Education

Ethics Hero: Jennifer McKendrick

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

My hero.

Jennifer McKendrick is my favorite Ethics Hero of 2011.

An Indiana County freelance photographer of sensitivity, courage and principle, McKendrick engaged in classic ethical behavior—seeing wrongful conduct that harms others, and taking affirmative action to address it. Her conduct is a template for all of us, and not merely regarding the specific problem she decided to confront: online bullying.

McKendrick had been hired to shoot the senior photos of several high school girls, then discovered that they had viciously denigrated other students on Facebook. She sent the girls’ parents this letter:
 Continue reading →

Sorry, Mr. Buell: It’s Not About Free Speech, It’s About “The Naked Teacher Principle”

/ Jack Marshall / 25 Comments

The Naked Teacher Principle rides again!

Jerry Buell, a veteran high school teacher recently named his district’s ‘Teacher of the Year,” was suspended indefinitely by Lake County, Florida’s Mount Dora High School for posting an anti-gay marriage rant on his Facebook page.  In the post, prompted by New York’s decision to legalize gay marriage, Buell said that the news made him want to throw up, that gay marriage was “a cesspool,” and that homosexuality was a sin.

He is welcome to his opinion. He has an absolute right to it. However, he does not have a right to be allowed to teach students, several or many of whom may be gay, after voluntarily allowing it to become public knowledge that he is disgusted by gays and considers them sinful. The school is right to remove him from his teaching duties, and it will be right to tell him that he will not be permitted to teach in the school again. Continue reading →

Calvin College, Forfeiting Its Right To Exist

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

As further proof of evolution, the chimp is behaving exactly like his distant relatives, the adminsitrators of Calvin College

I don’t know what the exact point is that marks where a religious school’s departure from legitimate adherence to its core beliefs metastasizes into a nuisance to society and civilization by affirmatively encouraging life-crippling ignorance. I do know, however, that Michigan’s  Calvin College has passed that point.

Two religion professors at Calvin wrote scholarly papers suggesting that new discoveries in genetics and evolution raised questions about the literal reading of Genesis that could no longer be brushed aside. Neither professor questioned the existence of God or the role of their church, but they argued that the findings of rigorous, modern science may require a theological re-examination of literalist Biblical teachings. Readers of The Banner, the publication of the Christian Reformed Church in North America, promptly blew a Biblical gasket:

“To protect the church and college from false teachers and contrary orthodox beliefs it would be right to let these guys go,” said one commenter. “Clearly, professors who deny the scriptures as interpreted by our creeds and who have broken the promise they made when they signed the Form of Subscription should be fired,” said another. From yet another: “Why is it that so many Christians and academics in Christian colleges seem more concerned about keeping in step with what the world teaches than they are about what God’s Word teaches? Are we ashamed of God’s Word in the face of the beliefs of our worldly peers?”

Calvin investigated the two professors, and as a consequence one of them, John Schneider, resigned the tenured position he had held for 25 years, as part of a settlement with the college. Continue reading →

Comment of the Day #3 on “Ethics Dunces: The Senate and House Leadership”

/ Jack Marshall / 1 Comment

Come back, Ross! We need your charts!

The third Comment of the Day on this “Comment of the Day Friday” is an epic from Michael, expanding on the theme of my original post.

“I hate the fact that no one is talking facts, only ideology. In such an atmosphere, these selections make sense. The S&P statement said our downgrade was because we failed to tacked long-term indebtedness especially the main drivers of long-term debt: Medicare and SS, but no one really wants to deal with that. To talk facts, you really need some tables, figures, and analysis. I’m not just talking about politicians, here. Isn’t this the reason we tolerate the media? Aren’t they supposed to keep us informed of about things like this so we can then get outraged by such a stupid selection of people to ‘fix’ our problem.

“Why can’t we find a news outlet that will break things down like this?” Continue reading →

Comment of the Day: “Comment of the Day: ‘The Barefoot Contessa and the Compassion Bullies'”

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

 

Does the truth matter?

No, that wasn’t a typo: Karl Penny just achieved a first for Ethics Alarms, a Comment of the Day in response to a Comment of the Day.

The COD at issue was Gary’s assertion that he had no obligation to align his ethical preferences according to my analysis (or any other) of the “Ina Garten rejects Make A Wish” dispute, and that to him it was “just a story” that he could use or ignore according to what he chose to believe.

This inspired Karl’s excellent Comment of the Day, which also contains one passage that would justify another Ethics Alarms first, an Ethics Quote of the Week in a Comment of the Day on a Comment of the Day. I bolded it. Thanks, Karl: Continue reading →

Ethics Quote of the Day: Ken, of Popehat

/ Jack Marshall / 17 Comments

“Listen to me: a law school calculated to make students feel good about themselves is as ridiculous as a Marine boot camp designed to make enlistees feel good about themselves. Law students, God help us, will one day be lawyers. When they are, nobody will care about their self-esteem. The prosecutors seeking to jail their clients will not be seeking to foster a sense of community. The opposing civil lawyers seeking to bankrupt their clients will not be promoting a culture of dignity and respect. Most law practice is about conflict. It’s a bloody, ugly street fight. Self-esteem borne of law-should-be-harmony is useless to clients. The only self-esteem useful to clients is self-esteem earned by hard work, determination, command of the subject matter, and the willingness to stand up to adversity. People who object to law professors being wickedly Socratic, and classmates being cutthroat, are missing the point. If you’re put off by a Socratic professor, Mr. Fluffy Bunny, a run-of-the-mill judge is going to make you soil yourself. If nasty, backstabbing classmates upset you, the first time you get into a nasty letter-writing campaign with an opposing counsel you’re going to have a breakdown. Law school is not a fucking spa day. It’s training to stand between your client and whatever the world throws at him.”

