Ethics Sage

The “Ethical and Right Way” of Raising Children

The Motivation behind being a ‘Tiger Mom,’ a blog by Cam Tran

My ethics students at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo are required to write a blog on a topic of deep interest illustrating their knowledge of ethical reasoning. The following is a blog by Cam Tran, one of the best blogs I received this term.

I was first introduced to the article “Why Chinese Mothers are Superior” published in the Wall Street Journal, an excerpt of the Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother by Amy Chua, in my senior year of high school in 2011. While reading this article, there was no surprise that I related to it as it reflected much of my Vietnamese background and how my mother has raised me or having known someone who was raised that way. This feeling was mutual with the other students that were raised by Eastern or Asian parents, however, the students that were raised by Western parents were outraged that a parent could be so harsh and cold to their own child, claiming that they were essentially torturing and making the child suffer, as parents are supposed to be loving and support their child.

While the students raised by Asian parents tried to explain that Asian parents are essentially showing their love and support by pushing their children so hard, the other students remained unconvinced and continued to be in shock and disbelief that parents could be so heartless to their children. I was taken aback by all the negative reaction and even slightly offended that others would think that my mother did not love me. Because I have only known this way of my mother raising me, I suppose I had naturally assumed that the Asian culture of raising children or “tiger moms” was well known to most people. But much to my error, not only was there backlash in my situation but across the nation, there was shock and criticism against the author Amy Chua, making me question which is the best and most ethical way to raise a child?

For an ethical perspective of child-rearing in the Asian culture, we can look to the ancient Greeks who believed that the quickest way to the pursuit of happiness is by living a life of virtue. For a tiger mom to be virtuous, she must serve her purpose in life, which is pushing her child to be the best that he or she can be. Essentially, as a tiger mom, she has an obligation to enforce a strong work ethic in her child to help him or her on the path of achievement. Likewise, for the child to be virtuous, he or she must fulfill the obligation by working hard to meet the expectations the parents have set. Conversely, for Western parents to be virtuous, they have the obligation of letting their child pursue passions and follow dreams, and therefore, instilling less of a work ethic.

To an outsider, it might seem that Asian parenting may lack moral motivation as the parents place a slightly higher emphasis of non-ethical values that relate to self-interest, such as wealth and power, over ethical values, such as integrity and honesty. However, Asian parents actually use the ethical values as a vehicle to get to the non-ethical values because they want their child to be happy and not lead a life of suffering. Asian parents’ primary goal is their child’s happiness but they believe that a focus on achievement is the best way to achieve this happiness. It is paramount through a child’s adolescence because when the child grows older he or she is able to be happy by enjoying the wealth and success that comes with said achievement. Asian parents have more of an authoritarian parenting style, instilling self-discipline and work ethics into their child as they do not want them to go through the same hardships as they had to go through.

Chua’s style of raising her children can be seen as a means to an end, not an end in itself because there is more of an emphasis on grades than actually learning the material. But the logic here is that if one fully learns and understands the material, then getting a high grade in the class should come easily. Asian mothers believe that success and achievement reflects good parenting, therefore, if a child did not do well in school then parents were not doing their job effectively.

Asian parents believe the only key to success is hard work and persistence. Even if one has no talent or is not gifted, if hard work and all of one’s effort is put into a task, it could be done and done so successfully. But with hard work comes practice. Research shows that practice is needed to become more proficient at a mental task because it helps it become more automatic so the motor skills in a brain become less active, allowing it to shift to areas with higher level of thinking and reflection. Practicing is crucial for excellence, so Asian parents seem to push their child to practice more and for a longer time, whether with a musical instrument or studying a subject, because they want their child to be his or her best self. Asian parents push their child to practice more on the musical instrument because they know that once the notes are learned, it enables for a more in depth exploring of the emotional content of the piece of music and therefore allow it to be fun and enjoyable to play. This is especially shown when Chua pushes her daughter to correctly play a piano piece “The Little White Donkey.” There was much resistance and strong words exchanged between the two but once her daughter was able to play the piece correctly, both felt accomplished in their task and from this, her daughter learned that if she practiced and put enough dedication into something, she will be able to achieve it.

While Asian parenting can work effectively, as Chua’s eldest daughter is now attending Harvard, some children may rebel to strict discipline and come to resent their parents. Likewise, Western parenting can be very successful because of the freedom the parents allow, which permits the child to learn and grow from mistakes and perhaps instill a work ethic in his or herself. Personally, I’m glad and thankful that my own mother followed a strict discipline while raising me through my adolescent years. Reflecting back, I would not have minded if she was even stricter and pushed me harder because it has really made me who I am today; someone I’m proud to be. While my mother was not the essence of a tiger mom and certainty not as harsh as Chua was with her kids, by any means, she raised me with a firm hand. Even though I strongly disliked it since I did not understand it as a child, I now fully appreciate all that she has done and sacrificed for me and see that everything was out of love wanting the best for me.

Cam Tran blog posted by Steven Mintz, aka Ethics Sage, on June 18, 2013

What's Wrong with Eating Lion Meat?

Lion-meat tacos, with a side of controversy

This blog was previously posted but I receieved an important comment that I include below from Megan Knauss from Born Free USA. The original blog follows the comment.

Comment by Megan Knauss megan@bornfreeusa.org

Ethics Sage: First, thank you for the mention!  Second, in response to your question, here are three reasons why eating lion meat is wrong:

1) The lion meat industry is virtually unregulated.  Consumers therefore have no assurance that their lion tacos and burgers will not pose a risk to their health. 

2) The lion population is quickly disappearing.  To place lion meat on the menu in US restaurants is to further threaten this iconic, vulnerable species’ future survival.

3) The Humane Methods of Slaughter Act does not apply to lions.  When lions are slaughtered for food, there are no laws in place to ensure that the animals are unconscious or insensible to pain before they are killed.

Thank you for bringing attention to this important issue.  As you point out, lions do indeed have rights- rights that are being trampled on by businesses that have twisted the American “freedom of choice” to justify serving this beautiful species on a platter. 

Original Blog by Ethics Sage

My nephew, I’ll call him Howard, is sometimes skeptical about the veracity of topics I choose for my blogs labeling some “urban legends,” so I dedicate this blog to him. I know he will be skeptical so I’ve included a  photo of the taco with lion meat sold by a Tampa, Florida restaurant until last week.

Well, all you taco lovers, for $35 dollars you can try lion as in the king of the jungle.

"I thought the lion was good," said patron Lee Weiner. "It didn't taste too gamey to me, similar to steak."

Frankie Consoli commented that the lion meat is a bit tougher than steak. Consoli is a connoisseur of what many of us would think as ethically-challenged food choices.  He’s eaten rattlesnake and antelope before and if he didn’t want lion at Taco Fusion, Consoli could pick from other exotic meats on the menu: bison, shark, ostrich, gator, gazelle, rabbit, duck, camel and kangaroo.

Since Taco Fusion opened in February 2013, the restaurant has built a reputation for their unconventional taco filings. They have previously offered game like beaver and otter, but the controversy didn't start until lion meat made its way onto their menu.

"I really don't like that at all," said McKenzie Bremer who opposed the restaurant's decision and said that a threatened species should not be served at a taco place.

Brad Barnett, the owner of Taco Fusion, defended his actions by saying: "If you don't like it, don't eat it." However, he bowed to the pressure and removed the lion meat as one of a few exotic fillings for their tacos.

Meanwhile, Taco Fusion has even more unusual items coming: iguana, bear and zebra, which, on one level follows a trend in gourmet circles to use ever-more-exotic ingredients. It's not uncommon for the Food Network to broadcast cooking competitions where chefs use sea urchin, squab, quail eggs and bone narrow.

So why not eat lion meat? Why prohibit it when other "tasteless" food choices exist such as Biscuit Kite Spider, Tomato Frog, and Green Slug Caterpillar?

Wild animal advocacy group Born Free USA embarked on an undercover investigation into the lion meat trade in 2011, and as part of their campaign to curb the trade, have petitioned to have African lion listed as "endangered" under the U.S. Endangered Species Act. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service concluded that the petition presented substantial evidence indicating that listing this subspecies may be warranted, but has yet to issue a finding.

Here are my reasons for freeing the Lion as a food choice. Lions are considered “Vulnerable” in the wild, which is a step short of “Endangered,” according to wildlife conservation groups, and so importing or selling lion meat isn’t illegal. However the African lion - one of Africa's most iconic animals - has experienced an alarming population decrease since the 1960's. According to National Geographic, only 32,000 Lions remain out of 100,000 roaming Africa in the 1960s, and the actual number may be much lower.

Animal rights activists oppose lion meat for the same reasons they oppose any other meat: It infringes on the rights of the animals. This is the link to ethics. We accept that human beings have rights – freedom of speech, freedom to worship as we wish, freedom to assemble, and so on. Don’t animals have rights? Wouldn’t one of those rights be to roam the wild without fear of being killed for food?  ...Just food for thought… 

It has taken me a long time to accept that eating Bambi is routine in many parts of the world. However, I draw the line at Simba.

Blog re-posted by Steven Mintz, aka Ethics Sage, on June 14, 2013

Is Following the Law the Same as Being Ethical?

IRS Official Invokes Ethical Legalism as a Defense

A question I got from my students all the time is if I follow all the laws doesn’t that mean I have acted ethically? I explain there is a difference between following the laws and making ethical decisions because the laws can’t cover every situation we encounter in life. If we limit the guidance for our actions to legalities, we are likely to miss the ethical signs that impropriety awaits us when the rules do not address a particular matter.

A perfect case in point is Lois Lerner, the IRS official whose unit is at the center of the investigation into alleged Tea Party targeting and other discriminatory treatment against certain groups and individuals with respect to the application of IRS regulations including nonprofit conservative groups applying for 501 (c) (4) tax exempt status.

Recently, Lerner was placed on administrative leave and Ken Corbin was named acting director of exempt organizations during Lerner's leave. He is currently deputy director of submission processing in the wage and investment division.  The reason for Lerner’s removal can be seen in how she responded to a Congressional investigation.

On April 30, 2013, Lerner and seven IRS colleagues spent six-hours being interviewed, on a bipartisan basis, by House Oversight & Government Reform Committee Subcommittee staff. That interview covered, among other topics, how the IRS determines which groups to review, what actions are taken in connection with the IRS reviews, and how the laws and regulations are used to examine those groups. Lerner failed to disclose the internal controversy over the search terms used by the Cincinnati office to identify 501(c) (4) groups for further review, the actions taken by that office in reviewing the identified groups, the investigation and imminent findings by the Treasury Department Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA); and TIGTA’s conclusion that the IRS had used inappropriate criteria to target Tea Party and other conservative groups. Ms. Lerner also failed to disclose that she was fully aware of these issues as early as June 2011, and, according to TIGTA, had been personally involved in reviewing questionable actions taken by the Cincinnati office.

Given the serious failure by Lerner to disclose to Subcommittee members key information on topics that the Subcommittee was investigating, the House lost confidence in her ability to fulfill her duties as Director of Exempt Organizations at the IRS. No doubt Lerner, who was responsible for overseeing 1.6 million tax-exempt organizations, made decisions and failed in her oversight in a way that erodes public trust and confidence in the IRS and its professional integrity.

In a hearing in May on the matter, Lerner invoked ethical legalism as a defense for her actions. Ethical legalism holds that as long as I follow the rules, I have acted ethically. "I have not done anything wrong. I have not broken any laws," she said. "I have not violated any IRS rules or regulations and I have not provided any false information to this or any other committee."

Other than this self-serving statement, Lerner invoked her Fifth Amendment right to not testify before Congress.

Lerner doesn’t get it that treating one group of people differently than another violates basic fairness standards. Groups that apply for exempt tax status should be treated the same and decisions whether to grant it should be based solely on whether each group meets the federal guidelines to be granted exempt status. To decide otherwise leads to failing the ethics test of treating equals, equally and unequals, unequally, a basic tenet of justice.

Blog posted by Steven Mintz, aka Ethics Sage, on June 12, 2013

Civility and Michelle Obama’s Handling of the Heckler

Was Michelle’s Response Proper?

Was Michelle Obama’s reaction to a heckler last week an example of civility or incivility? Did she go too far in talking down a heckler while she was speaking at a private fundraising event in Northwest Washington? In case you haven’t heard, Michelle was interrupted by Ellen Sturtz, who wanted the First Lady to get the President to sign an executive order banning LGBT discrimination.

Sturtz's interruption began halfway through Obama's 20-minute speech. Obama, interrupted, paused, and proceeded to confront Sturtz face-to-face: 

"One of the things I don't do well is this," replied Michelle to loud applause. She left the lectern and moved over to the protester, saying they could "listen to me or you can take the mic, but I'm leaving. You all decide. You have one choice." 

The crowd started shouting that they wanted Michelle to stay. 

"You need to go!" said one woman near the protester. 

The protester was then escorted out, shouting "...lesbian looking for federal equality before I die." (First part of the quote was inaudible.)

In an interview with a reporter after the event, Sturtz said she was startled by Obama's response: "Basically, I was asked by the first lady to be quiet, and I can't be quiet any longer," Sturtz said, adding, "she obviously thought she was going to make an example of me or something. I wasn't scared at all."  Sturtz also said: “She came right down in my face...I was taken aback.”

The incident exemplifies the lack of civility in society. Michelle handled it perfectly. Her message was I am speaking; I was invited to speak; others want to hear me; you are interrupting…

We have morphed into a society where individuals like Sturtz fail to consider how their actions affect others. The people in attendance did not want to hear her rants. They came to hear Michelle Obama. Regardless of the validity of one’s cause, there is a time and place for everything, and Michelle’s fundraising event was not the time to bring up one’s own agenda. Just think, if everyone acted that way in any and every fundraiser and political gathering, then we would be spending our time shouting down each other and that’s not a very civil way to behave.

Quite frankly, I think Barack Obama can learn a lesson from his wife. Her reaction to the heckling shows she is not afraid to exhibit strong character traits in public and walk the talk of leadership. The President often reverts to his ‘I have to satisfy everybody’ mode and fears he might upset one political group or another if he acts in a way that supports thoughtful actions and civility by a responsible citizenry. He has been heckled by some who show no respect for the office of presidency or for those who come to hear what Obama has to say. He needs to send a strong message, as did Michelle, that that kind of behavior should not be tolerated in a civil society.

Blog posted by Steven Mintz, aka Ethics Sage, on June 10, 2013

Should Illegal Immigrants be Given Driver’s Licenses?

Rewarding Bad Behavior

Numerous states are considering issuing driver’s licenses to illegal immigrants while one state, New Mexico, is struggling to prevent out-of-staters from fraudulently obtaining them.

Until recently, undocumented immigrants were able to obtain driver's licenses or permits only from three states: New Mexico, Washington and Utah. But that number is expected to grow.

A utilitarian analysis of this issue would examine the harms and benefits of granting driver’s licenses to illegals. Those who favor granting driver’s licenses to illegals claim licenses will make streets safer, since the immigrants must take a driving test. Some police agencies say the licenses allow them to keep better track of this population. Immigrant advocates say the licenses give this group needed mobility.

First, there is no evidence to suggest that our streets will be safer by granting the licenses to illegals. Since it has only occurred in three states, the data is just not there to support this assertion. In fact, some might claim the streets will be less safe because illegals drive poorly [another unsubstantiated claim] and will add congestion to the already congested roadways, especially out here in California. Thus, by allowing illegals the privilege of driving with a license, current drivers may be inconvenienced.

It is a privilege to be given a driver’s license not a “right.” There is nothing in the Constitution that supports allowing anyone to drive without meeting certain standards. One reasonable standard is for the driver to be a legal resident if for no other reason than they have earned the privilege by going through the steps to become a legal citizen.

The police claim a benefit is being able to better track the illegal immigrant population. The scary thing about this is the admission illegals are not very well tracked. Who are they? What is their business in the U.S.? Where are they employed? It seems to me a robust E-verify system would accomplish the same end without rewarding illegal behavior.

Finally, immigrant groups claim the licenses give the group needed mobility. "Individuals have to get to jobs and schools," said Melissa Keaney, an attorney with the National Immigration Law Center, a Los Angeles-based advocacy group.

Once again this is rewarding bad behavior by granting a privilege that has not been earned the way legal citizens have earned it and further clog up our roadways.

The granting of driver’s licenses to illegals is likely to increase in the future. The governor of Illinois signed into law in January a bill that grants licenses to those who lack a Social Security number, while the governors of Maryland and Oregon approved such bills last month. Similar bills sit on the desks of the governors of Colorado, Vermont and Nevada, while a number of other legislatures are considering the move.

There are other potential harms of granting the licenses to illegals in addition to those already addressed.  New Mexico investigators recently busted a Mexican immigrant who tried to obtain a license with the help of a criminal ring. The ring, officials said, used fake New Mexico addresses to create fraudulent documents for out-of-state immigrants, charging $2,500 per license.

State police in April arrested the Mexican immigrant, who lived in Georgia. Authorities canceled 40 licenses the ring had helped secure for 40 other immigrants from Latin America.

In another case, two Central American immigrants were arrested in April for applying for licenses using fake residential leases provided by another criminal group. The immigrants, who had paid $1,500 each for help in securing the licenses, found out about the group's services through an ad in a New York newspaper, according to state investigators.

Demesia Padilla, the cabinet secretary at New Mexico's Taxation and Revenue Department, which oversees the state's Motor Vehicle Division, says it is costly and time-consuming to perform background checks to ensure applicants live in the state, and complains that the department lacks the resources to do the job.

Some New Mexico lawmakers have launched repeated efforts to repeal the license law, with the support of Republican Gov. Susana Martinez. But so far, they have failed.

Padilla said her agency had to open a fourth office in Albuquerque last year to deal with immigrant licenses. Earlier this year, the agency couldn't investigate a potentially fraudulent ring because it already was busy with two others, she said. "We're doing this full time," she said. "There's not ever a slowdown."

In conclusion, this blog is not about whether illegals are sent home because they came here illegally and broke the law. That is a matter for another blog. I am against granting them legal driving privileges because of the potential harms to society not the least of which is fraud in applying for and obtaining the licenses.

One suggestion is to link granting driver’s licenses to a commitment to become a U.S. citizen and follow-up on such requirements. The problem there is it would require an efficient government process of granting the licenses and follow-up to determine if illegals are meeting the requirements to become a legal citizen. Expecting our government to do anything in an efficient manner is a pipe dream that has been disproven over and over again, and that is why we are in the mess we are with illegals.

Blog posted by Steven Mintz, aka Ethics Sage, on June 5, 2013

Abuse of Disabled Passes at Disney

The ‘Magical Kingdom’ not Magical for those on Long Lines

It's made headlines recently. We all know how frustrating it is, waiting in those long lines at Disney. But now some families are cheating the system. They're hiring disabled tour guides so they can cut right to the front. Two investigative reporters -- Jeff Rossen and Josh Davis -- went undercover and caught it all on tape.

Disneyland is "the happiest place on earth" -- except if you're waiting in those long lines, you and your kids, waiting hours in the heat. So how did one family get to skip past everyone? They did it ride after ride after ride, escorted to the front every time.

The reporters point out that the outrageous business few even know about: families bypassing the lines by hiring disabled tour guides with special passes. At most theme parks like Disney, they allow the disabled to get speedy access to rides. But now healthy families are abusing the system, paying disabled guides to get them in with up to five guests.

On ads the reporters found on Craigslist, tour guides brag about their disabled passes: "Let's cut the Disney lines together," "access to ... special entrances." So they had their producer and his family go undercover with home video cameras, hiring two of those disabled guides to show them around Disneyland.

One guide told them she got her pass after a car accident. "I'm here to make sure everyone has fun at Disneyland and we get on as many rides as possible. I have a special card that's going to help us beat the lines. She charged $50 an hour for her services.

A second disabled guide charged $200 and got them right through another side door at Star Tours, an attraction inspired by "Star Wars."

The list goes on including Splash Mountain, Pirates of the Caribbean, and Alice in Wonderland.

The reporters asked their guide about the fact they were profiting from what they were doing. The responses speaks volumes about the greed that has infected our society and a lack of personal responsibility, apathy toward the consequences of one’s actions, and total insensitivity to right and wrong. It has become endemic in our entitlement society today.

Here is the exchange with one guide:

"You're profiting from this," the reporters said.

"Well, Disneyland's profiting a lot from all the people that enter," she said.

"Will you continue to do this?"

"Yes, I will," she said. "We live in a capitalist country, and I don't feel like it's morally wrong."

The reporters interviewed the second guide whether he felt guilty about what he was doing. His response was scarier than the first guide from a moral point of view.

"Do you think you're abusing the system, the reporters asked?"

"No," he said.

"Why not?"

"I gave him a wonderful tour."

"With your disabled pass, where you went through side entrances and exits," the reporters pointed out. "And they're not disabled at all. They're complete strangers. And you charged them for it."

"And?" the guide said.

"Do you ever feel any pangs of guilt when you're cutting past all of those people who are waiting in line with people who are paying you, who aren't disabled at all?" they asked.

"It's a moral question."

"And that's the question, you don't feel morally --"

"I couldn't care less," the guide said.

"About those people waiting in line," we said.

"No."

