grade school special ed students?

Believe it or not, that’s what Jeremy Hollinger, a Mobile (Ala.)County Public School teacher who handles a second grade special education class at the Eichold-Mertz Elementary School did on his Facebook page. (In news reports, that’s what he “allegedly” did, or “is accused of” doing. In fact, all the evidence is public, it is clear and unambiguous, and the bottom line is, he did it.) Most spectacularly, Hollinger posted a mocking picture of himself wearing a seizure helmet and making a goofy face. Among his charming jibes at the young and challenged children in his class were such satirical comments on their behavior as “I guess crayons are on the menu” and “Why is there shit on the floor?” Continue reading →

Catawba Valley Community College vs. FIRE, Free Speech and Fairness

/ Jack Marshall / 13 Comments

Wait a minute...YES! It's FIRE to the rescue!!

Will someone please  tell me what is going on with colleges and universities lately?

Has there been a collective nervous breakdown among administrators? Is the stress getting to be too much? As the walls close in, with institutions realizing that they are charging far too much for diplomas that neither signify knowledge nor enhance employability, are they abusing power in a futile effort to pretend they are in control of a deteriorating situation beyond their control? I don’t know, but thank heaven for the Foundation For Individual Rights in Education, whose mission of protecting students and academics from abusive restrictions on their rights of free though and expression on university campuses is more crucial than ever.

FIRE’s latest rescue mission was on behalf of Marc Bechtol, a student at Catawba Valley Community College in North Carolina. In June, the College announced that all students would receive a CVCC branded Debit Mastercard according to the institution’s partnership with Higher One, a financial services company. The debit card also serves as the official student ID, so there was no way to opt out of the arrangement. In order to activate his card, Bechtol and other students were required to supply their Social Security numbers, dates of birth, and student numbers. Bechtol smelled a rat, and he has a good nose: this arrangement may be legal, but it is unethical. The school is forcing students to do business with a for-profit entity that will have access to sensitive and personal data. Bechtol objected to CVCC and Higher One  marketing its checking accounts through emails to students, making claims that they would get their tuition refunds and Pell Grants faster if they opened Higher One accounts.  One such email had the subject line, “Want your refund? Activate your CVCC Onecard today!”

After Bechtol activated his own debit card, he said he received a marketing phone call from Orchard Bank, trying to get him to apply for a credit card—smoking gun evidence that his proprietary information, forced out of him by his college, was being sold to marketing firms. Annoyed, Bechtol sharply criticized CVCC’s unethical partnership with Higher One on the school’s Facebook page, writing “Did anyone else get a bunch of credit card spam in their CVCC inbox today? So, did CVCC sell our names to banks, or did Higher One? I think we should register CVCC’s address with every porn site known to man. Anyone know any good viruses to send them? …OK, maybe that would be a slight overreaction.”

One week after posting this, Bechtol was taken out of a class by the CVCC Executive Officer of Student Services and told that he would not be permitted to return. Continue reading →