—– Ken, the astute lawyer/sage/Don Rickles of the libertarian social commentary website Popehat, excoriating the University of St. Thomas Law School for, among other things, extolling the values of self-esteem, collaboration, harmony and community among their students.

What Ken is really talking about is zealous representation, that once universally accepted bedrock of the  lawyer’s duty that has gradually fallen into disfavor with many academics and lawyers. Continue reading →

The Tricky Ethics of Trading Sex For Tuition

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

 

It's not generally known, but Anna Nicole Smith initially hooked up with billionaire husband J. Herbert Marshall so he could pay her tuition at MIT.*

Seekingarrangement.com is undoubtedly an unethical website. The question is how unethical, and that is why I’ve taken longer than usual to write about it, and the social phenomenon it and other websites are fostering.

The site is per se unethical because it facilitates adultery, infidelity and improper workplace conduct, by definition and unequivocally, convicted by its own words:

“Rich and successful. Single or married, you have no time for games. You are looking to mentor or spoil someone special — perhaps a “personal secretary”? secret lover? student? or a mistress for an extra-marital affair?”

Based on this alone, Seekingarrangement.com is Ashley Madison (the adultery website) all over again. Case closed, no appeal. A website is unethical when it endorses, encourages, and assists in dishonest conduct that is guaranteed to cause harm to third parties. The “consenting adults” argument doesn’t work, and doesn’t apply, when the adults are consenting to something that violates commitments, agreements and promises made to other parties who don’t have the option of consenting.

Seekingarrangement.com, however, became the topic of much debate this month for another reason: its use by desperate students, aspiring students or indebted graduates to pay their college tuition. In this it is like the more specialized Seektuition.com, which is solely devoted to matching horny, rich, developmentally retarded and presumably repulsive older men who can’t find real relationships to hot, poor, young women willing to exchange their bodies and dignity to  “help sponsor” their “ dorm rent, books, or provide assistance for tuition.” (“Perhaps even take you shopping for those new clothes you want to impress your sorority sisters!”). The Huntington Post broke the story, telling the tales of both students who “hook up” with wealthy, older men over the internet using Seekingarrangement.com and similar sites, have sex with them, and get tuition money or tuition loan repayment funds in return, while the wealthy men gladly pay big bucks to have an evening of passion with a co-ed and some Viagra. Continue reading →

The Widener School of Law Ethics Train Wreck: Political Correctness and Its Carnage

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

I have posted twice this year about the persecution of  Prof. Lawrence Connell, a tenured associate professor at Widener University School of Law in Delaware, but let me summarize the story for you, lets you missed the original post.

Connell is a criminal law professor, and is adept at concocting memorable hypotheticals to illustrate principles of law, often using celebrities and other people well-known to the students as characters. In one class, he illustrated the dilemmas in determining the crime of attempted murder with this hypothetical:

“The Dean has threatened to fire me if she comes to school one more time and finds that I have parked in her designated parking space. Upset about the possibility of losing both my job and the parking space, I bring my .357 to school, get out of my car, put the .357 into my waistband, walk to the top floor where her office is located, open the door to her office, see her seated at her desk, draw my weapon, aim my weapon, and fire my weapon directly into what I believe to be her head. To my surprise, it’s not the Dean at all, but an ingeniously painted pumpkin — a pumpkin that has been intricately painted to look like the Dean. Dick Tracy rushes in and immediately wrestles me to the ground. I am charged with the attempted murder of the Dean.”

Good hypothetical. But some of Connell’s students complained that the hypo communicated violent attitudes towards women and blacks, since the Dean, Linda Ammons, is both female and black. Continue reading →

What’s the Matter With Paul Gust?

/ Jack Marshall / 13 Comments

Oh-oh...now I'VE searched for her too!

Combine the Anthony Weiner debacle and the Naked Teacher Principle (in reverse), and you get the travails of 45-year-old Paul Gust, the computer teacher at the Saugatuck Public Schools in Michigan. He has been fired, and I would fire him too. But which of his actions were a firing offense?

1. Storing photos of naked women on his school computer?
2. Being such a klutz that he accidentally flashed some of the photos on the screen in the middle of a presentation on computer technology?
3. Having the FBI find photographs of underage girls on that same computer, though not photos that constituted child-porn?
4. Having the FBI also discover that he had searched for photos of Miley Cyrus braless, when she was under 18?
5. Having personal e-mails on his computer—beyond dispute involving personal discussions, off hours, on his own time, using his own accounts—that included discussions of sexual fantasies involving teen-age girls? Continue reading →

Incompetent Elected Official of the Month: Tennessee State Rep.Joe Armstrong

/ Jack Marshall / 20 Comments

SEDITION!

In a “who most deserves to have to resign?” contest between Tennessee State Rep. Joe Armstrong and sexting New Jersey County Commissioner Louis Magazzu,  Armstrong wins by a lap. The University of Tennessee bookstore has pulled a brand of novelty breath mints from its shelves, in compliance with a request from Armstrong, a loyal and incompetent Democrat. The mints  lampooned President Obama. They were packaged in tin cans with an  image of Obama and the motto, “This is change? Disappoint-mints.” The horror.

Armstrong said that the mints were offensive. Oh weally? Izzums wittle feewings wounded because evewyone doesn’y wuv your bewuvved weader? Continue reading →