Disney issued a statement: "We find it deplorable ... We have initiated a review of this abuse and will take appropriate steps to deter this type of unacceptable activity."

The reporters stated Disney is cracking down, sending out warning letters to anyone advertising these services online. And if they catch any of these "disabled tour guides" in the act, their disabled passes will be revoked, and they won't be allowed back into the park.

The essence of the ethical issues can be found in virtue theory. Virtues are the characteristics of excellence that lead a person to follow a moral path in life. Virtues such as honesty, trustworthiness, responsibility, and accountability speak to the personal characteristics that a virtuous person should have. Characteristics such as wealth, power, and fame are selfish virtues that sometimes lead to a lack of sensitivity about how one’s actions based on such behavioral traits might affect others.

I am not at all surprised by the fact some people choose to abuse the disabled pass policy of Disney for personal gain. There are all too many people in society who look for the easy way to make money rather than through hard work and dedication to the job at hand, two qualities that built this nation.

During the past twenty years or so we have raised a generation that is tone deaf to ethical issues. Their attitude is my ethics are my ethics and no one can tell me otherwise. They even think you impinge on their rights if you try to enforce a set of standards on them that they don’t buy into.

From corruption in business, corruption in government, cheating in sports, misuse of power and authority (i.e., the IRS), to cyber-bullying, cyber-hacking, identity theft, increasing violence in our schools, to a general lack of civility in society, we have morphed into a country built on the pursuit of self-interest without regard to the consequences of our actions on others. I fear that our moral blindness as a nation will soon lead to a marked and sustained decline in our economic power as a country because evil will outweigh good; greed will outweigh benevolence; and disdain will outweigh respect for others. It is a slippery slope and the slide has begun in earnest.

Blog posted by Steven Mintz, aka Ethics Sage, on June 4, 2013   

Lateral Thinking and the Logic of Spock: Random Thoughts from the Blogisphere

On Wednesday I posted some questions to consider as an experiment in lateral thinking that relies on creativity in the thought process. I promised to post the answers today, so here they are.

       man 
1. ------------ = man overboard
      board 

      stand 
2. ------------ = I understand
          i 

3. /r/e/a/d/i/n/g/  = reading between the lines

          0 
4. ------------ = two degrees below zero
       M.D. 
       Ph.D. 

5.     knee = neon light
        light 

6.     ground 
--------------------             = six feet underground
feet feet feet feet feet feet 

7.     he's X himself = he’s by himself

8.     ecnalg = backward glance

9.     death ....... life = life after death

10.   THINK = think big!!

Bonus Question

abababababababababababababababababababab... = long time no ‘C’

The purpose of this exercise was to show how sometimes we act before we think. Reason and thought are two critical elements of ethical behavior.This got me thinking about the quintessential logical thinker of all the millennia and galaxies far and near. Yes, you "Trekkies." I'm talking about the beloved Spock from Star Trek. Given the popularity of Star Trek into Darkness, I want to share one of my favorite scenes from the original show that illustrates how Spock explains logic to an other-being.

Enjoy...

Blog posted by Steven Mintz, aka Ethics Sage, on May 31, 2013

 

Have our Schools Become Laboratories for Violence?

Fighting in Schools Has Become all too Common

Girl on girl violence; student on teacher violence; teacher on student violence. Where will it all end? It seems these incidents are increasing in number and raise serious questions about our role as a civilized society. Some of you may think I am overstating to make a point. Perhaps so. Nevertheless, those of us who grew up in the 1960s through the end of last decade rarely experienced the kinds of situations that should make all of us stand up and take notice of the decline in time devoted to academic instruction and increase in monitoring of bad behavior (of both students and teachers) in the classroom.

I have read about some troubling incidents in the classroom recently. Here are a few examples.

Stockton, CA: On April 25, 2013, a high school student was arrested after getting into a physical fight with her teacher, but the student claims the teacher was the aggressor.

Marlina Martine was playing makeup in math class when her teacher, who authorities have not named, confiscated the makeup. Martinez called her mother on her cellphone to tell the teacher to return the makeup, but the teacher confiscated the phone.

At that point, the teacher and student began shouting at each other as a student recorded the action. In the video, the teacher pushed Martinez and the two began throwing fists, eventually falling on top of each other on the floor.

The student who recorded the video then posted it to his Facebook page, where it has since gone viral. [No surprise there.]

Fort Worth, TX: On May 1, 2013, a former elementary school teacher previously charged with fondling a child was arrested for a second time after two students told authorities he sexually assaulted them.

Fifty-year-old Max Marchelli is facing charges that include aggravated sexual assault of a child. Police say two second-grade girls at Western Hills Elementary School claimed Marchelli had assaulted them. Marchelli resigned from the school district and is free on $100,000 bond.

Bronx, NY: On December 9, 2010, a beloved teacher had a miscarriage after she was hit trying to break up a fight between two students in her fifth-period Spanish class at Exploration Academy.

Here is how it went down: A student arrived five minutes late, walked up to another student who was already seated and told him to get out of his desk.

When the seated student refused, the conflict escalated and the teacher tried to intervene. She was accidentally elbowed in the stomach and fell to the ground, crying.

"I can't believe it," said another student later on. "I can't believe she lost her child over a fight over a chair."

The two students involved in the incident have been suspended.

Other NYC Fights: A few days earlier, a 49-year-old teacher was punched in the eye by a 14-year-old eighth grader at a Junior High School in East Harlem. The teacher got a black eye and was treated at a medical center. The student was arrested for assault and has been suspended.

And in a third incident, fights in the hallways of Murray Bergtraum High School in Manhattan led to the principal becoming involved and threatening to stop issuing bathroom passes if kids kept getting into fights, prompting students to organize a riot between 5th and 6th period.

One student was injured and sent to the hospital, and several others are being disciplined.

Palm Beach, FL: On December 1, 2010, a middle school boy was beaten by another student while, according to the parents, the teacher did nothing but sit by his computer while the fight raged in his classroom.

Video of the fight between Joshua Poole, 13, and his Jeaga Middle School classmate shows Poole swinging wildly as he is punched repeatedly before falling to the floor. The teacher's inaction was reportedly due to a school policy that staff can only intervene after undergoing training, according to the school district.

That type of "policy run amok" is a growing problem in schools across the country, according to Carol Kochhar-Bryant, a professor at George Washington University's Graduate School of Education and Human Development. Part of the problem is in the past there have been many instances where if the child gets injured in any way by an intervention by a teacher, the teachers have been reprimanded. "Those policies protect the school, they protect the teacher, but we are realizing now they don't protect the child in those situations."

The root cause of the school violence problem is two-fold. First, there has been a decline in ethics in society. All too many young people do not know right from wrong and what is worse, they don’t seem to care. Moreover, a lot of kids of all ages seem to think right and wrong is whatever they decide it to be. This ethical relativism approach to decision-making leads to acting out one’s aggressions rather than keeping feelings in check because such behavior is not acceptable under societal standards.

It is all too easy to blame social media for the problem. Perhaps some youngsters create mayhem to have their outburst videoed and go viral on You Tube. Maybe some even aspire to be on a reality TV show. That does not explain away the lack of parental oversight of what their kids are doing; who they are doing it with; and why.

I sometimes think parents find it easier not to care; not to discipline their kids. They don’t want to argue with their kids on what they can (should) and cannot (should not) do. It’s easier to let the kids decide what is in their best interests even though all too often those same kids fail to consider the interests of others and how their actions may affect others before deciding how to behave. As the old expression goes, this is like allowing the inmates to run the asylum.

Blog posted by Steven Mintz, aka Ethics Sage, on May 14, 2013

Space Crooner Chris Hadfield Returns to Earth

A True Space Oddity and Inspiration to ALL -- Chris Hadfield

Astronaut Chris Hadfield, the first Canadian to command the International Space Station, is preparing to make the return voyage to Earth after almost five months in orbit.

Hadfield, along with flight engineers American Tom Marshburn and Russian Roman Romanenko, have boarded a Soyuz spacecraft for the journey home. It marks the first time Hadfield will come back from space in the Russian capsule — during his previous space missions, in 1995 and 2001, he travelled aboard one of the now retired space shuttles.

"Reviewing Soyuz procedures onboard, but I wanted to thank every person at the Cdn Space Agency," Hadfield tweeted earlier today. "Your work takes Canada into orbit. Be proud."

NASA mission control relayed that hatches between the capsule and the space station were reported closed at 3:50 p.m. ET. The capsule is now on autonomous power as the astronauts work their way through a pre-departure checklist.

Bob McDonald, the host of CBC Radio's Quirks & Quarks, said the astronauts and ground control will verify that everything in the capsule and space station is airtight.

'They have to make sure all systems are tight and clear before they actually let go of the space station," he said.

At 7:08 p.m. ET -- right about the time I am posting this blog -- the Soyuz will undock from the space station.

During his time aboard the International Space Station, Hadfield has been a popular Internet figure, doing a lot on social media channels and YouTube to promote space science. From chatting on the phone with William Shatner  to posting breathtaking photos of Earth to his Twitter and Tumblr pages to explaining why you can't cry in space, Hadfield has been a constant expression of the sheer joy of being in outer space.

Hadfield is an inspiration to all of us who can only dream of going to space. Whats more he produced this poignant cover version of David Bowie’s Space Oddity. He recorded the vocals and guitar while on board the International Space Station. Piano and other musical accompaniment were provided by folks down on Earth. The video itself is gorgeous, featuring some amazing shots of Earth through the windows of the space station as Hadfield sings Bowie’s famous tune.

ENJOY!

 

 

Blog posted by Steven Mintz, aka Ethics Sage, on May 13, 2013

ACLU Sues the State of California for Failing to Teach 20,000 Students English

Who is at Fault for Students’ Failure to Learn English in California Schools?

I was surprised to learn on April 25, that the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) filed a lawsuit against the State of California for failing to correctly teach the English language. The lawsuit was filed by the ACLU on behalf of 20,000 students. The lawsuit is seeking a court order to ensure that students receive the courses they need to learn English, as many have been given low grades and are frequently being held back due to a language barrier.

Earlier this year, state officials said 98% of the state's 1.4 million English learners were receiving services. The number of students in the "2012 Cohort Graduation and Dropout Rates" is staggering.

 

 

State Department of Education statistics show 23.7 percent of English learners in the class of 2012 dropped out between 9th and 12th grade. State Department of Education statistics show 23.7 percent of English learners in the class of 2012 dropped out between 9th and 12th grade.

ACLU attorney Mark Rosenbaum said: “These kids are not getting the differentiated learning they’re supposed to be getting. English learners are falling behind without proper language lessons, even as school districts collect federal funds specifically for that purpose. Under state and federal law, schools are required to teach non-English speakers the language, but by its own records, the state isn’t offering English instruction to nearly 20,000 students.”

The suit, filed in Los Angeles County Superior Court, accuses state education leaders of violating section 300 of the California Education Code, which states, in part, “The government and the public schools of California have a moral obligation and a constitutional duty to provide all of California’s children, regardless of their ethnicity or national origins, with the skills necessary to become productive members of our society, and of these skills, literacy in the English language is among the most important.”

Advocates of the lawsuits base their conclusions on information that school districts report to the state Department of Education. About 250 districts acknowledge they are providing no services or inappropriate language help to these students. One example is that of F.S., a student in the Compton Unified School District who was allegedly denied language help in third grade, failed most of his classes, and ultimately was retained. The next year, the same student, in the same school system, received help and showed sufficient progress in his classes to move on with his education.

Although federal and state funds are set aside to help English learners, the best approach has long been a topic of contention. It's more common for English-speaking teachers to receive training in how to make their lessons more accessible. And students can also receive support in classes taught in English.

For their part, state officials insist they are meeting their legal obligations and not shirking their responsibilities. The education department is "determined to ensure that all English-learner students receive appropriate instruction and services," said Chief Deputy Supt. of Public Instruction Richard Zeiger.

"When questions arose," he added, the department "asked local educational agencies to provide additional information regarding the services they are required to provide." Zeiger also urged parents with specific issues to contact the department though its established complaint process.

It seems to me the education department is being reactive rather than proactive. The department waits for a problem or complaint to occur and then responds to the matter. This is different from making sure the English language instruction and use of technology for English language students is provided on a timely basis. If those with inadequate English language skills don't learn them before going to college, there is no doubt they will suffer throughout their college education. I have seen it first hand as a college professor.

The sad part for California is that its education budget has been cut for about five straight years. California’s K-12 public schools have been cut by over $18 Billion, or roughly $3,051 per student during the 2009-2012 periods. Over 30,000 educators and 10,000 other school employees have lost their jobs during that same time. Class sizes are increasing; music, art and sports programs being eliminated; and computer labs, libraries and schools are being shut down.

According to a study Winners and Losers: Corrections and Higher Education in California, since 1980, higher education spending has decreased by 13 percent in inflation adjusted dollars, whereas spending on California's prisons and associated correctional programs has skyrocketed by 436 percent. The state now shells out more money from its general fund for the prison system than the higher education system.

These statistics are alarming. Unfortunately, they are likely to get worse before they get better. The causes of the problem are many, and that is a subject for another blog. If I can identify one factor that leads to the lagging English language skills and burgeoning prison population it is the breakdown in the family unit. All too many kids grow up in one-parent families with the result that responsibility and accountability are not adequately taught. All too many parents do not spend the time to teach their kids -- not only learning and technical skills but a work ethic.

Nothing will change in California until parents, guardians, and the kids themselves start to focus on learning, working hard, bettering themselves, and contributing to society. As for parents, what ever happened to the mantra of generations that we want our kids to have a better life than we had growing up?

Blog posted by Steven Mintz, aka Ethics Sage, on May 9, 2011

Jason Collins Comes Out

What will be the Effect of Collins’ Announcement that he is Gay?

By now you have probably heard that Jason Collins, a professional basketball player in the NBA, probably changed the face of the ‘Association’ for years to come. With twelve words Collins made it acceptable for gay athletes to reveal their sexual preference. There were others before him including Martina Navratilova, the great women’s tennis star, but no athlete has “come out” while active in any of the major team sports in the U.S. – basketball, baseball, football and hockey.

Collins, in an exclusive interview given to Sports Illustrated (SI) stated these words: “I’m a 34-year-old NBA center. I’m black. And I’m gay.” Jason Collins, with the help of writer Franz Lidz, told the sports world two things it already knew and one that it didn’t, and in doing so has made history.

Jason Collins is not a superstar as was Magic Johnson when he publicly announced in November 1991 that he was HIV-positive. The announcement sent shock waves throughout the world of sports, in the U.S., and in countries far and wide. Many wondered how the sports world would react to the news. Back then many of us were ignorant about the virus, how it was transmitted, and the possible effects on others who came in contact with someone who was HIV-positive.

To understand how far we have come as a nation – evolved as a society – we need to examine the reaction to Magic’s announcement by the public and compare it to, thankfully, the world-wide acceptance of Collins’s announcement.

The day after his announcement, Johnson appeared on the late-night talk show of his friend, Arsenio Hall. There, he adamantly denied rumors that he was gay. The crowd cheered wildly, as if Johnson had just won another championship, or announced he’d been cured. What a difference twelve years makes, and with twelve short words Jason Collins has shown us our progress as a civilized nation.

Collins has bounced around the NBA for twelve years (there’s that ‘magic’ number again). He just finished the season playing for the Washington Wizards after being traded by the Boston Celtics. He is a free agent this summer, and is nearing the end of his years in the league, but he says he hopes to get picked up by another team next season. If he does, he may be the only openly gay player, but as he notes at the end of the SI piece, he will surely not be the only gay player: “Pro basketball is a family. And pretty much every family I know has a brother, sister or cousin who’s gay. In the brotherhood of the NBA, I just happen to be the one who’s out.”

The NBA league office issued a classy statement after the story broke in Sports Illustrated. The league offered a statement on its official Twitter account: “We have known the Collins family since Jason and Jarron (Jason’s brother) joined the NBA in 2001 and they have been exemplary members of the NBA family. Jason has been a widely respected player and teammate throughout his career and we are proud he has assumed the leadership mantle on this very important issue.” The series of tweets ends with the hashtag #NBAFamily.

As recently as 2007, the sports world, at least one member of it, reacted to a gay athlete coming out in an entirely different way. When the basketball center John Amaechi came out in 2007, three years after he had retired from the NBA, the former All-Star Tim Hardaway said, “First of all, I wouldn’t want him on my team. Second of all, if he was on my team I would really distance myself from him because I don’t think that’s right and I don’t think he should be in the locker room when we’re in the locker room.” Hardaway later apologized, and it is hard to imagine such comments being made or finding much public support today, but they surely hung over Collins’s announcement—and will continue to do so for other male athletes that follow his footsteps.

Gender matters as well. On Wednesday, April 17, Baylor University women’s basketball superstar, Brittney Griner, one of the best female basketball players on the planet, came out of the closet and few people even shrugged at the announcement.  Even though Griner’s announcement received relatively little press, her story is no less one of courage and pride. She is at the pinnacle of her sport; she was just selected No. 1 in the W.N.B.A. draft, and signed a high-profile endorsement deal with Nike. If Collins is a hero, then so is Brittney Griner.

For years I’ve blogged about the lack of role models in society including the sports world. Sports fans have been given two major jolts about their heroes the past few years. In baseball, the two biggest superstars of their era – Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens – allegedly used steroids. Regardless if they are or ever will be found guilty of the charges, most everyone knows they did use the performance enhancing drugs (PEDs). Then we have the devastating case of Lance Armstrong who duped the public for many years while using PEDs; denying the charges’ claiming he was the victim of a vendetta against him; and otherwise lying over and over again about the truth of the matter.

So we finally have heroes to look up to. Not because of their statistics. Not because of their athletic talent. But because of their selfless act of admitting being gay and the classy way they handled the announcement. Kudos to Jason and Brittney for showing all of us what it means to have integrity and be a role model for all youth – not just the LGBT community.

Blog posted by Steven Mintz, aka Ethics Sage, on May 2, 2013

Is stepping on a Sheet of Paper with the name Jesus an Expression of Academic Freedom?

Academic Freedom, Religious Beliefs, and Civility in the Classroom

Recently, I read about a self-proclaimed Christian instructor at Florida Atlantic University, Deandre Poole, who asked his students to write "Jesus" on a piece of paper and "Stomp on it."

The exercise was from a textbook manual and was designed to teach that "even though symbols are arbitrary, they take on very strong and emotional meanings." The instructor indicated that he would not have stepped on the paper if he had been asked.

I’ve been teaching at the university level for more than thirty years and have rarely heard of such a stupid and disrespectful exercise. I can’t figure out the point of the exercise.

Let’s assume one-half of the class stepped on the paper. So what? What does this indicate to the professor with respect to the academic learning experience? Does it mean those students believe anything goes in a college classroom in the name of freedom to inquire? Does it mean one-half of the students are not afraid of the instructor’s response to his exercise? Does it mean one-half of the students are anti-Jesus and his teachings?

It seems to me an intellectual discussion of what Jesus has meant to a large portion of the population of the world makes more sense. The instructor could have asked probing questions such as if Jesus is the son of God how could he allow what happened at the Boston Marathon or at Newton and so many other tragedies in our recent past? Is this a valid question to ask from an ethical point of view? If so, why is it proper to explore the ethical dimensions of horrific acts and our faith in a higher being? If not, what is the appropriate frame of reference for the discussion on a philosophical basis?

Ryan Rotela, a devout Mormon, refused, telling the professor, "With all due respect to your authority as a professor, I do not believe what you told us to do was appropriate.  I believe it was unprofessional and I was deeply offended by what you told me to do."

Rotela was suspended from class.  The university initially defended the professor, citing the lesson was intended to encourage a multi-faceted viewpoint and debate. Subsequently, the professor was put on administrative leave pending an investigation by the university.

Fay Voshell who holds a Masters of Divinity from Princeton Theological Seminary, reminds us that stomping on Jesus touches a sore nerve. Beginning in 1626, Japenese Christians were forced to stomp or spit on an image of Christ or Mary. The images, named fumie, became a means of identifying Christians and a method of forcing them to repudiate their faith.  Stomping on Jesus or Mary also became a prelude to torture and universal persecution.  One torture involved cutting off three fingers from each hand, leaving only the little finger and thumb.  Children as young as five were subjected to this mutilation. The idea was that Christians were worse than animals and therefore entitled to fewer digits than the beasts. 

Generally, however, if believers refused to stomp their feet on the fumie, they and their families were put to death by drowning or being burnt alive.  Some of the faithful were not up to martyrdom and went into hiding, utilizing special prayers asking forgiveness if they had capitulated to the Japanese government's demands they renounce their faith.  For the next 250 years, the persecution of Japanese Christians was so intense they were nearly all exterminated, along with the symbols of the faith.  To this day, the number of Christians in Japan remains very low.

The attempts to exterminate Christians and the images of their faith have a long and bloody history, and certainly have not been confined to pre-modern Japan. While persecution has remained a constant of Christian history since the time of Jesus and the apostles, iconoclasm, the concerted attempt to rid a given civilization of Christian religious images, has been a recurrent issue, especially during the eighth and ninth centuries. During that time period, imperial legislation of Byzantium attempted to bar the use of figural images.  Existing icons were destroyed by those who had a theory that sacred images were "graven images," and therefore idolatrous. 

