Omaha

“Pass the Trash” Ethics

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

School superintendents included.

Nancy Sebring was hired to be the new Omaha, Nebraska school superintendent and was scheduled to move into her position on July 1, having been hired in April.  Meanwhile, she was finishing up as outgoing Superintendent of Schools in Des Moines, Iowa. When Sebring suddenly resigned her Iowa post, which she had held for six years, on May 10, she and Des Moines school board president Teree Caldwell-Johnson explained that Sebring had stepped down early so she could attend to pressing family affairs before moving to Nebraska.

The real reason, however, was that Sebring had resigned as an alternative to being fired. The school board had discovered that she had used the school’s computer system to send more than forty e-mails to a man with whom she was having an adulterous affair, many of them sexually explicit. The e-mail trail began shortly before she announced her new job, and continued until she was forced to resign. Now Omaha knows about the e-mails too, thanks to a newspaper report. Sebring’s new job has ended before it started, and Omaha is desperately behind in finding a school superintendent. Continue reading →

Ethics Quiz: Should A High School Football Team Be Punished For THINKING About Being Unethical?

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

Beware of unethical thoughts!!

Talk about strict!

Officials at Omaha, Nebraska’s Creighton Prep were horrified to learn learned that about fifty members of the school’s football team had planned an ethically offensive scavenger hunt that included “a group photo with a topless chick,” “a pic with a fat chick,” “steal a yarmulke from a Jewish synagogue” and “get into a yelling fight with a stranger in public,”along with more harmless challenges.

In fact, the players, divided into groups, lost their nerve. Administrators learned that the players vetoed the most objectionable activities in favor of those that were harmless and silly.

“I’m disappointed in their plan because their plan is inconsistent with the mission of their school,” said Rev. Thomas Merkel, president of the all-boys Catholic school. “I’m proud of the fact that they didn’t follow through on their plan.” Not too proud, though:  the students involved received in-school suspensions and were barred from extracurricular activities, including football practice. None of the students were expelled.

The hunt came to the school’s attention when one of the scavenger teams lost its list, which was subsequently found by a student who turned it in to the brass. The administrators determined that the plan “promoted hazing, exploitation of women, theft and other conduct unbecoming of a Creighton Prep student.”
None of which, apparently, the students actually did.

Your Ethics Quiz Question: Is it fair and appropriate to punish the football team members for including offensive tasks on the list, even if none of them were actually performed? Continue reading →