The Florida Atlantic faculty is currently suggesting that the administration's handling of the situation has compromised the instructor's academic freedom. The question is where does academic freedom start and end and when does civility enter the classroom experience. I don’t think academic freedom is a license to experiment with tasteless and historically offensive actions. 

A healthy classroom engages students in a rich debate of ideas. It should not encourage students to perform symbolic gestures that ridicule the beliefs of others. Poole should apologize for his lack of civility and then continue his task of educating and enlightening his students.

Blog posted by Steven Mintz, aka Ethics sage, on April 26, 2013

'Black Jails' in China

Human Rights Challenges in China

Black Jails in China are a network of extralegal detention centers established by Chinese security forces across the People's Republic of China in recent years. They are used mainly to detain, without trial, petitioners, who travel to seek redress for grievances unresolved at the local level.

Black jails have no official or legal status, differentiating them from detention centers, the criminal arrest process, or formal sentencing to jail or labor camps. They are in wide use in Beijing, in particular, and serve as holding locations for the many petitioners who travel to the central Office of Letters and Calls to petition.

The jails were introduced to replace the Custody and Repatriation system after it was abolished in 2003 following the notorious Sun Zhigang incident.

Sun Zhigang, an employee at the Guangzhou Daqi Garment Company from Wuhan, capital city of Central China's Hubei Province, was beaten to death by eight patients at a penitentiary hospital just hours after being arrested as a vagrant for not carrying ID.

Qiao Yanqin, an employee of the hospital and the principal culprit, was given the death sentence for planning and organizing the beating.

Sun's case has triggered a major debate on the validity of the holding system and the two-decade-old Measures for Internment and Deportation of Urban Vagrants and Beggars.

The holding measures, an administrative regulation issued by the State Council in 1982, are currently the legal basis for internment and deportation by public security authorities.

The measures require urban vagrants and beggars to be housed and deported to their hometown and urge the local governments to make proper arrangements for them.

I was shocked to first discover these ‘black jails’ and that detaining citizens trying to take their local grievances to the central government is a long-practiced policy. It smacks of the remnants of Communist China and has no place in the “new China” that still lacks basic human rights.

The good news is the Chinese government may finally be coming to grips with the abusive practice. On February 5, 2013, a Beijing court sentenced 10 men to prison for illegally detaining petitioners and ordered them to pay compensation to their victims. The men, all farmers from the city of Yuzhou in central China’s Henan province, were given sentences ranging from six months to two years for intercepting and imprisoning a group of people, also from Henan, who had hoped to lodge complaints with the central government, according to the official Xinhua news agency. Three of the 10 were minors and therefore had their sentences commuted.

The court also determined that 10 of the 11 illegally detained petitioners were entitled to between 1,300 and 2,400 yuan ($208 to $385) each in lost wages, transportation and other costs, according to the news agency.

Officially, Beijing welcomes petitioners. Unofficially, according to human rights groups, it puts immense pressure on local governments to keep petitioners from getting to or staying in the city. In order to comply, local governments dispatch teams of thugs — sometimes referred to as “interceptors” — to round up Beijing-bound trouble-makers and store them in ad hoc black jails until they can be transported home, where they’re often punished or threatened.

There are additional encouraging signs that the Chinese government is serious about improving human rights. China will begin to separate suspects arrested for minor offenses from violent criminals as part of a series of proposed reforms to its detention system recently announced.The system has been under fire for months, following a series of at least 15 suspicious deaths in China's extensive system of prisons and jails this year.

It has also said it will stop handing down labor camp sentences this year under a system that allows police to lock up petitioners, government critics and others for up to four years without a trial, although details are still unclear.

China has been evolving from a purely communist to state-run capitalist society. In fairness, we should remember that the government has made significant progress during the past thirty-plus years since the death of Mae Zedong.  After Mao's death in 1976, forces within the party that opposed the Cultural Revolution, led by Deng Xiaoping, gained prominence, and most of the political, economic, and educational reforms associated with the Cultural Revolution and its excesses were abandoned by 1978.

We can only hope China continues to evolve on a human rights level while recognizing it has a long way to go to develop the systems to treat all citizens fairly and with respect. After all, it didn’t happen in the U.S. without years of struggle and abuse. Let’s hope recent steps are for real and that China is attempting to achieve the goal of freedom for all its citizens.

Blog posted by Steven Mintz, aka Ethics Sage, on April 22, 2013

Rape, Suicide and Cyber-bullying

Social-Media, Cyber-bullying, and Suicide Becoming all too Common in Society

Perhaps you’ve read the story of fifteen-year-old Audrie Pott who passed out drunk at a friend's house, woke up and concluded she had been sexually abused.

In the days that followed, she was shocked to see an explicit photo of herself circulating among her classmates along with emails and text messages about the episode. And she was horrified to discover that her attackers were three of her friends, her family's lawyer says.

Eight days after the party, she hanged herself.

"She pieced together with emails and texts who had done this to her. They were her friends. Her friends!" said family attorney Robert Allard. "That was the worst" Sheriff's officials arrested three 16-year-old boys on suspicion of sexual battery against Audrie,

Cynics might claim that Audrie is at fault as well. After all, she had been drinking at a sleepover at a friend's house, passed out and "woke up to the worst nightmare imaginable." She knew she had been assaulted. However, blaming the victim because she got drunk is not a defense to sexual assault. In fact, a good person, an ethical person, would take extra measures in such situations to take extra care of the inebriated party.

Audrie’s tragedy is becoming all too common in society. Two additional episodes were recently in the news — a suicide in Canada and a rape in Steubenville, Ohio.

In Canada, police recently received new information and are reopening their investigation in the case of 17-year-old suicide victim Rehtaeh Parsons. Parsons was photographed while being sexually assaulted in 2011 and was then bullied after the photo was shared on the Web.

In Steubenville, Ohio, two high school football players were convicted last month of raping a drunken 16-year-old girl in a crime that was recorded on cellphones by students and gossiped about online. The victim herself realized she had been attacked after seeing text messages, a photo of herself naked and a video that mocked her.

These cases underscore the ethical blindness and mean-spirited actions of some young people who use social media to bully and harass others in the most vicious of ways. To say they are cowards; to say they are without conscience; to say they are despicable are understatements.

A disturbing trend in society is the lack of ethics and personal responsibility of young people. Are these the future leaders in America? If so, we are all in trouble. The question is what can we do about it?

We need a change in the culture of society that uses the anonymity of the Internet and social media postings to mock others and strip away their dignity. It often starts with offensive postings and can lead to videotaping the event that goes viral.

The message to schools is that inaction, or an improper response, is not enough when it comes to dealing with bullies.  Schools need to be proactive in preventing bullying from getting out of control.  It is one thing to have a policy in place prohibiting bullying.  It is more important for schools to actively enforce it and take additional steps to foster a positive climate in which bullying of all kinds is not tolerated  by staff or students. 

Likewise, the ethical standards of our schools need to catch up with the technology. First, teachers and staff need to be sensitized to the signs of cyber-bullying, how to respond to such incidents, and the reporting mechanisms within the school/school district. Just as sexual harassment training has helped to inform men and women in the workplace of  the danger signs of sexual harassment and how it harms others, we need a similar approach to educate youngsters, teachers and staff to the equally egregious offense of cyber bullying.

Students must be taught an Internet ethic just as they should be taught societal ethics in the classroom. Given the amount of time most teenagers spend online each day, accountability and personal responsibility must become part of each school's response to cyber-bullying. There should be zero tolerance for such activities with suspension and ultimately expulsion the penalties for harassing another student in cyberspace. I ask: “Where is the moral outrage? Do we have to wait until a horrific event such as a mass suicide occurs before passing legislation making cyber-bullying a federal crime as are discrimination and sexual harassment?”

Blog posted by Steven Mintz, aka Ethics Sage, on April 19, 2013

Cyber-Bullying in Sports

Canadian Tennis Star Suspends Her Career Due to Cyber-bullying

Imagine being ranked # 38 by the WTA and being named the Female Player of the Year by Tennis Canada two times, in 2010 and 2011, and then deciding to quit tennis because of cyber-bullying. This is the case of Rebecca Marino. The former Canadian tennis player suffers from depression and has been bullied about it on social media.

Marino had a big serve and a monster forehand. She had gone toe-to-toe with the great Venus Williams under the lights at the U.S. Open and appeared to be a bright a prospect. But after losing at Wimbledon in 2011, she announced that she was taking an indefinite leave, citing the scourge of depression after talking openly about the cyber-bullying and abuse she absorbed.

Within a year after that Wimbledon defeat, she had vanished from the women’s tour altogether. She tried to return last year, and even played in the Australian Open in January, but tumbled to No. 418 in the world.

“I have been suffering from a form of depression for many years,” she said. “Depression is nothing to be ashamed about. I’m hoping by opening up about this, I can encourage someone to get the help they deserve.”

In February 2013, she spoke of her past problems with social media to the New York Times. Internet criticism — including nasty Twitter messages from people who lost money after betting on her matches — was sometimes overwhelming. She said those people told her to burn in hell or to die.

“You know, there’s that saying ‘Sticks and stones may break my bones, but names will never hurt me.’ But that’s not true. Names definitely hurt. Words hurt," she told the newspaper.

She responded to taunts on Twitter about her weight, saying she was happy with her body. But the constant berating caused her to abruptly close down her Twitter and Facebook accounts, and then announcing she would stop playing. “Social media has been taking its toll on me,” she acknowledged.

Among the many sad aspects of this story is the real issues people face fighting depression. To be bullied on top of it can be debilitating and soul-destroying, as it clearly has been for Marino.

Marino has a great deal of inner-strength to have dealt with the problem while trying to move up in the WTA standings. One thing I know is she deserves better. She has strength for dealing with the depression openly and living with the taunting until it became too much.

Cyber-bullying is at epidemic proportions especially of school-age kids. I have blogged before about the use of social media to bully others. It is cowardly and violates just about every ethical standard there is, in particular being disrespectful, mean-spirited, and lacking in empathy.

Marino has not ruled out returning to tennis and I hope should does. A talent like hers should not be discarded because of bullying or for any other reason than it is time to retire. The tennis world is weaker as a result of what happened to her. Let’s wish all the best and to have a long and fulfilling life.

Blog posted by Steven Mintz aka Ethics Sage on April 8, 2013

Ban on Large Sugary Drinks: Personal Liberty vs. Personal Responsibility Issues

New York State Supreme Court Overturns Ban on Sugary Drinks

I have previously blogged about the New York City law that banned sugary drinks greater than 16-ounces because of health concerns including the increased risk of diabetes and heart disease among youngsters. The law created a major controversy about how far the government can (or should) go in protecting what might be perceived to be the public (health) interest by banning the sale of an unhealthy product. The issue has become even more controversial because on March 11 2013, New York State Supreme Court Justice Milton A. Tingling decided in New York Statewide Coalition of Hispanic Chambers of Commerce v. New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, to enjoin New York City’s controversial ban on the sale of large sugary beverages.

Justice Tingle noted among other things that the Department had cited the “enormous toll” that obesity places on the “economic health” of New Yorkers. To Justice Tingle any regard for the economic consequences of obesity demonstrated that the Department based its regulation “on economic and political concerns” outside the scope of its authority. Thus the very fact that the Department considered the economic consequences of the issue it addressed, a consideration that most people would claim is a critical component of sound regulatory policy, helped to doom the ban on large sodas.

Without arguing the legal issues I want to look at some of the health consequences of over-indulging in the sugary drinks and personal liberty versus personal responsibility concerns.

A recent study by Harvard University found that two out of three adults and one out of three children in the United States are overweight or obese, and the nation spends an estimated $190 billion a year treating obesity-related health conditions. Rising consumption of sugary drinks has been a major contributor to the obesity epidemic. A typical 20-ounce soda contains 15 to 18 teaspoons of sugar and upwards of 240 calories. A 64-ounce fountain cola drink could have up to 700 calories.

Sugary drink portion sizes have risen dramatically over the past 40 years, and children and adults are drinking more soft drinks than ever. Before the 1950s, standard soft-drink bottles were 6.5 ounces. In the 1950s, soft-drink makers introduced larger sizes, including the 12-ounce can, which became widely available in 1960. By the early 1990s, 20-ounce plastic bottles became the norm. Today, contour-shaped plastic bottles are available in even larger sizes, such as the 1.25-liter (42-ounce) bottle introduced in 2011.

[What’s next – a 10-liter “big gulp” at 7-11? Where does it all end?]

Here are some more facts:

• In the 1970s, sugary drinks made up about 4% of US daily calorie intake; by 2001, that had risen to about 9%.

• Children and youth in the US averaged 224 calories per day from sugary beverages in 1999 to 2004—nearly 11% of their daily calorie intake. From 1989 to 2008, calories from sugary beverages increased by 60% in children ages 6 to 11, from 130 to 209 calories per day, and the percentage of children consuming them rose from 79% to 91%.

• On any given day, half the people in the U.S. consume sugary drinks; 1 in 4 get at least 200 calories from such drinks; and 5% get at least 567 calories—equivalent to four cans of soda. Sugary drinks (soda, energy, sports drinks) are the top calorie source in teens’ diets (226 calories per day), beating out pizza (213 calories per day).

• A 20-year study on 120,000 men and women found that people who increased their sugary drink consumption by one 12-ounce serving per day gained more weight over time—on average, an extra pound every 4 years—than people who did not change their intake. Other studies have found a significant link between sugary drink consumption and weight gain in children. One study found that for each additional 12-ounce soda children consumed each day, the odds of becoming obese increased by 60% during 1½ years of follow-up.

• People who consume sugary drinks regularly—1 to 2 cans a day or more—have a 26% greater risk of developing type 2 diabetes than people who rarely have such drinks.

• A study that followed 40,000 men for two decades found that those who averaged one can of a sugary beverage per day had a 20% higher risk of having a heart attack or dying from a heart attack than men who rarely consumed sugary drinks. A related study in women found a similar sugary beverage–heart disease link.

• A 22-year study of 80,000 women found that those who consumed a can a day of sugary drink had a 75% higher risk of gout than women who rarely had such drinks. Researchers found a similarly-elevated risk in men.

Before going on let me raise the question whether we should blame the soft drink industry for their irresponsibility in selling increasingly larger sizes of drinks without regard to the health effects? Do they have an ethical obligation to consider the health effects? Where does corporate responsibility end and personal responsibility begin?

If those who consume the soft drinks pay no heed to these fairly well-known facts by now, why should we care if they shorten their lives through consumption of unhealthy drinks? Isn’t this an affront to personal liberty? Where does it all end? Why not ban fast food over certain calorie limits?

Some will say that banning soft drinks over 16-ounces won’t stop the consumption of large sugary drinks. Those who want to drink it will find a way to do so. The alcohol prohibition ban from 1920 to 1933 didn’t stop alcohol consumption. Has the illegality of marijuana affected the level of smoking? I think not.

This does not mean we shouldn’t ban a harmful practice simply because those who are abusers will find a way to still behave in a reckless manner.

The debate over banning sugary drinks over 16-ounces reminds me of the debate over gun control. Critics claim that banning certain weapons won’t stop criminals from getting their hands on such weapons; it will only stop those who want to protect home and property from violent people who would do them harm. Still, don’t we have an ethical obligation, and an obligation to all those who died from violent acts such as in Aurora Colorado, and in Newtown, to do something; act in some way; make an effort to stem the tide of rising violence?

These are difficult issues because increasingly in our society people, especially young people, feel entitled to do whatever they want; say whatever they want; act in any (often times ridiculous and offense) way that they want. As I have blogged about before, we have an entitlement society. Frankly, I blame the parents of today’s youngsters for the problem. All too many gave their kids whatever they wanted without holding them responsible or accountable for their actions.

So, I believe the answer lies in education in our schools about the dangers of unhealthy eating practices similar to unhealthy sexual practices and other behaviors. It may not work but we have to try and our schools should provide a laboratory to influence behavior in a positive manner whether it is by teaching about ethics or about dangerous and harmful habits that can end one’s life before it is time.

Blog posted by Steven Mintz, aka Ethics Sage, on April 5, 2013

 

Entitlement Ethics

Making Sense of our Entitlement Society

The one issue that divides us as a nation more than any other is “entitlement ethics.” Entitlement theory comes from the Theory of Justice. Here, I discuss the theory as espoused by two philosophers – John Rawls and Robert Nozick – and evaluate it against the Moral Theory of Rights put forth by Immanuel Kant. The issue of whom in society is entitled to the resources produced by others and how much of it lies at the foundation of the divide. An important point is there is no one right or wrong point of view. More important, there are practical limitations on those resources that must be considered in making the arguments.

Theory of Justice: Just Distribution of Resources

Rawls argues that the state should have whatever powers are necessary to ensure that those citizens who are least well-off are as well-off as they can be (though these powers must be consistent with a variety of basic rights and freedoms). This viewpoint is derived from Rawls’s theory of justice, one principle of which is that an unequal distribution of wealth and income is acceptable only if those at the bottom are better off than they would be under any other distribution. Hence we have the viewpoint to tax the rich and transfer resources to the least well off amongst us. This view of Justice Theory would justify the reallocation of resources in society.

Entitlement Theory of Justice

Nozick, on the other hand, responds to such arguments by claiming that they rest on a false conception of distributive justice: they wrongly define a just distribution in terms of the pattern it exhibits at a given time (e.g., an equal distribution or a distribution that is unequal to a certain extent) or in terms of the historical circumstances surrounding its development (e.g., those
who worked the hardest have more) rather than in terms of the nature of the transactions through which the distribution came about. For Nozick, any distribution of “holdings,” as he calls them, no matter how unequal, is just if (and only if) it arises from a just distribution through legitimate means.

One legitimate means is the appropriation of something that is unowned in circumstances where the acquisition would not disadvantage others (i.e., taxing the rich at, say, 50% would not disadvantage them – a popular notion espoused by the liberal point of view). A second means is the voluntary transfer of ownership of holdings to someone else (i.e., the Warren Buffett’s of the world
choose voluntarily to share their wealth with others less fortunate). A third means is the rectification of past injustices in the acquisition or transfer of holdings (i.e., those harmed by wrongful acts in the past deserve an increased distribution of resources). According to Nozick, anyone who acquired what he has through these means is morally entitled to it. Thus the “entitlement” theory of justice states that the distribution of holdings in a society is just if (and only if) everyone in that society is entitled to what he has. Ah, but there is the rub: Who is entitled to what?

Theory of Moral Rights

So, the key becomes how to define “entitlement.” In this regard we can turn to the theory of “moral rights.” Rights theory provides that human beings have certain fundamental rights that should be respected in all decisions: the right to free consent, privacy, freedom of conscience, free speech, and due process. A right is a capacity, a possession, or condition of existence that entitles either an individual or a group to enjoy some object or state of being. For example, the right to free speech is a condition of existence that entitles one to express one's thoughts as one chooses.

The moral force of a right depends on its strength in relation to other moral considerations applicable to the context in question. According to rights theory, as long as the distribution of wealth in society is achieved through fair acquisition and exchange, the distribution is a just one
regardless of any degree of inequalities that may ensue. The morally correct action is the one that a person has the moral right to do, that does not infringe on the moral rights of others, and that furthers the moral rights of others.

People who rely on rights theory to reason their actions emphasize the entitlement of individuals. Restrictions on behavior should prevent harm to others, but unless your actions harm others, you should be free to do as you please.

My discussion is, of course, a simplification of the theories made necessary by the limitations of blogging. Bringing it home in today’s terms, an entitlement is a guarantee of access to benefits 
based on established rights or by legislation. A "right" is itself an entitlement associated with a moral or social principle, such that an "entitlement" is a provision made in accordance with legal framework of a society. Typically, entitlements are laws based on concepts of principle 
("rights") which are themselves based in concepts of social equality or enfranchisement.

Individual Entitlements

In a casual sense, the term "entitlement" refers to a notion or belief that one is deserving of some particular reward or benefit—if given without deeper legal or principled cause, the term is often given with pejorative connotation (e.g. a "sense of entitlement").

In the past election Mitt Romney claimed that 47% of Americans "are dependent upon government.” That sounds about right. According to the Center on Budget & Policy Priorities, the percentage of the federal budget devoted to aid to others is about 54 percent: 20% social security; 21 percent Medicare/Medicaid/Children’s Health Programs; and 13% for “safety net” programs including programs that provide cash payments to eligible individuals or households, including Supplemental Security Income for the elderly or disabled poor and unemployment insurance; various forms of in-kind assistance for low-income families and individuals, including food stamps, school meals, low-income housing assistance, child-care assistance and various other programs.

On a practical level, we cannot sustain these levels of payments going forward given that: the numbers will increase with an aging population; poorly trained or poorly motivated young people are not competitive in today’s technology-driven economy; and the growing attitude that “I am entitled to be sustained by the government if I choose not to work because it is my basic right and the government’s duty to meet it.”

We need to distinguish between entitlement payments, including those in the supplemental security income programs, and rights-oriented payments including social security and Medicare, both of which most of us have paid into through payroll deductions throughout our working lives. Entitlement payments should be restricted to a percentage of the resources coming into the government so that if we become more prosperous as a nation i.e., GNP goes up, we can then share more with the less fortunate. The shortfall should be made up by religious institutions and private charities. As for social security and Medicare payments, these emanate from rights we have as tax-paying citizens. Oh, by the way, 47 percent of Americans pay no tax.

Blog posted by Steven Mintz, aka Ethics Sage, on March 25, 2013

Should Casey Anthony be allowed to Profit from a Book on Her Life?

Is it Wrong to Sell a Book and Profit after a not-guilty Verdict?

Perhaps you’ve heard that the trustee overseeing Casey Anthony's bankruptcy case has filed a motion to sell the rights to her story so she can pay her debts. In a motion filed last Friday in federal court in Tampa, trustee Stephen Meininger asked Judge K. Rodney May for permission to sell the "exclusive worldwide rights" of Anthony's life story.

Casey Anthony, who is now 26, was acquitted of murder in 2011 in the death her 2-year-old daughter, Caylee. Anthony has never told her side of the story, despite intense media scrutiny of the case.

During a meeting with creditors in her bankruptcy case in Tampa, Anthony said she was unemployed and hasn't received any money to tell her story. She said that she is living with friends and that those friends -- and strangers who send her gift cards and cash -- help her survive.

But Meininger, through his attorney, said he thinks that her story has value and should be auctioned off to the highest bidder.

So, the question I raise is whether it is ethically appropriate to allow Anthony to sell the rights to her story under any conditions.

First, let’s look at the basic issue of whether a criminal can profit from a crime, bearing in mind that Anthony was not convicted of murdering her daughter. If a criminal writes a book about his crimes, who gets the money? What if he sells his personal items, which may have increased in value due to his notoriety? What if he writes a book, does a TV appearance, or is interviewed for a newspaper or magazine story many years after he is released from prison? And what about O.J.? Since he wasn't convicted of any crime, could he keep the profits if he wrote a book about how he killed Nicole?

The rule isn't universal, but judges generally do try to prevent people from profiting from their own wrongs. A classic case in this respect is Riggs v. Palmer, that dates back to 1889. Palmer had poisoned his grandfather because his grandfather intended to disinherit him. Under New York inheritance statutes, Palmer was entitled to inherit all but a small portion of his grandfather's estate. The statutes required valid wills to be enforced, and provided no exception that would prevent a killer from inheriting from his victim. The validity of a will is determined at the time it is executed. When the will was executed, Palmer had done nothing wrong.

The court looked to the maxims of equity (fairness) and decided that Palmer should not be allowed to profit by his own fraud or to take advantage of his own wrong because it would be against public policy.

The Riggs court didn't come up with this idea on its own. The principle is much older and is still around today, although most states have codified it in statutes. For instance, Scott Peterson, a convicted killer, was prevented from receiving benefits under his wife's life insurance policy by California Probate Code.

Of course, earning money and keeping it are two different things. Courts have held that criminals remain liable to victims and their heirs. The cases of O.J. and Robert Blake show that a person can be acquitted of a crime but still be held civilly liable. If the victims fear that the killer will dissipate assets before they can get a judgment, they can try to get an order freezing those assets. So even in cases where criminals elude statutes meant to keep them from profiting, their victims and the victims' families can still see to it that they don't.

As for Casey Anthony, the rationale provided to allow her to sell the rights to her story is to repay huge amounts of debt. Anthony filed for bankruptcy in Florida in late January, claiming about $1,000 in assets and $792,000 in liabilities. Court papers list Anthony as unemployed, with no recent income.

Her listed debts include $500,000 for attorney fees and costs for Jose Baez, her criminal defense lawyer during the trial; $145,660 for the Orange County Sheriff's office for investigative fees and costs; $68,540 for the IRS for taxes, interest and penalties; and $61,505 for the Florida Department of Law Enforcement for court costs.

It seems to me Anthony should be allowed to sell the rights to her story so long as the proceeds are used to compensate others who have sacrificed a great deal as a result of her “crime.” A good analogy is the Ron Goldman case. OJ wrote a book based on his warped perspective called "If I Did It," which has sold more than 100,000 copies. A federal bankruptcy judge awarded rights to the book to the family of murder victim Ronald Goldman to help satisfy a $38 million wrongful death judgment against Simpson.

Just about everyone is profiting from the Casey Anthony case starting with Jose Baez, the attorney for Anthony. Baez’s book, Presumed Guilty: Casey Anthony: The Inside Story has sold over 1 million copies. By the way, Amazon reviewers give it 3 stars out of 5.

Then there is the prosecutor in the case, Jeff Ashton. His book, Imperfect Justice: Prosecuting Casey Anthony, tells the “behind-the-scenes story of the investigation, the trial, and the now-infamous verdict.” It must be well written since his book received 4 ½ stars.

Then there are those looking to profit by their "expert" insights such as Keith Ablow, a forensic psychiatrist. His book, Inside the Mind of Casey Anthony: A Psychological Portrait, aims to explain to people “as much as possible about how this little girl disappeared from the face of the earth by using psychological reasoning as a lens to explore the death of Caylee Anthony.” Sorry, Keith, but you only received 2 stars from Amazon readers and your book sounds boring, like the trial.

Finally, there is Wendy Murphy, a frequent guest on talk shows that dissect legal verdicts, who wrote Casey Anthony What REALLY Happened to Caylee and Why Truth Matters.  In this book Murphy and her co-authors answer a variety of questions about the trial and verdict including the one that all inquiring minds want to know: Is there a real "Zanny the Nanny"? This book must be a disappointment given such a compelling question because it received only 2 ½ out of 5 stars.

Now that you are up to date on the profiteers from the Anthony trial, we must ask from an ethical perspective what are the motives of those who wrote books? Was it a way to vent frustration with the trial and verdict? Or, is it a way to share one’s insights on one of the most watched criminal trials since OJ? Or, was it an attempt to profit from the misery of an innocent little girl and so many like her whose lives are taken suddenly and inexplicably? Perhaps I should write a book to explain my perspective on this issue. 

Blog posted by Steven Mintz, aka Ethics Sage, on March 22, 2013

Instagram’s Terms of Service and Privacy Issues

Ethical Issues and Instagram

Social networking websites (such as Facebook, MySpace, Google+, Twitter, and LinkedIn) have become the established norm for communication and maintaining relationships. While these websites are useful tools for exchanging information, many users are concerned that their personal details are being circulated far more widely than they would like. The growing concerns over privacy breaches have resulted in a number of class action lawsuits. In this blog I address the situation at Instagram.

Instagram is a mobile photo sharing app which allows people to add filters and effects to photos and share them easily on the Internet. Instagram was acquired by Facebook in 2012. Instagram is a free service that allows users to share their photos with friends and family. Of course, one never knows where is the photo goes once it is posted on the Internet.  

On December 17, 2012, Instagram announced several changes to its Terms of Service. The new Terms of Service suggested Instagram would be allowed to use pictures in advertisements without notifying or compensating users, and to disclose user data to Facebook and to advertisers. Instagram also proposed that the parents of minors implicitly consent to the use of their childrens' images for advertising purposes. The new Terms of Service also introduced a mandatory arbitration clause which would force users to waive their rights to file a class action lawsuit in most circumstances. The changes were to take effect on January 16, 2013 and would not apply to pictures uploaded before that date.

Many users expressed outrage. As a result, a few days later, Instagram again revised the Terms of Service announcing that it would withdraw some of the proposed changes. Instagram backed off a plan to use the names, images, and photos of users for advertising purposes by deleting language about displaying photos without compensation. However, Instagram kept language that gave it the ability to place ads in conjunction with user content, saying "we may not always identify paid services, sponsored content, or commercial communications as such.” It also kept the mandatory arbitration clause.

Instagram's new terms include a clause asserting that users under the age of 18 imply by their agreement that a parent or legal guardian has also read and agreed to the terms. The word “imply” is key. These days if any organization expects users under the age of 18 to follow through a guideline with ethical action…well, that organization has had its head in the sand the past few years.

The new terms require users with a legal complaint to submit to arbitration rather than sue Instagram in court, and it prohibits them from joining a class-action lawsuit under most circumstances. That didn’t go very far.

A class action lawsuit was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California on December 21, 2012 which accused Instagram of violating the property rights of its users and breaching its existing terms of service. The class action lawsuit seeks to preserve valuable and important property, statutory, and legal rights, through injunctive, declaratory and equitable relief before such claims are forever barred by adoption of Instagram’s New Terms. The lawsuit takes particular issue with Instagram’s ownership of user images, especially in the situation where a user quits the service and, according to Instagram’s Terms of Service, loses ownership of their photos to the company.

On February 13, 2013, Instagram asked the federal court to dismiss the class action lawsuit filed over changes to Instagram’s Terms of Service. Instagram argued that the plaintiff, Lucy Funes, had no right to bring her claim because she could have deleted her Instagram account before the changes in the Terms of Service went into effect on January 19, 2013. According to Instagram's filing, Ms. Funes filed the lawsuit on December 21, nearly a month before the changes in the Terms of Service went into effect and she continued to use her account after that day. Instagram also disputed Funes' claims that the new terms required her to transfer rights in her photos to the company. Furthermore, Instagram took the position that both the old service terms and the new terms "emphasize that the individual owns the content he/she posts through Instagram's service."

Numerous ethical questions arise in a case like Instagram. Here is one as food for thought:

Do social networkers have a right to privacy? More and more users of Facebook and MySpace are finding that prospective employers are perusing their sites, despite the fact that they may conceive of their online presence as personal space. Also, what is a private person’s right to control the images and information about them available on line? I will address these issues in an upcoming blog.

One final thought. I went to the Instagram website and read its short version of its Community Guidelines. That pretty much told me all I needed to know. When an online photo-sharing service has to tell its members “to keep your clothes on” it implies the site has had such issues before and the users have no idea about the consequences of their actions. A word to the wise: What we do today affects who we are tomorrow.

Blog posted by Steven Mintz, aka Ethics Sage, on March 18, 2013

 

Is it Ethical to Save Four People at the Expense of One?

Lessons from the Talmud

On Tuesday I posted a blog that presented two ethical dilemmas based on the “Trolley Problem.” The Trolley Problem is a thought experiment in ethics, first introduced by Philippa Foot in 1967. Others have  also extensively analyzed the problem including Judith Jarvis Thomason, Peter Unger, and Frances Kamm  as recently as 1996. I have used these problems in my ethics class to challenge students’ moral intuition. Here are the two dilemmas once again:

Dilemma #1

Imagine that you are standing on a footbridge spanning some trolley tracks. You see that a runaway trolley is threatening to kill five people. Standing next to you, in between the oncoming trolley and the five people, is a railway worker wearing a large backpack. You quickly realize that the only way to save the people is to push the man off the bridge and onto the tracks below. The man will die, but his body will stop the trolley from reaching the others. Legal concerns aside, would it be ethical for you to save the five people by pushing this stranger to his death?

Dilemma #2

Now assume that the runaway trolley is heading for five railway workmen who will be killed if it proceeds on its present course. The only way to save these people is to hit a switch that will turn the trolley onto a side track where it will run over and kill one workman instead of five. Ignoring legal concerns, would it be ethically acceptable for you to turn the trolley by hitting the switch in order to save five people at the expense of one person?

The choice is between saving five lives at the cost of taking one life. Before I get to the “answers,” I want to explain how one researcher is using MRI technology to map brain response while analyzing the dilemma. Joshua Greene at Harvard University was more concerned to understand why we have the intuitions, so he used functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging, or fMRI, to examine what happens in people’s brains when they make these moral judgments.

Greene found that people asked to make a moral judgment about “personal” violations, like pushing the stranger off the footbridge, showed increased activity in areas of the brain associated with the emotions. This was not the case with people asked to make judgments about relatively “impersonal” violations like throwing a switch. Moreover, the minority of subjects who did consider that it would be right to push the stranger off the footbridge took longer to reach this judgment than those who said that doing so would be wrong. Interestingly results to say the least.

I received quite a few responses to my blog and selected the best one with respect to identifying the ethical issues. The response comes from Michael Belk, a frequent reader of my blog. Here it is:

#1: I do not believe it to be ethical to intentionally end someone else's life whether it is to save others or not.  I do not believe it is my moral responsibility to sacrifice one life in order that others may go on. 

You hope and pray that it is not their time and leave the results of their outcome to faith.  I would feel terrible, but if you push someone in the way to save others, you may as well say you killed a man.  I would never be able to forgive myself.

The man has a family and people who love him, so how could you explain your actions to his family.

#2. Again I do not believe you should intentionally take a life, but if your intentions were to save the other five men and you were unaware of the damage it would do to the sole man, then you acted out of goodwill and that is more admirable.

Michael’s insights are right on the money. We have no right to sacrifice the life of one person to save others. There is a saying from the Talmud, an authoritative record of rabbinic discussions on Jewish law, Jewish ethics, customs, legends and stories: “Whoever destroys a soul, it is considered as if he destroyed an entire world. And whoever saves a life, it is considered as if he saved an entire world.”

We have no right to decide who lives and who dies. Yes, if we can save one person without harming others we have a moral obligation to do so. However, to save one life while sacrificing others is an arbitrary act in many ways. What if the one sacrificed is a humanitarian, well-respected and well-known person who works tirelessly for the poor and others who can’t help themselves? What if those saved are criminals who committed murder and escaped from prison. You see the dilemma? Who are we to judge who is a good person, and be saved, and who is a bad person? We should focus on leading the best possible life we can; to serve others whether through medicine, the clergy, the law, a teacher, nurse, or first-responder.

Blog posted by Steven Mintz, aka Ethics Sage, on March 15, 2013

What would you do?

Ethical Dilemmas Challenge our Reasoning Skills

What Is Ethics?

The term ethics is derived from the Greek word ethikos which itself is derived from the Greek word ethos, meaning “custom” or “character.” In philosophy, ethical behavior is that which is “good.” The Western tradition of ethics is sometimes called moral philosophy. The field of ethics or moral philosophy involves developing, defending, and recommending concepts of right and wrong behavior. These concepts do not change as one’s desires and motivations change. They are not relative to the situation. They are immutable.

In a general sense, ethics (or moral philosophy) addresses fundamental questions such as: How should I live my life? That question leads to others such as: What sort of person should I strive to be? What values are important? What standards or principles should I live by? There are various ways to define ethics. The simplest may be to say that ethics deals with “right” and “wrong.” However, it is difficult to judge what may be right or wrong in a particular situation without some frame of reference.

Ethical Dilemmas: Are you an ethical person?

I decided to do something different today in my blog. I describe two hypothetical situations below to challenge readers to think through what the most ethical action would be? I want to give you some time to think about it, so I will post my response on Friday.

Good luck and no cheating!

Dilemma #1

Imagine that you are standing on a footbridge spanning some trolley tracks. You see that a runaway trolley is threatening to kill five people. Standing next to you, in between the oncoming trolley and the five people, is a railway worker wearing a large backpack. You quickly realize that the only way to save the people is to push the man off the bridge and onto the tracks below. The man will die, but his body will stop the trolley from reaching the others. Legal concerns aside, would it be ethical for you to save the five people by pushing this stranger to his death?

Dilemma #2

Now assume that the runaway trolley is heading for five railway workmen who will be killed if it proceeds on its present course. The only way to save these people is to hit a switch that will turn the trolley onto a side track where it will run over and kill one workmen instead of five. Ignoring legal concerns, would it be ethically acceptable for you to turn the trolley by hitting the switch in order to save five people at the expense of one person?

Blog posted by Steven Mintz, aka Ethics Sage, on March 12, 2013

STUPID IS AS STUPID DOES: THE SAGA OF THE TSA

TSA TO ALLOW WEAPONS ON PLANES: SERIOUSLY?

Forrest Gump quotes are uncomplicated, basic and true. They are almost Zen-like in their simplicity. One of the best Forrest Gump quotes is "stupid is as stupid does" which may not be poetry or very deep, but it ends up being true and a more workable metaphor for life than the movie's tag line "life is a box of chocolates". The TSA has now given us a real-life example of stupidity at its stupidest.

As you probably heard by now, federal officials said they will allow passengers to carry small knives, golf clubs, hockey sticks and pool cues into the cabins of commercial jets. The policy change, which will take effect April 25, is being made to help align the list of prohibited items on U.S. flights with those of international carriers and cut the time passengers spend going through security screening. This is an example of using the lowest common denominator to set policy.

The TSA list of prohibited items will no longer include small knives with non-locking blades less than 2.36 inches (6 centimeters) long and 1/2-inch wide. Also removed from the list will be sporting equipment such as golf clubs, billiard cues, ski poles, toy bats and hockey and lacrosse sticks.

The TSA pointed out that other security measures are already in place to protect planes, including hardened cockpit doors, armed federal air marshals, armed pilots and crew members with self-defense training. It is nice to protect planes but what about we, the passengers, who may need help fending off the crazed golfer or hockey player sitting next to us?

The TSA can’t seriously believe that no danger exists to passengers by allowing these potential weapons on planes. Where has the TSA been these past few months while mentally and emotionally-challenged individuals have shot up schools, shopping malls, committed random acts of violence, and caused pain for all too many families?

Someone at TSA should explain to the American people how a small knife is less dangerous than a box cutter. A hockey stick can do great damage. What is to stop one passenger from pulling out his or her stick or club and pounding another passenger because that person is too loud or taking up too much space?

The phrase "blunt instrument" is used to describe a type of weapon that lacks a sharp point or edge. Examples of a blunt instrument include baseball bats, canes, rocks, and hockey sticks. Congratulations TSA for letting blunt instruments on planes.

Here is some interesting information for the TSA to consider as they (hopefully) reconsider this stupid change.

• Annual FBI crime statistics show that more people are killed with clubs and hammers each year than by rifles or shotguns.
• In 2011, there were 323 murders committed with a rifle but 496 murders committed with hammers and clubs.
• Michael Skakel lost a bid for freedom on October 24, 2012, since being convicted of beating Martha Moxley to death with his golf clubs.
• Hockey sticks are routinely used in hockey games to injure opponents on the ice.

Brandon M. Macsata, executive director of the Association for Airline Passenger Rights and a critic of airport security screening procedures, said he is not sure how the change will improve security or speed the screening lines at airports. I also can’t understand how the TSA believes the new rule will speed security lines and the boarding process. What will the airlines do when they realize after only one-half of the plane has been boarded, there no longer is any bin space because people are storing what will become fold-up hockey sticks and golf clubs manufactured specifically for ease of transportation on our planes?

Some family members of victims killed in the September 11 terror attacks said they are outraged by the TSA’s decision to let passengers carry pocketknives on planes. The change is an affront to all people of goodwill and it dishonors the memory of those who died on 9/11.

To say the TSA decision seems to be a poorly thought-out decision is an understatement. TSA now stands for "TOTALLY STUPID AGENCY!"

Blog posted by Steven Mintz, aka Ethics Sage, on March 8, 2013

A Governor's Attack on Academic Freedom

Governor Brown Insensitive to the Effects of Budget Cuts and Seeks to Control Academic Decision-Making

This blog first appeared as an article on February 18, 2013 in The Chronicle of Higher Education. It challenges California Governor Jerry Brown’s recent intrusion into the process of academic freedom. Gov. Jerry Brown's 2013-14 budget for California intrudes on academic freedom in a way that could harm the 23 campuses of California State University and the 10 campuses of the University of California—but the impact of his attempt to control academic decision-making threatens every public college and university in the country.

Putting aside for the moment the fairness of Brown's proposed $250-million increase for both the CSU and UC systems, and an additional $10-million to each one to develop online courses, the governor's budget attempts to dictate how the increased funds should be spent. That is a violation of academic freedom, the bedrock of colleges and universities.

Universities exist to promote the public interest, not to further the interests of individual professors, the institution as a whole, or, in this case, the governor of California. The public interest is not served by Brown's inserting himself into education decision-making.

Academic freedom fosters an independent academic voice and encompasses the conflict-of-interest issues that might impair impartiality. This conflict is between the goals of the governor in dictating how the increased funds should be spent and the wishes of the college administrators and faculty members who should be making the educational decisions.

Several statements by Brown on his Web site are troubling. "The people in the university are going to have to find a way to do the same thing with fewer growing resources," he says. What does he think we have been doing for the past five years? While it is true that tuition increases have been excessive and unfair to the students, they have been necessary to stem the tide of canceled classes, overly crowded classrooms, and good faculty members lost to institutions that actually have increased faculty salaries during the past five years. In the California state systems, we have seen no such increases and have endured a 10-percent cut in salary during one of those years.

Brown wants to tie financial support to the universities' ability to improve graduation rates and to graduate students on time. Fair enough. But such linkage is likely to lead to a decline in standards in order to "improve graduation rates," as has been the case in the elementary- and secondary-education systems.

Moreover, doesn't the governor know that virtually all colleges and universities in the state are subject to accreditation standards by, at a minimum, the Western Association of Schools and Colleges? Professional programs undergo a more specialized accreditation process as well, such as that of AACSB International—the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business. Those organizations already look at graduation rates and the quality of programs, and are more qualified than the state to make such assessments.

The most intrusive demand by Brown is that universities expand their online courses to reduce costs and allow more students to get the classes they need to graduate. Once again the governor is placing quantity ahead of quality. Among the many questions involving online education is whether the same quality of education can be made available online as that available in the classroom.

What's more, the costs of developing and maintaining online courses may divert funds from other programs, lowering the quality of the educational experience of all students. The state spent $1.6-billion less on higher education in 2010-11 than it did 10 years earlier, according to the independent Public Policy Institute of California. While that decline is due in part to the recession since 2008 and to lower general-fund revenues, it also reflects changing state priorities. During the past 10 years, state support for higher education has fallen 9 percent, while that for corrections and rehabilitation services has increased 26 percent. Shouldn't we devote more funds to higher education, in the hope of developing skills among people who might otherwise get in trouble and wind up in our prisons?

I have taught in the California State system for 25 years, and it no longer resembles what once was among the best public-­college systems in the country. The facilities on many campuses have not been modernized, the failure to keep up with salary levels of comparable institutions has led to a brain drain, and the lack of funds has inhibited the development of programs to meet the needs of a changing world.

The irony is that faculty members have continued working as hard or harder to maintain the quality of education, despite overall declines in salaries and being asked to teach more classes with more students in technologically marginal classrooms.

State universities exist to serve the needs of young people who want to be educated and advance their position in life. They should provide a low-cost alternative to private colleges and universities, and should have faculty and staff members committed to excellence in education.

Part of the process of running a multi-campus system, such as CSU and UC, is to leave academic governance to local campuses. It does not matter whether the state universities are in California, New York, or Wisconsin—the principle is the same. Shared governance on each campus dictates that decisions should be made by the faculty and academic administrators of that campus and not by a government official.

California has the largest and most diverse state-run university systems in the country, and it often serves as a bellwether for other large state-university systems. Governor Brown is using the state's woeful budget situation to exact concessions from the University of California's chancellor and California State University's Board of Trustees, who are content to avoid further program and salary cuts in the 2013-14 academic year.

What happens in California does not necessarily stay in California, which is why faculty and staff members across the country should sit up and take notice of our governor's efforts to use a financial crisis to dictate academic policy.

Blog posted by Steven Mintz, aka Ethics Sage, on March 1, 2013

Slavery used to teach Math in NYC Schools

Slavery Examples Raise Insensitivity to new Highs (or lows)

It’s not always easy teaching fourth-graders to really get math. Word problems can be especially useful because they give children easily imagined, real-life examples that make numbers and equations come to life. Remember these from your childhood?

“If Susie had four cookies and John had two cookies and they put all their cookies on a plate, how many cookies would be on the plate?” “Jane carried six books. She gave one to Bella and two to Tom; how many books was Jane still carrying?”

Very effective but so old-school! Now we find out about the crassest way I’ve ever heard to teach math to grade students. I’m referring to the inappropriate questions asked by Jane Youn, a New York City teacher, who had asked fourth-graders to write homework questions that blended math and social studies, education officials said. Last month, the fourth-grade teacher sent pupils home with math problems that were based on slavery as submitted by the pupils themselves.

The teacher used the students' questions, including the slave-related ones, as homework for the class. Another teacher, Jacqueline Vitucci, had copied the offensive questions and was going to assign them before common sense somehow intervened.

Question 1 on the sheet, entitled “Slavery Word Problems Homework,” was written as a matter-of-fact subtraction problem. The question asked: “In a slave ship, there can be 3,799 slaves. One day, the slaves took over the ship. 1,897 are dead. How many slaves are alive?”

Another question said a slave was whipped five times a day and asked students to calculate how many times a month he was whipped. The school principal said she's "appalled" by a homework assignment that used scenarios about killing and whipping slaves to teach math. Adele Schroeter, the principal of P.S. 59, a well-thought-of elementary school that draws students from Midtown and the area around the United Nations, told the Daily News that she has ordered sensitivity training for all of the staff. The school is 60 percent white and five percent African American.

The NYC Department of Education said the situation was "obviously unacceptable." It said "appropriate disciplinary action" would be taken.

Parents of students at the school called the lesson inappropriate and offensive. "I don't understand how teachers aren't aware that would be offensive. Why aren't they aware? Why aren't they in touch? Why aren't they concerned with these issues of minorities in America nowadays?" parent Tim Tate told CBS New York. "It's a little unnerving, a little unsettling."

This issue goes beyond insensitivity into the realm of abject stupidity. The NYC Department of Education should fire the teacher, fire the principal, and send a formal apology letter to all parents and students, black or white. There is no place in our society for such an egregious offense.

The Emancipation Proclamation was issued on September 22, 1862. It has been over 150 years since the passage of that incredibly important piece of legislation in the development of our nation as a civilized society. To learn that a fourth grade teacher uses slavery to teach math is nothing short of shocking and disheartening.

As an educator I always look for ways to use inappropriate statements by students as a teaching tool. The only way the assignment could have been salvaged once students were asked to submit the questions would have been for the teacher to use the questions submitted about slavery as a teachable moment so students could learn why it is inappropriate to use such examples given the sensitivity we all share about such an application in a classroom. It could have been used as a teachable moment about choices, respect, civility and character development. The fact that it wasn’t just adds fuel to the insensitivity fire started by the NYC teacher.

What I don’t understand is the lack of coverage in the media of this travesty. I can only wonder what the uproar would have been, and rightly so, if the question had said: A concentration camp occupant was gassed five times a day and asked students to calculate how many times a month he was gassed.

Blog posted by Steven Mintz, aka Ethics Sage, on February 25, 2013

What are our Ethical Responsibilities when Witnessing a Vicious Crime?

Violent Acts threaten our Civil Society

By now you have probably heard about the vicious beating of a 22-year old in Newark, NJ. He did not report it for fear that his three tormenters would come back for more.

Police arrested 22-year old Ahmad Holt, 23 year old Jamaar Gray and 31-year old Raheem Clark. All three are charged with aggravated assault, robbery and possession of a weapon . The belt was used to whip the victim.

After he took a belt from someone else, Holt proceeded to viciously whip the man for 90 seconds while ordering him to yell the phrase "Doggy Dawg" and to tell the camera that it is a "Doggy Dawg" world. DeMaio said "Doggy Dawg" is a street name used by Holt, and said all three suspects have known gang affiliations.

In much of the video, which is too graphic to embed in this blog, police say Holt is the man who was behind the vicious beating, wildly swinging away at the victim. Gray allegedly took the video. Investigators believe Clark supplied the belt that was used in what is described as a dispute over a measly $20.

Newark Mayor Cory Booker called this vicious beating a "human tragedy" and while Newark police made three arrests, the mayor said it was "unacceptable behavior." We do not tolerate this viciousness. We do not tolerate this kind of evil in our community," Booker said.

The evil that Booker refers to spilled out for all to witness in the beating of the young man stripped of his clothes and whipped with a belt. All of it was recorded and put out on the internet, leading to a call to Newark police, and now the arrest of these three men and the discovery of a reluctant victim.

The alleged cameraman, Jamar Gray, and another man named Raheem Clark have also been charged in the crime.

This incident reminds me of the recent NYC subway death where passengers on the subway platform watched while Ki-Suck Han was pushed off a subway platform by Naeem Davis. Mr. Han was hit by the train and died while observers did nothing other than snap a shot on their cellphones all the while Mr. Han sought a way off the tracks before the oncoming train did him in. Davis was arraigned on a second-degree murder charge and held without bail in the death of Mr. Han.

Do we have an ethical responsibility to help others in need when a life may be at stake? If someone is being attacked in the streets should we intervene to help? In a civilized society the answer is “yes” to both questions.

I attribute both of these incidents to the “bystander effect,” that reflects a moral blindness ingrained in our society. Moral blindness in this sense is the inability to see the moral dimensions of a problem. This is an issue whereby our judgment is clouded by failing to see we have responsibilities to others. The universal ethical principle is: How would I want others to act [toward me] in similar situations. We would want on-lookers to help us off the tracks especially when it would have been easy to do so. Mr. Han already had his hands on the platform. The train was still a bit from the station. There appeared to be no danger to others. The attacker had already fled.

Recently in our country we witnessed 20 elementary students at Sandy Hook Elementary randomly and violently gunned down in their classroom by Adam Lanza, a 20-year-old former student at the school. The Sandy Hook killings did surpass the mass murder on April 20, 1999 at Columbine High School outside Littleton, Colorado when two , 18-year-old senior students, Eric Harris and Dyle Klebold, massacred 12 students and one teacher and injured 21 others.

Then there was a lone gunman, 22-year-old Jacob Tyler Roberts, going into an Oregon shopping mall and killing two, seriously wounding another, after getting off at least 60 rounds of ammunition. Finally, Seung-Hui Cho who killed 32 people and wounded 17 others on April 16, 2007 at Virginia Polytechnic Institute.

In virtually all of these cases the killer or killers took their own lives after the killings. In  other words they seem to have viewed the mass murders as a way to make a statement about how badly they had been treated whether it was losing a job, bullying, or some other perceived wrong-doing, and wanting to go out “with a bang.” It also appears in most, if not all cases, the killers were mentally disturbed. I don’t mean mentally disturbed because they committed such heinous crimes. That goes without saying. They were mentally disturbed with respect to having an anti-social personality disorder perhaps accompanied by depression and social anxiety.  One question is whether such mental problems could have been diagnosed in advance and treated early on.

One disturbing trend about these mass killings is they were done by teenagers and other young people who targeted children and students at our schools. Why is it occurring in our society with such frequency today? Have we gotten to the point as a nation where our goal in life is to video something that gets on You Tube? Have we become so desensitized to violence in our society that we see it as an extension of a video game, violent movie, or even realty TV? What does it mean for us as a “civilized” society down the road. How can we stop the alarming trend of gratuitous violence that has led us down the path of the killing of innocent children? These are questions I raise that need to be discussed in a national dialogue. What we need now are people of good will and leaders in the psychiatric community with the help of mental health experts to somehow begin a national dialogue supported by all aspects of society – civic leaders, business leaders, and the government – before it is too late.  

Blog posted by Steven Mintz, aka Ethics Sage on February 22, 2013

Should Students who cheated at Harvard be Rewarded or Punished?

Students Disciplined in Harvard Scandal

You may have read last week that Harvard has forced dozens of students to leave in its largest cheating scandal in memory but the institution would not address assertions that the blame rested partly with a professor and his teaching assistants. The issue is whether cheating is truly cheating when students collaborate with each other to find the right answer – in a take-home final exam.

Harvard released the results of its investigation into the controversy, in which 125 undergraduates were alleged to have cheated on an exam in May 2012. The university said more than half of the students were forced to withdraw, a penalty that typically lasts from two to four semesters. Of the remaining cases, about half were put on disciplinary probation—a strong warning that becomes part of a student's official record. The rest of the students avoided a punishment.

In previous years, students called Government 1310 an easy class with optional attendance and frequent collaboration. But students who took it last spring said that it had suddenly become quite difficult, with tests that were hard to comprehend, so they sought help from the graduate students who ran the class discussion groups and graded assignments. Those teaching fellows, they said, readily advised them on interpreting exam questions. (It seems to me the actions of the teaching assistants in prompting student understanding of test questions to prepare for the exam were a blatant violation of academic honesty).  

Administrators said that on final-exam questions, some students supplied identical answers, down to, in some cases, typographical errors, indicating that they had written them together or plagiarized them. But some students claimed that the similarities in their answers were due to sharing notes or sitting in on sessions with the same teaching fellows. The instructions on the take-home exam explicitly prohibited collaboration, but many students said they did not think that included talking with teaching fellows.  

The first page of the exam contained the instructions: "The exam is completely open book, open note, open internet, etc. However, in all other regards, this should fall under similar guidelines that apply to in-class exams. More specifically, students may not discuss the exam with others—this includes resident tutors, writing centers, etc. (Did the ‘etc.’ mean teaching fellows?).

Students complained about confusing questions on the final exam. Due to "some good questions" from students, the instructor clarified three exam questions by email before the due date of the exams.

Students who spoke to the New York Times said that collaboration was widely thought to be allowed in the course. The class’s teaching fellows—graduate students who graded the exams and ran weekly discussion sessions—varied widely in how they prepared students for the exams, so it was common for students in different sections to share lecture notes and reading materials. The course’s instructor and the teaching fellows sometimes encouraged collaboration. During the final exam, some fellows even worked with students to define unfamiliar terms and help them figure out what, exactly, certain test questions were asking.

Some have questioned whether it is the test’s design, rather than the students’ conduct, that should be criticized. This is a good point because test questions were unclear and needed to be clarified while the exam was in process. This would never occur in an in-class exam. Others place the blame on teaching assistants who opened the door to collaboration outside of class by their own behavior in helping students to better understand the questions.

The Harvard cheating scandal is not black or white from an ethical perspective. One way to evaluate it is by examining the behavior and actions of the stakeholders. The instructor is partly to blame because unclear questions had to be clarified and that would have have promoted collaboration to better understand just what the instructor’s intentions were.

For the instructor, the students’ collaborative work does make it difficult to assess individual performance—because many people’s answers sounded similar, instructors could not determine who really understood the work and who was merely free-riding. As a professor, this is why when I assign a group project I require oral presentations so I can grade individual effort.

It seems some of the cheating students engaged in rationalizations for their behavior. We hear the test was confusing; collaboration was expected in other areas; and the teaching fellows promoted the idea through their involvement in helping to interpret the questions.

I do think the students violated the rules in this case and should be held accountable for their actions. However, there were mitigating circumstances not the least of which was from the teaching assistants who seemed to work with those students who came forward asking for help to interpret information and develop responses to test questions.

Perhaps the lesson to be learned from the Harvard cheating scandal is we, in academe, need a new approach to evaluating the benefits and potential harms of collaboration. It can be a great teaching tool and mirrors collaborative effort in the workplace. Test questions in a collaborative enivornment can better assess analytical reasoning and critical thinking skills, two skills essential for success in today's workplace.

The level playing field argument is key in evaluating the use and purpose of student collaboration. Academic integrity is at stake. Collaborative effort may impair fairness in the grading process unless collaboration is expected of all students. Otherwise, those who “play by the rules” may receive lower grades because they worked individually while those who shared information may benefit from such an approach.

Blog posted by Steven Mintz, aka Ethics Sage, on February 8, 2013

Does Everyone Lie?

Are we a Culture of Liars?

In the aftermath of the Lance Armstrong fraud perpetrated on the entire world we have to question whether everyone lies. Has it become so ingrained in our national psyche that lying has become the right way to behave?

I watched the Katie Couric interview a week ago Thursday and saw Manti Te'o commit a common lie. Katie asked whether he was truthful about his relationship with Lennay Kekua and Manti responded he never lied because whenever he was asked if he had ever met her, he skirted the issue. He admits to being less than forthcoming. But, a lie by omission is still a lie.

We say it is wrong to lie our kids and claim we don’t do it ourselves, yet lying is common, used to get out of tight situations, and part of the narcissistic behavior pattern that has enveloped Americans during the past twenty years or so. It has become part of our self-esteem – who we are and what we believe in. We live in a society where deception is thought of as nothing wrong. So what if we take advantage of others so long as it advances our own self-interests.

Liars think they have good reasons to lie, or good intentions. But the people being deceived don’t necessarily feel that way. I always tell my students that lying is wrong on many levels not the least of which is you are using people for your own personal gain. It goes against the basic “Golden Rule” that we should treat others the way we want to be treated. No one wants to be lied to so why should we lie to others?

On a practical level once we begin to lie or cover-up, we begin the slide down the proverbial ethical slippery slope where one lie leads to another and we struggle to get our story straight and consistent when we are questioned about our actions. This is the classic way police detectives catch criminals. They ask them to repeat their stories many times and in different ways to respond to probing questions. It’s hard to remember the initial lie and subsequent cover-ups, but not so with truthful statements.

"People do it because it works," said Robert Feldman, dean of social and behavioral sciences at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst and a leading researcher on the psychology of lying. "We get away with lies all the time. Usually they're minor: 'I love your tie.' 'You did a great job.'

“The reality is, people lie all the time — ‘I love the report you gave,’ for instance — and tell you what you want to hear. Most of us lie, and most of us don’t get caught. If others hadn’t come forward, I’m sure Lance Armstrong still be living the lie.”

According to Feldman, Bill Clinton is a prime example of a public figure who lied to protect himself — by denying he had sexual relations with White House intern Monica Lewinsky — and later, after confessing, reclaimed some vestige of his credibility and moral standing. Clinton is now one of the country’s most admired public figures, if by no means universally beloved.

The popular television show House features a character who always tells people “everyone lies.” The statistics seem to bear this out. A variety of studies have been conducted about lying. One that was published in the Journal of Basic and Applied Social Psychology found that during a 10-minute conversation between two strangers, 60% lied at least once. Those liars told an average of two to three fibs.

According to a 2012 Gallup poll, 43 percent of Americans rate the country’s state of moral values as “poor,” and 73 percent indicate it’s getting worse. Dishonesty, deception, and integrity (or lack thereof) are part of the problem, respondents said, along with loss of religious faith and a breakdown in family structure.

Moral philosopher and author Sissela Bok, whose books include “Lying: Moral Choice in Public and Private Life,” agrees that lying is prevalent throughout this society and others, often starting with small steps and at a young age. Step by step, the lies can build to what seems like the point of no return.

From a liar’s perspective, “You’re very optimistic about not getting caught,” adds Bok. “Also, you think you have good reasons to lie, or good intentions. But the people being deceived — investors, public citizens, whoever — don’t necessarily feel that way.”

So ask yourself whether you, too, lie all the time. Do you tell people what they want to hear rather than the truth? Do you deceive by obfuscating the truth?  Do you lie by omission?

Here are five common forms of lying in serious matters:

• The potential worker who lies on his/her resume to get a job or get ahead
• The husband who says he is working late when he is having an affair
• The worker who takes long-term disability for a serious injury, only to be found puttering around the golf course
• The guy who says his car broke down because he is late for work
• The dog who ate your homework.

Lying has become endemic to our society. Perhaps the best way to deal with it is to assume whatever a person says to us when questioned about a serious matter that the opposite is true.

Blog posted by Steven Mintz, aka Ethics Sage, on February 1, 2013

Should the Monday After the Super Bowl be a Holiday?

Super Bowl Monday and Work Ethic

Perhaps you have heard there is a petition circulating to send to President Obama to make next Monday, the day after the Super Bowl, a national holiday.

" Declare the Monday following the Super Bowl a national holiday" is the brain child of the Fantasy Football site, 4for4.com. Here is the petition:

“In 2012, an estimated 111 million American citizens watched the Super Bowl, making it the most- viewed television braodcast in history and one of the largest location-independent gatherings of American people to date. 

We at 4for4.com Fantasy Football petition the Obama Administration to consider  declaring the Monday following Super Bowl Sunday a national holiday. By doing so, the Obama Administration can promote camaraderie among the American people, keep the streets safer for our children on Sunday night and Monday morning, promote a productive workplace when work resumes on Tuesday, and honor the most popular event in modern American culture.”

Now, the fact that a Fantasy Football site initiated the petition detracts from the seriousness of the effort since there can be no doubt Fantasy Football hopes the PR effort leads to more sign-ups for its newsletter, betting, and other self-promoting activities. Nevertheless, the fact that many Americans have already signed the petition and more are seriously considering it speaks volumes about the declining ethical values in our society.

The rationale typically given to have Super Bowl Monday as a holiday is that people do not want to go to work after eating and drinking for four hours on a Sunday -- so let's make the Monday after the Super Bowl a national holiday. I suppose given our work-ethic-challenged society many already call in sick that Monday while others are unproductive at work. Still, that doesn’t mean we need to set new lows for work effort and caring about the quality of work one does in the workplace.

One important ethical value is the pursuit of excellence. Having a national holiday after the most watched show of the year elevates laziness and the declining work ethic in our society to new heights (or lows!). When sports gets priority over keeping the engine of economic development and capitalism going even for one day, we have morphed into selfish society of the first order.

Glassdoor.com surveyed employees asking what the Super Bowl does to the workplace the Monday after the game. They found:

• 20% of employees say that employee morale is typically better in the office the day after the Super Bowl.
• 22% of employees notice, however, that the Monday following the Super Bowl is commonly a less productive day than usual.
• 8% of employees plan to take the day off following the Super Bowl.
• 9% of employees plan to take the Monday off as a vacation day.  
• 3% of surveyed employees admit that they plan to call in sick the day after the Super Bowl.

Glassdoor.com also asked employees if their employers offer any type of perks for the Monday after the Super Bowl. Several employees said that they are either allowed to work from home or use the Monday as a flex day. Another employee noted that their weekly Monday morning meeting gets bumped until later in the day on the Monday after the Super Bowl. Other survey respondents said that their employers buy breakfast for employees on the Monday after the game.

In a broader survey that illustrates laziness in society, two-thirds of U.S. workers who call in sick at the last minute do so for reasons other than physical illness, according to the findings of the 17th annual CCH Unscheduled Absence Survey. CCH is a leading provider of human resources and employment law information and services.

Is worker absenteeism a problem for business in general? Yes, according to the 2007 CCH Survey. It found that while 34 percent of people call in sick to work at the last minute due to “personal illness,” 66 percent are taking time off to deal with personal or family issues.

“Most people today are juggling the demands of busy personal and professional lives, and are trying to do their very best in both places,” said CCH Employment Law Analyst Pamela Wolf. Employers, however, have failed to make significant headway against the costly absenteeism problem that takes billions of dollars off the bottom line for U.S. businesses. The nation’s largest employers estimate that unscheduled absenteeism costs their businesses more than $760,000 per year in direct payroll costs, and even more when lower productivity, lost revenue and the effects of poor morale are considered.

The CCH Survey also found that for many employers, it’s no surprise when employees are likely to be no-shows. More than two-thirds (68 percent) report finding a discernable pattern in unscheduled absences, with 37 percent of organizations reporting the most noticeable pattern is people calling in sick on Mondays and Fridays, followed by 17 percent recognizing the most noticeable pattern occurring around holidays such as Christmas or the Fourth of July and 13 percent reporting their most noticeable pattern of unplanned absences occurs during flu and hay fever seasons.

Our country runs the risk of falling behind China as the world’s largest economy. We need to get serious about the importance of staying competitive in an increasingly globalized world economy with countries like China chomping at the bit to overtake us as the world leader.

You can bet the Chinese government has not declared a national holiday for the day after the country’s national Ping Pong Championship.

Blog posted by Steven Mintz, aka Ethics Sage, on January 28, 2013

Sandwich Generation

What are our Ethical Obligations to Care for our Aged-Parents and Children?

The other day I found out for the first time in a conversation with my brother that I was part of the “sandwich generation.” You can find the term in both the Oxford English and Merriam Webster Dictionaries.

In the early 1990's very few had even heard of the term "sandwich generation." Most thought it was connected to a sandwich eaten by children who were "latch key" kids. Instead, sandwich generation refers to those people who are sandwiched between aging parents who need care and/or help and their own children. It could be the parents have “boomerang” adult kids who come back home after school and/or unsuccessful attempts to get a job. At the same time, one’s parents need in-home care, 24/7 adult supervision or independent/assisted living.

The task is not easy to become elderly or a parent to your parent(s). After all, our society "says" adults should be able to take care of themselves. But, as more live well into their 80s and 90s and families are dispersed across the country, everyone is going to be involved somehow, some way, in elder care. If not today, then tomorrow.

Being a Sandwich Generationer - an elder/parent caregiver - is a new role on the stage of life for which no one can ever rehearse. Becoming a parent to an aging parent presents extraordinary challenges. The challenges to elders are just as daunting. To lose control of one's life - even the little things - can be shocking and frustrating.

Members of the sandwich generation face difficulties in allocating time and money and often describe themselves as being pulled in two directions. Emotional difficulties, especially depression, and marriage conflicts are common problems for those in this situation.

The challenges currently present in the field of aging lend themselves strongly to issues that require ethical consideration. Ethics, defined as a set of principles of right conduct, or a theory or a system of moral values, are critical to reevaluating our treatment and beliefs toward aging individuals. 

Should families be required to care for their aging family members? One ethical principle is “Universality” that asks: Would I want others in my situation to do the same thing I am about to do for the same reason? For me the answer is simple. I would want my daughter and her family to care for me if I were in the position of my aged mom.

We must create a world that provides to older adults independence (including access to safe environments, health resources and opportunities for personal growth), participation (including the ability to remain integrated in society and have a voice), care (care and protection, ability to maximize well-being, and enjoy basic human rights and freedoms), self-fulfillment (access to educational, cultural, spiritual and recreational resources) and dignity (freedom from exploitation and being valued independently of their economic contribution).

While the need for care by older adults is increasing, availability is decreasing; people over 65 are expected to increase at a 2.3% rate, but the number of family members available to care for them will only increase at a 0.8% rate. Unfortunately, availability of care is a major factor in predicting whether or not an older person can remain at home (aging in place) versus being moved to institutionalized care. Furthermore, the services provided by family caregivers represent 80% of all home care services and are conservatively valued at $306 billion a year, more than twice the amount spent on paid home care and nursing home services combined.  

Family caregiving has become the norm. According to the National Family Caregivers Association, more than 50 million people provide care for a chronically ill, disabled or aged family member or friend during any given year. Currently, there are over four million family caregivers in California alone. Caregivers care for spouses (5%), and parents (40%) as well as grandparents, parents-in-law, other relatives, and friends (55%).

Here are five simple rules for caring for the aged: (1) listen; (2) always be there; (3) make them smile; (4) don’t lie; and (5) protect them.

Blog posted by Steven Mintz, aka Ethics Sage, on January 25, 2013

The Ethics of ‘Birthing Tourism’

U.S. Maternity Hotels Cater to Pregnant Chinese Women

Is it ethical to establish a “maternity hotel” in the United States to accommodate Chinese women who want to give birth to their children in the U.S. solely to reap the benefits for their child of U.S. citizenship? The question is real as “birthing tourism” in the U.S. has become the destination of choice. According to the 14th Amendment to the U.S. constitution (ratified in 1868), anyone born in United States automatically becomes an American citizen and obtains access to public education, university loans, voting, and so on.

Is the practice dishonest because the motivation is to game the immigration system for selfish reasons? Do such practices take away resources that otherwise would go to U.S. citizens? Is it fair to those less well-off and unable to take advantage of the system that those who can afford to fly to the U.S. and pay for the birthing costs reap the benefits of the questionable practice? Should the U.S. ban the practice of birthing tourism and shut down such sites?

The Chinese women who come to the U.S. to give birth to their children pay as much as $20,000 to stay in the hotel facilities during the final months of pregnancy, and then spend an additional month recuperating and awaiting the new baby's U.S. passport. U.S. citizenship will allow some of the children to return to the U.S. to take advantage of free public schools and low-interest student loans. Parents may also be able to piggyback on the child's status and apply for a green card when the child turns 21.

One example of how it works is the case of Liu Li. After consulting quite a few agencies for expectant mothers, Liu chose a reputable one. Airplane tickets, fees for labor, pre- and post-delivery care cost her roughly $20,000. Since most airlines refuse to accept women passengers who are more than 32 weeks pregnant, Liu set off for America when she was six months pregnant and then checked into a Chinese birthing center in California.

After her arrival, Liu Li realized that the area was full of facilities set up for Chinese women like her. On the limited occasions when Liu Li goes to the Punete Hill Mall near her birthing center — the facility limits walks outside its premises to three per week, each time for about three hours — Liu bumps into lots of pregnant Chinese women. Birthing centers such as Liu’s, which are mostly situated in west coastal areas, operate without a business license, and try to be as discreet as possible. In April, a number of illegally converted maternity centers in Los Angeles were discovered and shut down.

Many of the hotels operate in violation of zoning laws, their locations known mainly to neighbors who observe the expectant mothers' frequent comings and goings. Such was the case in Chino Hills, where residents recently protested an alleged maternity hotel operating in a hilltop mansion. City officials have sued the property owner, claiming that the seven-bedroom house was illegally subdivided with 17 bedrooms and 17 bathrooms, with at least 10 mothers and babies living there. San Gabriel officials shut down a similar facility in 2011, and Chino Hills officials hope their lawsuit will result in a similar outcome.

Critics also cite safety concerns surrounding the largely unregulated industry. A local attorney says he is representing a maternity hotel in a case where a baby was dropped and died. The California Department of Public Health also is investigating a case that may involve maternity hotels, said a spokesman who said he could not provide further details.

Federal immigration authorities say no law prevents pregnant women from entering the country. The women typically travel on tourist visas and return home with their newborns, who will have the option of coming to the U.S. for schooling, sometimes while the parents remain in Asia. American citizenship is also considered a hedge against corruption and political instability in the children's home countries. For some, giving birth in the U.S. staves off hefty fines under China's one-child policy.

Maternity hotels have proliferated in the last decade as mainland China's new middle class tries to give its offspring every advantage. But birth tourism is not limited to Chinese and Taiwanese nationals. South Korean and Turkish mothers are also reported to pay thousands of dollars for package deals that include hotel rooms and assistance with the visa process.

Since the publicity surrounding the Chino Hills case, Los Angeles County officials have received at least two dozen complaints, mostly regarding sites in Rowland Heights and Hacienda Heights. The unassuming home at the top of the hill in an upscale Chino Hills neighborhood has been operating as a “maternity mansion” charging women from China high prices to give birth in the U.S., essentially buying American citizenship for their babies, according to neighbors who want the operation shut down.

For me, it is hard to unequivocally label the birthing tourism practice as unethical. No laws are broken and the Chinese women who take advantage of our 14^th Amendment pay the costs to travel to the U.S. They are not sneaking into the country illegally as so many others have done especially down by our southern border. We either have to pass a new law to prohibit the practice, if that is what we want to do as a nation, or accept it as a reality in today’s globally interconnected world.

Blog posted by Steven Mintz, aka Ethics Sage, on January 21, 2013

Calling out Dr. Drew and Dr. Phil

School Violence and Cyber-bullying Threatens our Civil Society

Where is Dr. Drew? Where is Dr. Phil? Why aren’t they devoting every show to school violence, cyber-bullying, and the general decline of civility and ethics in society? Don’t they have a responsibility to use their good names, significant influence, public persona, and vast resources to help stem the rising tide of violence in schools and the killing of innocent young children? I find them wanting in all these areas. Maybe these kinds of shows do not draw the ratings. If well-respected psychologists like Dr. Drew and Dr. Phil don’t care enough to take the lead, and then who will?

So, here we go again. On January 10, a 16-year-old student who blasted a California high school classroom with a shotgun was targeting two classmates because he felt he'd been bullied. One student was hit and was in critical but stable condition, and the shooter was in custody after a teacher and the school's campus supervisor talked him into putting his shotgun down.

Kern County Sheriff Donny Youngblood said he did not know whether bullying had actually occurred between the Taft Union High School students.

Over the past few years, cyber-bullying has become the most serious problem facing our schools and the consequences can be devastating including suicidal ideation on the part of the bullied individual and even suicide. Unfortunately, school violence has now surpassed cyber-bullying as the number one problem because it can lead directly to the death of innocent school children.

Cyber-bullying has become all too common in part because of social media. The bullying can be done anonymously. The party being bullied may not even know the person doing the bullying. At the beginning of bullying, the self-esteem of the victim is hit very hard. The victim feels guilty and confused at the same time, trying to figure out why this is happening to them. As it continues, social skills begin to fade away even more and depression starts to set in. If no help is found or if the bullying isn’t even noticed, more severe consequences start to surface.

I can’t help but wonder whether Adam Lanza, the mass killer at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, was bullied because he may have had Asperger’s syndrome. Of course, that doesn’t excuse his behavior. What he did was horrific and shocked our national conscience and it raises the broader societal issues of civility and ethics.

The Golden Rule that we should treat others the way we want to be treated has been replaced in our society by a sociopathic, antisocial personality disorder syndrome that bubbles over at the slightest provocation, whether real or imagined, leading to the disasters we have witnessed at Sandy Hook and the shootings at the Aurora, Colorado movie theater.

We need a change in the culture of society that uses the anonymity of the Internet and social media postings to mock others and strip away their dignity. It often starts with offensive postings and can lead to videotaping the event that goes viral.

Likewise, the ethical standards of our schools need to catch up with the technology. Students must be taught an Internet ethic just as they should be taught societal ethics in the classroom. Given the amount of time most teenagers spend online each day, accountability and personal responsibility must become part of each school's response to cyber-bullying. There should be zero tolerance for such activities with suspension and ultimately expulsion the penalties for harassing another student in cyberspace. I ask: “Where is the moral outrage? Do we have to wait until a horrific event such as a mass suicide occurs before passing legislation making cyber-bullying a federal crime as are discrimination and sexual harassment?”

There needs to be sustained public attention to the horrific school shootings and cyber-bullying. We need a person such as Dr. Drew or Dr. Phil to develop community-wide education and outreach programs to educate the public to the signs that something might be terribly wrong with their kids. We need public forums on these issues – town hall-type events where parents and teachers can come together and discuss their concerns and share observations with professionals like Dr. Drew and Dr. Phil.

Principals and teachers have to take a more active role in talking about school violence and cyber-bullying and provide options for troubled kids. Schools should have mandatory psychological evaluations for all kids starting in third or fourth grade.

I leave you with two quotes that sum up where we are as a nation. The first is attributed to Edmund Burke: "All that is required for evil to prevail is for good men to do nothing." The other addresses the role of teachers and how they can influence young people for good. This quote is attributable to Henry Brooks Adams: “ A teacher affects eternity; he can never tell where his influence stops.”

Blog posted by Steven Mintz, aka Ethics Sage, on January 15, 2013

Hall of Fame Vote Places Integrity over “Accomplishment”

Ethics of Denying PED users a vote into the Hall

By now you’ve heard no one received the 75% vote of sportscasters needed to be inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, NY. Craig Biggio was closest with 68.2 % approval followed closely by Jack Morris with 67.7%; Jeff Bagwell, 59.6%; and Mike Piazza with 57.8%.

Most observers believe these and other worthy players were denied entrance into the Hall because they played during the steroid era. There is absolutely no proof they used performance enhancing drugs (PED’s). Is it right to deny entrance to someone who established Hall-like records simply because they played during the steroid era?

Personally, I think Morris and Piazza should have been voted into the Hall. They were the best players of their era during the 1980s and 1990s, well before suspected steroid use. Morris was a five-time All Star; played on four World Series Championship teams winning the MVP award in 1991; and pitched the most innings and had the most wins of any pitcher of his time. Piazza was a 12-time All Star and had more home runs than any other catcher. He also had a .308 lifetime batting average, unheard of for a catcher.

Morris, Piazza, and the others clearly got caught up in the frenzy over suspected PED users such as Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens. Morris and Piazza were denied entrance to the Hall with astonishingly low percentage approval of  36.2% and 37.6%, respectively or about one-half the required votes needed.

Bonds, of course, holds the all-time baseball record for career home runs with 762 reached in 2006, surpassing Hank Aaron’s record of 733 that had stood since 1976. Bonds holds the single record of 73 home runs surpassing Mark McGwire’s record of 70 in 1998. Bonds was awarded a record seven MVPs and is a 14-time All Star.

McGwire’s record knocked Babe Ruth off the pedestal of most home runs (60) in a season with 61 during 1961. Babe Ruth had set the record in 1927. So, it took Maris 49 years to overtake Babe Ruth; McGwire took just 22 years to dethrone Aaron; and Bonds took only 8 years to surpass McGwire. The validity of these results do not pass the smell test.

As for Clemens he tallied 354 wins, a 3.12 earned run average, and 4,672 strikeouts, the third-most all time. Clemens was an 11-time All-Star and two-time World Series champion. Most impressive is his seven Cy Young Awards, the most of any pitcher in major league baseball (MLB) history.

How can we evaluate the ethics of the sportswriters vote to keep Bonds and Clemens out of the Hall? First, is it right to deny entrance to baseball’s most prestigious shrine given the record-setting careers of these two players? Neither one was convicted of using PEDs. However, if they did “juice up” then it would be unfair to elect them into the Hall because other players who played by the rules during the steroid era of baseball did not amass the same statistics but are compared to players like Bonds and Clemens.

One thing that concerns me most is holding players accountable after the fact when baseball had no rules at the time banning steroid use. It seems like the rules of the game are being changed by the sportswriters – the same sportswriters that voted for Bonds for MVP and Clemens for the Cy Young award on multiple occasions and watched while Bonds' head grew in size from his Pittsburgh Pirate days to SF Giants. 

One way to judge accomplishment is to look at their careers before the alleged period of steroid use. If we do that both Bonds and Clemens had Hall of Fame careers before the telltale date of juicing up. On that basis I think they should be elected to the Hall.

Another perspective is to ask: Did cheating make them fundamentally different than they would have been absent the steroid use?  Bonds averaged 35 home runs each year during his first 14 years in baseball and 52 during the next five years. Is it logical that a player would become a better home run hitter later in his career?

The story is much the same with Clemens who averaged 16 wins each year during the tail-end of his career with Toronto and the NY Yankees from 1997 through 2003. Prior to that in his last years with the Boston Red Sox he averaged 10 wins a year. One can conclude the juice started flowing in 1997.

For me the bottom line is Clemens and Bonds should not be let into the Hall because they cheated even if they did not violate MLB rules at the time. Part of ethical analysis is to consider how one’s actions affect others. There must be dozens of pitchers whose earned run averages are higher because Bonds (allegedly) juiced up; there must be dozens of hitters whose batting averages are lower than they would have been otherwise had Clemens (allegedly) not used PEDs. Other pitchers and hitters played by the rules but were not able to compete on a level playing field with the players who used steroids.

We should not reward players, no matter how impressive their statistics, as long as their records are tainted. The performance of Bonds and Clemens the last few years of their careers when compared to the early years is so overwhelmingly out of whack that, in my mind, they used steroids; cheated; failed to consider the impact of their actions on other players and MLB; and cheated fans out of honest performances on the field that raises ethical questions about the win-lost results for teams like the NY Yankees and SF Giants.

Blog posted by Steven Mintz, aka Ethics Sage, on January 11, 2013

How to be a Better Person

Work Ethic, Civility and Personal Responsibility are the Keys

As a college professor I always look forward to this time of year with a new term starting; new faces to see; new thoughts to probe; new ideas to discuss with my students. In preparing for my first class on ethics I wondered what to say to encourage my students to examine their own behavior and think about how they can treat others better or do something for the betterment of the community or become more contributing members of society.

I was motivated to think about these questions by the recent events when on two separate occasions a person either fell to his death or was pushed off the NYC subway platform. I have already blogged about the needless subway death when bystanders stood idly. I also have blogged about our falling off the “moral cliff” and how much more severe it is than the “fiscal cliff.” I can help but wonder about how quickly we forget the message of abusive behavior to others in society in the form of mass killings, the most recent at Sandy Hook Elementary.  How can a human being treat other human beings this way? The question that still has not been answered in this and other cases is: What prompts one person to pick up multiple assault weapons and kill innocent children?

I have often blogged about cyber-bullying, a practice that demeans youngsters because of some perceived difference in appearance, behavior, or sexual preference. It is a virus attacking our schools fueled by the widespread use of social media and anonymous way a posting can be made that leads to ridicule and abuse against the bullied individual. In some respects it is a “faceless” crime; the perpetrator is a coward of the worst kind.

As we begin the New Year all of us should commit to being better people. I will ask my students to do so in their own lives. I will encourage them to do the following:

Social Interaction

Put down the smart phone, tablet, and laptop and speak directly and personally to friends and family. The personal interaction creates a connection that is difficult to come by when you “let your fingers do the talking.”

Work Ethic

Work harder in school and in whatever endeavor you choose in life. The ancient Greeks knew the pursuit of excellence through virtuous practice is its own reward. The most rewarding experiences in my professional life have been when I set a goal, worked hard to achieve, and succeeded in doing so. It makes us feel like we have accomplished something in our lives.

Civility

Don’t make fun of others for any reason. The diversity of our culture whether in race relations, national heritage, or sexual preference is what makes us strong and the most admired country in the world. Don’t be rude; practice patience; and be kind to others.

Personal Responsibility

Don’t blame others for your failings. If something bad happens to you, search inside your own mind for an answer and commit to doing better next time. If you make a mistake in life, admit it, promise never to do it again, be remorseful towards those you have harmed, and then become a better person.

Entitlement

We are not entitled to have the government pay our way. We are not entitled to receive benefits that don’t come from hard work and dedication. We should not complain when circumstances change for the worse and insist we are entitled to better. Search inside your own soul for an answer.

Work hard; practice kindness and be empathetic; accept personal responsibility; and strive to be the best person you can be. Just imagine if each of us took these words to heart how much better of a society we would have.

Blog posted by Steven Mintz, aka Ethics Sage, on January 2, 2013

NRA Solution to Gun Violence: Add More Guns to School

The Key to a Safer Society is Impulse Control and Personal Responsibility

Should we blame video games, movies and the media for the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut? Should we blame the easily obtainable guns that attack our moral sense of right and wrong? Yes, yes, yes and yes, but that still is not the answer to the sickness that inflicts our society in the form of mass killings.

Last week I blogged about the incredible number of mass killings in 2012 that has shocked our collective consciousness. I presented suggestions to stem the rising tide of violence in society including personal responsibility education starting at the elementary school level with impulse control a major part of the curriculum; mandatory psychological evaluations for all kids starting in elementary school, some of which can be done using art therapy; and airport-security-type measures that can be implemented more smoothly by staggering student arrival times at school.

The NRA wants to put armed security guards in every school. Add a gun; stop the violence. This doesn’t pass the laugh test. Any student or other person such as Adam Lanza who is crazy enough to want to kill innocent children is crazy enough to get a gun into school and avoid the security guard. The only way to have a measure of comfort this can’t happen is by screening everyone who comes into the school building for weapons as we do in airports, courts and other federal buildings. Yes, the kids won’t like it and yes, it’s awful to even suggest it. But, we have to take extreme measures before another catastrophe occurs.

We do need gun control. The ban on assault weapons, which expired under President Bush in 2004, wasn’t the complete answer to stopping violence in society. In fact, the specific assault weapon used by Lanza would still have been legal to purchase. However, to stand by and do nothing is unacceptable. If we can save one life by re-establishing the ban on assault weapons it would be worth it. The worse thing is to talk about it amongst ourselves; hold Congressional hearings about it; and wind up with marginal or superficial changes in gun control laws.

The real answer lies in changing behavior. The sickness in our society is due to many factors. Yes, the entertainment industry has no conscience when it comes to the message sent through movies, television, and other forms of media. Yes, our own country commits senseless violence in other countries and it has been in the news and on television all too often (i.e., Vietnam and Iraq).

But the problem is exacerbated by moral absence in the form of parental guidance and the failure of our schools to teach ethics and personal responsibility. It’s almost as if “ethics” has become a dirty word in our society. There are no socially accepted rules of conduct any more such as honesty, trustworthiness, caring and empathy, personal responsibility, and the pursuit of excellence. We have a “do your own thing” mantra in our society today without regard to how our actions affect others. It’s a form of ethical relativism – my ethics are whatever I want them to be.

We no longer can stand idly by as a nation and watch as the cancer of mass killings eats at our very soul as a nation. Edmund Burke said it best: "All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men [and women] do nothing."

Blog posted by Steven Mintz, aka Ethics Sage, on December 24, 2012

 

Forget the Fiscal Cliff; we have fallen off the Moral Cliff

Starting a Dialogue to Stem the Tide of Mass Killings in the U.S.

What a disconcerting sight it was last Friday on December 14, 2012, as we watched dozens of school children at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown Connecticut marching with hands on the shoulders of their classmates being led away from the school and to safety by their teachers. Adam Lanza, a 20-year-old former student at the school, killed his mother, a teacher’s assistant at the school, at her home and then proceeded to kill 20 children, and six adults at the school while shooting over 100 rounds of ammunition. Early reports describe Lanza as an honors student, and was called "remote" and "one of the goths" by classmates.  A law enforcement official said he may have had a personality disorder.

We have seen it before. We have agonized about mass killings in our country all too many times. The year of 2012 will go down as the most violent with respect to mass killings.  Just a few days earlier on December 11, we watched in horror the aftermath of a lone gunmen, 22-year-old Jacob Tyler Roberts, going into an Oregon shopping mall and killing two, seriously wounding another, after getting off at least 60 rounds of ammunition.

On October 21, three people were killed in a Milwaukee area salon including the estranged wife of the suspected gunman, Radcliffe Haughton, a 45-year-old former Marine. He targeted his wife and killed two other women along the way.

Another mass killing took place on September 27 at a manufacturing factory in Minneapolis when 36-year-old Andrew J. Engeldinger killed five and injured 3 more just days after losing his job of twelve years at the plant.

On August 5, 40-year-old Wade Michael Page killed 6 and injured 3 at a Sikh temple in Wisconsin. Page was a member of a Neo-Nazi skinhead group.

To complete this year’s awful record of mass killings, on April 2, 43-year-old One L. Goh killed 7 and wounded 3 at Oikos College in Oakland, California. Goh One L. Goh, was reportedly bullied and mistreated at his nursing school program at the small Korean Christian nursing program at the College.

The shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School was not the worst in terms of numbers of people killed in a mass murder. That “honor” goes to Seung-Hui Cho who shot and killed 32 people and wounded 17 others  at Virginia Polytechnic Institute in Blacksburg, Virginia  on April 16, 2007. The Sandy Hook killings did surpass the mass murder on April 20, 1999 at Columbine High School outside Littleton, Colorado when two senior students, Eric Harris and Dyle Klebold, massacred 12 students and one teacher and injured 21 others.

In virtually all of these cases the killer or killers took their own lives after the killings. In  other words they seem to have viewed the mass murders as a way to make a statement about how badly they had been treated whether it was losing a job, bullying, or some other perceived wrong-doing, and wanting to go out “with a bang.” It also appears in most, if not all cases, the killers were mentally disturbed. I don’t mean mentally disturbed because they committed such heinous crimes. That goes without saying. They were mentally disturbed with respect to having an anti-social personality disorder perhaps accompanied by depression and social anxiety.  One question is whether such mental problems could have been diagnosed in advance and treated early on.

There are no easy solutions to the growing problem of mass murders in the U.S. Yes, stricter gun laws might help and should be enacted. I don’t think our founders passed the Second Amendment right to bear arms knowing, or anticipating, the killing of one or more citizens by another in non-self-defense situations and as mass murders. The Constitution is a living, breathing document and should change as societal values change. That is why we needed the Fifteenth Amendment to the Constitution that  prohibits each government in the U.S. from denying a citizen the right to vote based on that citizen's "race, color, or previous condition of servitude” and the Nineteenth Amendment giving women the right to vote.

I provide the following five suggestions in the interests of starting a meaningful dialogue on how to stem the rising tide of senseless violence in the U.S. that destroys the innocent lives of its victims and forever changes the lives of those left behind. Of necessity, these suggestions target the schools where all too many killings have occurred and where the mental disorders of the mass murders might first appear below the surface ready to simmer to a boil and spill over to the detriment of our civilized society.

1. All schools starting with K through 4/5 should incorporate a module on personal responsibility and civic duty into their curricula. I do not mean as part of social studies or other topical program. The module should be stand-alone and deal with issues such as impulse control, anti-bullying, and outreach organizations that a troubled person can turn to for help. We need to get back to teaching why each of us has a responsibility as citizens of this country and how to be contributing members of society.
2. Mandatory psychological evaluation for all school children starting with middle school. In a sense this would be a follow-up to the education in K through 4/5 and to diagnose potential problem kids at the earliest possible age. This will mean more highly skilled counselors in schools; it will cost money; but the potential payback in terms of reduced violence and innocent lives saved outweighs those costs.
3. All schools should have an airport-style security screening for guns and other weapons for all who enter the school premises including children and adults. At Sandy Hook Elementary, the school  had a video surveillance system whereby visitors had to be buzzed in, but that did not stop Adam Lanza from gaining access presumably because he was known to the school. Some will say the security checkpoints infringe on our Constitutional rights – the 4^th Amendment right against unreasonable search and seizure. Well, I say so be it. Again, the founders could not have anticipated the violent nature of our society and use of uncontrolled arms to kill other citizens for no reason whatsoever.
4. Training for teachers and others who interact with young people to spot the red flags that someone may have psychological problems and/or is being bullied. The training should emphasize what to look for in troubled children and young adults; what to do once the signs have been identified; and how to develop early-stage intervention programs.
5. Start a national conversation on this problem. I hear about it from time to time from well-respected psychologists such as Dr. Drew. But, once the dust settles it seems the issue is put on the back burner. We need to sensitize all Americans to the problem and how parents and other care-givers can spot early signs of a troubled child or teenager. We need to develop specific outreach programs to deal with all aspects of the issue.

These are just ideas to get the ball rolling on creating a national dialogue on “Personal Responsibility and Mental Health Outreach.” I hope my suggestions are considered seriously and prompt responses and other suggestions to stem the tide of mass killings in the U.S.

Blog posted by Steven Mintz, aka Ethics Sage, on December 15, 2012

 

Should Ohio State be in the BCS Championship Game?

Notre Dame v Ohio State or Alabama v Ohio State: You make the Call

Now that the Bowl bids have gone out and we know Notre Dame will play Alabama for the BCS National Championship, I thought it was a good time to reflect on whether Ohio State University should be in that game instead of one of the other teams.

The case against Ohio State came into the news again on December 5 when The Ohio Supreme Court suspended for one year the law license of an attorney whose emails to Jim Tressel triggered an ongoing scandal and NCAA investigation that cost the football coach his job at Ohio State.

At issue was whether Columbus attorney Christopher Cicero violated professional rules of conduct that prohibit revealing (confidential) information from meetings with a client or a prospective client.

The 5-2 court decision followed the recommendation of a disciplinary board that argued Cicero wrongly discussed interviews with tattoo parlor owner Edward Rife, a potential client. However, the court overruled the board's recommendation for a six-month suspension.

Cicero sent emails to Tressel in April 2010, warning him that players were selling memorabilia or trading them for tattoos. The email traffic sparked the scandal and ended Tressel's Ohio State tenure.

An NCAA investigation also led to a bowl ban this year, reductions in scholarships and the loss of Ohio State's $389,000 share of the Big Ten bowl pot a year ago. The entire 2010 season also was vacated.

Ohio State just completed a 12-0 season and is ranked No. 4 in the AP poll. Quite frankly, I thought they should have been ranked #1 or #2. They beat four ranked teams, as did Notre Dame, including one of the Rose Bowl contenders (Wisconsin), as did Notre Dame (Stanford). But, that is another issue for another time.

Some equate Ohio State’s suspension with the two-year suspension of USC in 2010 and 2011. In June 2010, after a prolonged four-year investigation into whether former USC running back Reggie Bush and his  family had accepted financial benefits and housing from two sports agents in San Diego while he was a student athlete at USC, the NCAA imposed sanctions against the Trojan football program for a "lack of institutional control," including a two-year postseason ban, the loss of 30 scholarships over three years, and the vacation of all wins in which Bush participated as an "ineligible" player, including the 2005 Orange Bowl, in which the Trojans won the BCS National Championship.  It was a much stiffer penalty for an infinitely worse offense than the “tattoo parlor” scandal at Ohio State.

Back to Ohio State and the issue of the former players who took benefits. The real crime, I think, is not that it was a stupid action by stupid players, but the university administration that downplayed it and Jim Tressel’s cover up (similar to Penn State). When will offenders realize the cover-up is always worse than the crime? The answer is probably never and that is why they commit offenses in the first place that warrant suspension or some other penalty.  

The Ohio State situation is less about scandal itself and even damage control and more about the way an institution responds to a crisis. This is why the penalty imposed on Penn State in its sexual abuse scandal was, appropriately, so harsh. When viewed from that perspective, perhaps Ohio State got what it deserved with the one year suspension and lost opportunity, perhaps, to play for the BCS Championship. Actions have consequences and people and institutions must be held accountable for their actions (or inactions). Unfortunately, the viewing public loses out by not seeing Ohio State play in the BCS Championship game. I fear the final score will be a blow out: Alabama 31 – Notre Dame 10. But, don’t take it to the bank.

Blog posted by Steven Mintz, aka Ethics Sage, on December 14, 2012

 

The NYC Subway Death: Bystander Effect or Moral Blindness?

What was the Ethical Obligation of the Passengers on the Subway Platform?

Do we have an ethical responsibility to help others in need when a life may be at stake? If someone is being attacked in the streets should we intervene to help? What if it isn’t a violent attack so we need not fear for our lives?

Unless you have been living subterranean for a while, you know of the incident where Ki-Suck Han was pushed off a subway platform in  NYC by Naeem Davis. Mr. Han was hit by the train and died while observers did nothing other than snap a shot on their cellphones all the while Mr. Han sought a way off the tracks before the oncoming train did him in. Davis was arraigned on a second-degree murder charge and held without bail in the death of Mr. Han.

I attribute Mr. Han's death not to the “bystander effect,” as some have claimed; instead, it reflects a moral blindness that has become ingrained in our society. Moral blindness in this sense is the inability to see the moral dimensions of a problem. It’s not a right versus wrong issue; it’s an issue whereby our judgment is clouded by failing to see we have responsibilities to others. The universal ethical principle is: How would I want others to act [toward me] in similar situations. We would want on-lookers to help us off the tracks especially when it would have been easy to do so. Mr. Han already had his hands on the platform. The train was still a bit from the station. There appeared to be no danger to others. The attacker had already fled.

All kids of excuses have been offered for Mr., Davis’ actions including he attacked me first and he was drunk. Even if these defenses were true, and a doubt the former, that doesn’t give one human being the right to push another to his death. Is this what a civilized society looks like?

The bystander effect creates apathy -- the greater the number of people present, the less likely a person is to help a person in distress. In an emergency situation, observers are more likely to take action if there are few or no other witnesses.

A classic example of the bystander effect took place in New York on March 13, 1964 when a young woman, Kitty Genovese, was stabbed to death near her home. While some facts are disputed, neighbors apparently did nothing to help the woman or call the police. Reportedly, one neighbor did scream out “Let that girl alone,” and the attacker ran away.

I do not think these two situations are the same. In the Genovese case, there was a violent attack and a person who might have intervened could have put his or her own life in danger. That doesn’t explain why no one called the police. In Mr. Han’s case, there was no apparent danger to a bystander who might have intervened.

One of the most controversial aspects of this story is that of a freelance photographer for the New York Post who was waiting for a train when he said he saw a man approach Han at the Times Square station, get into an altercation with him and push him into the train's path.

The Post photo in Tuesday's showed Han with his head turned toward the train, his arms reaching up but unable to climb off the tracks in time.

The photographer, R. Umar Abbasi, told NBC's "Today" show that he was trying to alert the motorman to what was going on by flashing his camera. He said he was shocked that people nearer to the victim didn't try to help in the 22 seconds before the train struck.

"It took me a second to figure out what was happening ... I saw the lights in the distance. My mind was to alert the train," Abbasi said.

"The people who were standing close to him ... they could have moved and grabbed him and pulled him up. No one made an effort," he added.

In a written account Abbasi gave the Post, he said a crowd took videos and snapped photos on their cellphones after Han was pulled, limp, onto the platform. He said he shoved them back as a doctor and another man tried to resuscitate the victim, but Han died in front of them.

Abbasi is providing a rationalization for failing to act himself – blame others for not doing what he should have done. In the time it took to snap the shot, Abbasi probably could have ran to Han and pulled him up. Most likely if he needed help puling Han up, someone would have come to his aid because there were “people nearer to the victim.” The explanation that he snapped shots so the flash would alert the conductor makes no sense in the cellphone-camera crazy society we live in. It was more likely the photographer was looking for a story for the Post or a YouTube photo-op than trying to warn the conductor. Anyway, I believe the conductor would have thought it was just another person addicted to using his cell phone.

To be fair none of us know how we would react if we were in a similar situation. It occurs in a split second. What I try to do is discuss it with myself (I do that a lot these days) in advance of any such event and think through what I should do in similar situations. In Mr. Han’s case I would have enlisted the help of those “people nearer the victim” so it counter-acted any bystander effect that existed.

The moral of the story for me is that we live in a society where people react to situations like the subway death as if it’s a reality-TV-type of situation. Are they filming a new show? Is this a stunt to snap a shot and get it on YouTube? The last thing that crosses our mind is that another human being is in danger and we have an ethical and personal responsibility to intervene because, supposedly, we live in a civilized society.

Blog posted by Steven Mintz, aka Ethics Sage, on December 10, 2012

 

 

Oregon Duck Uniforms and the Poverty Level in the U.S.

Cost of Multiple Duck Uniforms Raises Ethical Issues

Saturday night I watched the football game between Oregon and Stanford. I’ve watched the Oregon Ducks before and noticed they seem to have a new uniform for each game. I was intrigued by the fact the University must spend thousands of dollars just on uniforms, although my guess is Nike absorbs most or all of the costs because of the advertising value of millions of kids watching the Ducks in their glossy uniforms. Still, someone is paying for the uniforms.

It seems a bit excessive, even reckless, given there are 46.2 million Americans on poverty or 15.2% of the nation. The government's definition of poverty is based on total income received. For example, the poverty level for 2012 was set at $23,050 (total yearly income) for a family of four. Most Americans (58.5%) will spend at least one year below the poverty line at some point between ages 25 and 75.

Nike sells replica jerseys for between $85 to 90. The authentic jerseys with sewn on patches will come out soon, costing $120. For the players, Nike says the new full uniforms are made of sixteen different fabrics, making them lighter, cooler and more durable. Here is part of their description of the product that debuted at last year’s Rose Bowl:

The new uniform incorporates pinnacle performance innovation and design while providing enhanced thermoregulation and more durability with the inclusion of Nike Chain Maille Mesh – a lightweight ultra-breathable material – used in both the jersey and pant.

I figure each uniform costs Nike about $20 to manufacture. The Ducks list 100 players connected to the football team in some way or another. That means $2,000 just for one uniform. The Ducks play about 15 games each year so we’re talking $30,000 in total.

Another Ducks product is the Oregon Duck Lunar TR-1+ shoes with Win the Day and Duck logos on them. Each pair costs $235. The Nike Store sold out of the shoes online in just six minutes. I figure the shoes cost Nike $60 to make so let’s add another $6,000 for all the players and triple it ($18,000) assuming they need three pairs to get through the season. There may even be separate shoes for each game but I think my point is made.

The poverty line threshold in the U.S. ($23, 050 for a family of four) is, on a daily basis, about $16 per person per day. If my estimates are close, the cost to outfit the Duck football players for a year is about $48,000, double the poverty level for a family of four and enough to sustain 3,000 people for one day or about 8 people for one year. When you think about the extravagant spending on uniforms by the Ducks, you begin to understand that it reflects a society where glitz and glamour are valued over feeding the hungry -- not a pretty picture.

The Ducks are not alone. Last year the University of Maryland rolled out a uniform that appeared to be two in one (depending on which side you're looking at) with their state flag tribute digs. This year Notre Dame introduced an alternate “Shamrock Series” uniform that broke something that didn't need fixing. Then Michigan used the Cowboy Classic this month to trot out neon maize road uniforms; a Yahoo Sports writer called them “ ‘firefly goo’ that were about as subtle as a four-year-old's highlighter.”

In addition to the ethics of spending so much money while others go hungry every night is that college sports /players are role models for younger kids. Now we see some high school football programs mimicking Oregon’s multiple-uniform approach.

Central High School in Knoxville Tennessee is one example. They settled for only two jerseys and one pair of pants from the manufacturer, Under Armour. The Bobcats also went with the trendy flat-black, no-shine helmets from Riddell. The coach is quoted as saying: "I came up with a couple of ideas that I liked, and we asked the kids. They're always going to give you their opinions on what looks good and what doesn't."

A mid-grade helmet costs $200-250 but can go as high as $325-350. A stock Under Armour jersey retails for $50. Team dealers can offer jersey discounts. But factor in printing costs and any deviations from the basic stock style, a jersey can surpass $100 per player.

Here are some more disturbing facts about poverty that make the lavish uniform situation all –the-more troubling. About half of all American children will receive Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits at some point before age 20. Among African-American children, 90 percent will enroll in SNAP before age 20.

This has gotten out of hand. What message are we sending to our youth when we squander badly needed resources in the name of “looking good” while playing a game that makes you look dirty?

Blog posted by Steven Mintz, aka Ethics Sage, on November 19, 2012

Californians Vote to Keep the Death Penalty

Cost considerations, Exonerations, and Finality for Victims Raise Concerns about Capital Punishment

On November 6, California voters rejected the latest attempt to repeal California's death penalty ending the hopes, at least temporarily until the next proposition comes out, of activists who saw this election as their best chance in 35 years to end capital punishment in the state.

With all ballots counted, voters rejected Proposition 34 by a margin of 52.8% to 47.2%. The defeat came even though recent polling showed concern growing over the cost of capital punishment and the punishment rarely being enforced.

Since 1989 California has sentenced two men to death who were later exonerated and released from prison. In 2011 and 2012 alone, five California men who were wrongfully convicted of murder but received lesser sentences were exonerated and released from prison.

California has executed just 13 convicts and its death row has ballooned to 726 inmates since 71 percentage of the electorate voted to reinstate capital punishment in 1978. No executions have taken place since 2006 because of federal and state lawsuits filed by death row inmates. According to a study by Loyola Marymount University and Loyola Law School, ending the death penalty would save the state $130 million annually.

Perhaps post-conviction DNA exonerations are not good enough reasons to end capital punishment. However, another consideration, I believe, is – the humanity of putting someone to death. I can understand the feeling of families that lost a loved one -- “an eye for an eye.” However, it is disconcerting to say the least that the process often drags on for years. Year after year those losing a loved one wait while appeals and other delays prevent the sentence from being carried out. The average time on death row ranges from about 10-20 years. There is no finality in the system. I can’t stand in the shoes of affected families but do feel, personally, that it would be better to know the convicted person would spend the rest of his/her life in jail without the possibility of parole.

Returning to California, Shujaa Graham was convicted of robbery and given a life-sentence in 1976. He was later blamed for the murder of a prison guard and put on death row.  Finally, after a fourth trial, he was acquitted of the murder - and his robbery conviction was also overturned.  He was released in 1981, a relatively short period on death row before exoneration. Since then - for 35 years - his mission in life has been to raise awareness about wrongful conviction.

"What has happened to me is over with and done," he said. "No one can bring those years back and no one can bring the psychological scars. No one can remove the physical scars.” His wife points out that he still suffers from abusive treatment and laments losing formative years of his life.

The death penalty not only fails as a solution to the problem of violence in the U.S. but, because of the excessive costs of implementation, capital punishment interferes with a spectrum of preventive programs that have been demonstrated to work well.

Throughout the U.S., police are being laid off, prisoners are being released early, the courts are clogged, and crime continues to rise. The economic recession has caused cutbacks in the backbone of the criminal justice system. In Florida, the budget crisis resulted in the early release of 3,000 prisoners. In Texas, prisoners are serving only 20% of their time and rearrests are common. Georgia is laying off 900 correctional personnel and New Jersey has had to dismiss 500 police officers. Yet these same states, and many others like them, are pouring millions of dollars into the death penalty with no resultant reduction in crime.

The exorbitant costs of capital punishment are actually making America less safe because badly needed financial and legal resources are being diverted from effective crime fighting strategies. Before the Los Angeles riots, for example, California had little money for innovations like community policing, but was managing to spend an extra $90 million per year on capital punishment. Texas, with over 300 people on death row, is spending an estimated $2.3 million per case, but its murder rate remains one of the highest in the country.

The death penalty is escaping the decisive cost-benefit analysis to which every other program is being put in times of austerity. Rather than being posed as a single, but costly, alternative in a spectrum of approaches to crime, the death penalty operates at the extremes of political rhetoric.

The death penalty is much more expensive than its closest alternative -- life imprisonment with no parole. Capital trials are longer and more expensive at every step than other murder trials. Pre-trial motions, expert witness investigations, jury selection, and the necessity for two trials -- one on guilt and one on sentencing -- make capital cases extremely costly, even before the appeals process begins. Guilty pleas are almost unheard of when the punishment is death. In addition, many of these trials result in a life sentence rather than the death penalty, so the state pays the cost of life imprisonment on top of the expensive trial.

Looking at the ethics of capital punishment, I close with a quote from Katherine Fullerton Gerould from her 1920 book, Modes and Morals. “Many of us do not believe in capital punishment, because thus society takes from a man what society cannot give.”

Blog posted by Steven Mintz, aka Ethics Sage, on November 16, 2012

E-Mails from Biographer to a Third Party Led to Petraeus’ Resignation

How should we Evaluate Patraeus’ accomplishments in light of his Affair?

What is it about middle age men and their libidos? First it was Bill Clinton. Then, John Edwards followed by Eliot Spitzer. Fit Tiger Woods in there. I could go on but you get the picture. The latest to fall from grace is General David Petraeus, the American former military officer and public official.

Patraeus served as Director of the CIA from September 6, 2011, until his resignation on November 9, 2012. Petraeus acknowledged in his announcement that he had shown "extremely poor judgment by engaging in an extramarital affair." You think?

The woman at the center of the extramarital affair that led to the resignation of Petraeus is a highly-accomplished, West Point graduate like Patraeus, author and anti-terrorist specialist who got to know the high-profile general, in part, by going running with him in Afghanistan.

Paula Broadwell met Gen. David Petraeus in 2006, when she introduced herself after he gave a speech at Harvard's Kennedy School, where Broadwell was working on a master's degree. She got to know the General thereafter and wrote a book about him: All In: The Education of General David Petraeus. The glowing biography was taken offline shortly after her name was linked to the scandal.

The sordid affair was uncovered by an FBI investigation of “harassing” e-mails sent by Broadwell to another woman reported to be Jill Kelley who was a "social liaison" to military bases in Tampa, Florida. That probe led agents to Broadwell's email account, which uncovered the relationship with the retired four-star general, who earned acclaim for his leadership of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

When F.B.I. agents followed up on the complaint and began to examine Broadwells’ e-mails, they discovered exchanges between her and Petraeus that revealed that they were having an affair, according to several officials who described the investigation on the condition of anonymity. They also discovered that Broadwell apparently had acquired some classified documents, and considered whether Petraeus might be the source, one official said.

The F.B.I. investigators were not pursuing evidence of Petraeus’s marital infidelity, which would not be a criminal matter. But their examination of his e-mails, most or all of them sent from a personal account and not from his C.I.A. account, raised the possibility of security breaches that needed to be addressed directly with him.

The agents apparently concluded, however, that it was probably not Petraeus who had given them to her, and that there had been no major breach of security. No leak charges are expected to be filed as a result of the investigation.

President Obama praised the General in his announcement of the resignation on November 9. "David Petraeus has provided extraordinary service to the United States for decades. By any measure, he was one of the outstanding General officers of his generation, helping our military adapt to new challenges, and leading our men and women in uniform through a remarkable period of service in Iraq and Afghanistan, where he helped our nation put those wars on a path to a responsible end," Obama said. "As Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, he has continued to serve with characteristic intellectual rigor, dedication, and patriotism. By any measure, through his lifetime of service David Petraeus has made our country safer and stronger.”

The Patraeus-Broadwell matter raises the question whether his life’s-work should be judged by his military accomplishments, which are significant, or the fall from grace because of his extramarital affair. Normally, I am willing to forgive someone for such discretion. To do so I look for signs of true regret for one’s actions: (1) admit to the mistake willingly; (2) show true remorse for what you have done; (3) apologize to those you have harmed; and (4) promise to never do it again.

Patraeus may have met these requirements. Still, he was in a sensitive national security position that, in my mind, overrides these prerequisites of true forgiveness. Who knows what he told Broadwell? Who know what she might now try to pass on to others, most of who have no right to know about the inner workings of the CIA or its field operations?

Patraeus exhibited a severe lack of judgment, lack of common sense, contempt for the uniform, and disrespect for his family. I cannot forgive his actions under any circumstances. Putting aside the issue of remorsefulness, it’s important to remember that ethics is not judged by situational behavior or relative to one’s beliefs. Ethics rely on established standards of moral behavior in society, not to mention the military code of conduct. Patraeus violated these norms and as a leader in the military he dishonored the uniform and put into question his service to the country.

Patraeus should be held to a higher standard because of his position. My goodness, he presided over much of "the surge" period in the war in Afghanistan. Under other circumstances I might have forgiven him, but not when he potentially compromised sensitive military information by passing it along to Broadwell. It doesn’t matter whether he did or did not do so. He shouldn’t put himself in such a compromising position by having an affair with his biographer, writer, and someone who had the potential to taint his entire life’s work.

To quote the incomparable Forrest Gump: “Stupid is what stupid does.”

Blog posted by Steven Mintz, aka Ethics Sage, on November 12, 2012

THE PENN STATE SCANDAL REVISITED

A CONSPIRACY OF SILENCE

New charged filed on November 6 accusing three former Penn State administrators of engaging in a "conspiracy of silence" to cover up child sexual abuse allegations against Jerry Sandusky raise questions about whether iconic football Coach Joe Paterno could have been charged if he were still living.

If former President Graham Spanier, university Athletic Director Tim Curley, and former administrator Gary Schultz had been charged while Paterno escaped prosecution, the former administrators probably might have complained that the coach was getting special treatment.

WHY DO GOOD PEOPLE SOMETIMES DO THE WRONG THING

Those who have watched the case said the grand jury deliberations paint Paterno as an active participant in the conspiracy. "The reality is that he knew. He knew early on, and he chose to protect the image of the football program and to protect Penn State," said Jennifer Storm, an advocate for victims who has worked with two of the young men Sandusky molested when they were boys.

But Bruce Antkowiak, a former federal prosecutor, said that without knowing everything that state prosecutors in the case know, it's not fair to conclude that there was probable cause to charge Paterno. "Once the case is tried and all the evidence has come out, it might be possible to make that kind of retroactive assessment, but right now it's too difficult," Antkowiak said.

For me, this is a good time to review the facts of the Penn State scandal and raise ethical questions. I have no doubt there was a cover-up and Paterno was the primary participant. Based on my assumption, I raise the following ethical questions:

What motivates an otherwise ethical person to do the wrong thing when faced with an ethical dilemma? Why did Joe Paterno and leaders of Penn State University look the other way and fail to act on irrefutable evidence that former assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky had raped and molested young boys, an offense for which Sandusky is serving a 30-to-60- year sentence?

According to the independent report by Louis Freeh that investigated the sexual abuse, four of the most powerful people at The Pennsylvania State University including Spanier, Curly, Schultz, and Paterno, failed to protect against a child predator harming children for over a decade by concealing Sandusky’s activities from the Board of Trustees, the University community and authorities.

The Freeh report characterizes the inactions as lacking empathy for the victims by failing to inquire as to their safety and well-being in addition to which they exposed the first abused-child to additional harm by altering Sandusky, who was the only one who knew the child’s identity, of what assistant coach Mike McQueary saw in the shower on the night of February 9, 2001.

REASONS FOR UNETHICAL ACTIONS

The following explanations are given in the Freeh report for the failure of University leaders to take action to identify the February 9, 2001 child victim and for not reporting Sandusky to the authorities:

• The desire to avoid bad publicity by reporting the incident
• The failure of the University’s Board of Trustees to have reporting mechanisms in place to ensure disclosure of major risks to the University
• A President who discouraged discussion and dissent
• A lack of awareness of child abuse issues, the Clery Act that requires all colleges and universities that participate in federal financial aid programs to keep and disclose information about crime on and near their respective campuses
• A lack of whistleblower policies and protections
• A culture of reverence for the football program that is ingrained at all levels of the campus community

EXPLANATIONS FOR UNETHICAL ACTIONS

Former Penn State President Graham Spanier is quoted as saying in an interview about how the University worked that “honesty, integrity and always doing what was in the best interests of the university (italics added) was how everyone agreed to operate and …”we’ve always operated as a family. Our personal and social and professional lives were all very intertwined.

At Penn State a culture existed that placed the interests of the University, as perceived by its leadership, ahead of the interests of the abused children and the public trust. The tone that was set by Paterno and Spanier was one of the cover-up of potentially damaging information about the institution and its football program.

The culture of an organization should be built on ethical values such as honesty, integrity, trust, responsibility and accountability. While Penn State may have espoused to follow such principles, the reality was its actions did not match these stated goals of behavior.

ETHICAL BLIND SPOTS

Leaders of organizations who may be successful at what they do and see themselves as ethical and moral still cultivate a collection of what Max Bazerman and Ann Trebrunsel call blind spots. Blind spots refers to the gap between who you want to be and the person you actually are. In other words, most of us want to do the right thing – to act ethically – but internal and external pressures get in the way.

The authors attribute blind spots to the concept of bounded ethicality, that is, psychological processes that lead even good people to engage in ethically questionable behavior that contradicts their own preferred ethics. As in the Penn State situation, bounded ethicality comes into play when individuals make decisions that harm others even though that harm is inconsistent with these decision makers’ conscious beliefs and preferences.   

The moral of the Penn State saga is not to allow one’s loyalties to others and an institution get in the way of doing the right thing. The Penn State officials acted as if ethics is situational and in that situation it was more important to protect the image of the university than put an end to and prosecute child abuse.

A person who acts wrongly in one instance out of greed or self-interest forfeits the right to call him or herself an ethical person. That doesn’t mean all of us do the right thing all the time. But what it does mean is we aspire to do the right thing; we know the difference between right and wrong; and we act accordingly.

Blog posted by Steven Mintz, aka Ethics Sage, on November 7, 2012

Blind Runner: The Inspirational Story of Sami Stoner

Virtue and the Pursuit of Excellence

The ancient Greeks believed that happiness is the end goal of life in the sense of well-being, resulting from achieving excellence in the fulfillment of one’s function. Virtue is the way in which the fulfillment of happiness occurs and excellence achieved. One’s character and reasoning skills enables virtue to be achieved. Thus, the pursuit of excellence is a goal we all should strive to achieve in our life’s work and in daily encounters with others.

Recently, I saw a story on ESPN about a blind runner – Sami Stoner. Stoner’s story is inspirational and shows how much we can accomplish if we put our mind to it.  A legally blind 16-year-old, Sami traversed cross-country courses this season with her new guide dog, Chloe, and is believed to be the first high school athlete in her home state of Ohio to compete with an animal. Sami, a junior at Lexington High School, competed on the junior varsity cross country team.  

“I don’t run for time or place or anything, I just run because I love it, and I’m glad I can share my love of running with Chloe now.  She’s helped me so much.”

Having just completed her fourth year running cross country, Sami won a waiver from the state high school athletic association that allowed her to compete with a dog. The golden retriever puppy, who guides Sami through the crowded hallways at school, also takes her safely through the running trails of Ohio.

“She watches out for roots and she tries to pick the clearest path for me,” Sami said. “The ways she moves, I can feel it in her harness, so she has little ways to signal which way to go and what to do.”

At the starting line, Sami and Chloe stay back 20 to 30 seconds so Chloe doesn’t get spiked by another runner, but they usually pass other competitors by the first mile on the 5-kilometer (3.1-mile) course.

Running with just some peripheral vision is scary, Sami says. But Chloe is highly focused, which has helped Sami feel secure enough to improve her personal record to 29:53.

“There is still a little element of being terrified you’re going to fall flat on your face,” Sami says.

Sami began running cross-country in eighth grade, and by the end of that school year, her vision deteriorated and she became legally blind. She was found to have the untreatable Stargardt disease, which is similar to sight-robbing macular degeneration that affects older adults.

In high school, she worried she wouldn’t be able to compete, but teamed up with a friend, Hannah Ticoras, who ran alongside her as a guide.

“All I wanted to do was run, and running with Hannah gave me that opportunity,” says Sami.

But Hannah graduated at the end of Sami’s sophomore year.  Her mobility teacher thought she’d be a good candidate for a guide dog, and after a month of training over the summer, the Stoner family welcomed Chloe home in August.

Approaching life with uncommon verve despite her disability, those close to her say, Sami strives to be a positive role model for other visually impaired people, including a young girl she began mentoring recently.

“I just hope people learn that just because you have a disability or some kind of disadvantage that it’s not the end of the world,” says Sami, who has a 4.0 grade point average this year. “You can still do stuff, you just have to find a way of doing it.”

What makes one person achieve so much despite all odds against it? Can we imagine ourselves overcoming what Sami has had to overcome? If the answer is “no,” as I believe most people would say, then we should use Sami’s story as lesson to be learned and strive to be the best we can be at what we do. We should strive for excellence in everything we do. As Aristotle said:

We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.

Blog posted by Steven Mintz, aka Ethics Sage, on November 2, 2012

The Bigger they are, the Harder they Fall: The Lance Armstrong Story

What do Lance Armstrong and Michael Milken have in Common?

Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, and now Lance Armstrong are superstars who reached the pinnacle of their sport only to be taken down by allegations of using performance-enhancing drugs. We know there are dozens like them yet to be exposed. We know it is wrong on many levels not the least of which is it compromises the level playing field that should exist in sports. The real questions are: Why did they do it? And, in the case of Armstrong: How should he be viewed in the public eye given the fact he has done so much good through his cancer-fighting foundation, Livestrong, and he, himself, successfully recovered from advanced testicular cancer that was first diagnosed in 1996?

For the record, neither Barry Bonds nor Roger Clemens has been convicted of using the drugs; Clemens was found not guilty of perjury; and Bonds guilty of obstructing justice. As for Armstrong, the Tour de France has indicated it would vacate all of his victories from 1999-2005 unless the decision is appealed by the International Cycling Union. 

Even Nike has had enough of Lance Armstrong. On October 17 the company announced its split with the cyclist even though it stood by Tiger Woods and Kobe Bryant after their sexual escapades. Nike’s statement explaining its decision was: "Due to the seemingly insurmountable evidence that Lance Armstrong participated in doping and misled Nike for more than a decade, it is with great sadness that we have terminated our contract with him.” Over the years, Nike paid Armstrong about $40 million for his endorsement.

With regard to Livestrong, Armstrong announced that he had stepped down as chairman of his cancer-fighting foundation so that the organization can focus on its mission instead of doping allegations against its founder.

Nike wasn't the only company to part ways with Armstrong. Trek, the company that supplied the bikes that he rode to seven Tour de France victories, severed ties as well. "Trek is disappointed by the findings and conclusions in the US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) report regarding Lance Armstrong," the company said in a statement. "Given the determinations of the report, Trek is terminating our long-term relationship with Lance Armstrong.”

Armstrong strongly denies doping, but did not fight the USADA accusations through arbitration, saying he thinks the process is unfair.

Cheating is wrong on any level. It is dishonest; violates the public trust; and compromises the integrity of the person and the sport. There is no excuse for such behavior, only a rationalization such as everyone does it or a moral blindness in the sense that these athletes believe they are above the law.

Armstrong's inspiring story is a compelling one. He not only recovered from cancer that had spread to his lungs and brain but then won the world's best-known bike race. He helped the Livestrong foundation grow from a small operation in Texas into one of the most popular charities in the country. In 2004, the foundation introduced the yellow "Livestrong" bracelets, selling more than 80 million and creating a global symbol for cancer awareness and survivorship.

Armstrong’s story reminds me of another person who fell from grace – financier Michael Milken. Milken played a key role in the development of high-yield bonds, called “junk bonds,” during the go-go years of the 1980s. He earned the moniker of “Junk Bond King.” These bonds financed the merger boom during those years that coincided with the start of a telecommunications boom and an explosion of Internet users.

Milken was indicted on 98 counts of racketeering and securities fraud in 1989 as the result of an insider trading investigation. He reached a plea bargain with SEC to six securities and reporting violations but was never convicted of racketeering or insider trading. He was sentenced to ten years in prison and permanently barred from the securities industry. Milken’s sentence was influenced by testimony against him by Ivan Boesky, an arbitrager who had financed corporate takeovers and amassed personal wealth of more than $200 million. Boesky provided evidence against Milken to reduce his own sentence in an SEC case and received a meager sentence of 3.5 years and a fine of $100 million.

Milken has been called a philanthropist because since the 1980s he has funded research into cancer and other life-threatening diseases through the Milken Family Foundation and Milken Institute. Milken himself beat prostate cancer. (Where did he get the money to finance the Foundation, I wonder?).

How should we view Lance Armstrong in light of the doping charges? As with most wrongdoings, it’s the cover-up that gets you in the most trouble and not the crime (i.e. Nixon and Watergate). Does that mean if Armstrong had come out right away and admitted his failing and was remorseful the public would have accepted it and let it go at that? I believe the answer is “yes.” I’m not saying I would agree with this response to my hypothetical. Unethical (and illegal) behavior is wrong and should be punished regardless of the reaction of the offending party. However, forgiveness is a virtue that should influence our view of someone who sincerely admits a mistake and asks for it.

What might have Armstrong said to restore his image? Here is my take: “I started taking performance-enhancing drugs after my battle with cancer. I continued to take long after because it helped provide the strength to continue to compete in cycling. I was wrong. My actions were unfair to my competitors and the sport. I admit my mistakes and accept the punishment.”

Had Armstrong reacted this way he would have been viewed differently in the public eye. Yes, he still would have been stripped of his Tour de France titles. However, and most important, he would have retained his integrity and honor as a person. The moral of Armstrong’s story is that in the end all we have in life is our reputation for honesty and trustworthiness. It takes a long time to build a reputation of trust but not very long to tear it down.

Blog by posted by Steven Mintz, aka Ethics Sage, on October 22, 2012

 

 

Are U.S. Corporate Tax Rates Stifling 'Ethical' Behavior?

Are Lower Corporate Income Rates the Answer to Increased Economic Activity?

Given the focus on ‘paying your fair share’ of taxes this election cycle, I want to bring attention to the controversial issue of whether the U.S. corporation tax rate is too high, leading to the outsourcing of jobs overseas; motivating companies to set up shop abroad and; skirting U.S. taxes. If this is the case, are U.S. corporations following ethical practices or, more specifically, acting like socially responsible businesses. It seems an appropriate topic for my blog since the Presidential debates start tonight and it is a contentious issue between the candidates.

As you may know, the U.S. has the highest corporate tax rate in the world. The U.S. rate stands at 39.2% when both federal and state rates are included. The second highest is Japan with a 36.8% rate after lowering it from 39.8 this past April. We all know how Japan’s economy has been in a malaise in the last two decades. Perhaps high corporate tax rates are part of the reason.

In comparison, France has a 33.3% rate [and a top rate of 75% on individual income of more than €1 million ($1.25 million)]; the United Kingdom, a 26% rate, China, 25%, and, at the low end, both Canada and Germany with a 15% rate. Finally, Switzerland’s rate is 8.5%. Perhaps not coincidentally, Canada, Germany, and Switzerland have fared better during the Great Recession of the past five years than other countries.

Loopholes and other special treatment for different kinds of businesses mean that businesses in the United States pay an effective rate of only 29.2% of their income, which puts the U.S. below the average of 31.9% among other major economies, according to analysis by the Treasury Department. However, the effective rate is not known until tax deductions are determined and it doesn’t affect the decision whether to shift profits overseas or keep it in the U.S.

Should corporations act in a ‘socially responsible’ manner and pay the highest corporate tax? Our capitalist economic system relies on the belief that corporate managers should act in the best interests of shareholders. And, as noted economist Milton Friedman stated in a 1970 essay in the NY Times Magazine, the only social responsibility of business is to maximize profits to enhance shareholder wealth. Friedman believed the basic doctrine of "social responsibility" involves the acceptance of the socialist view that political mechanisms, not market mechanisms, are the appropriate way to determine the allocation of scarce re­sources to alternative uses.

I believe the issue of social responsibility should be couched in the avoidance of taxes by U.S. businesses that keep their profits overseas. Under the U.S. tax system, corporate profits are not taxed until they are repatriated back to the states. Further, companies use a technique known as transfer pricing to shift more profits overseas to countries with low tax rates. Ireland is a popular destination for U.S. businesses with its low 12.5% rate. Essentially, parent corporations charge artificially low prices to overseas subsidiaries for goods shipped overseas thereby minimizing taxable income in the U.S. while those subsidiaries charge market prices for their sales to customers in overseas markets.

It has been estimated that the deferral of tax payments may be costing the U.S. Treasury $100 billion or more each year. Republicans contend that a lowering of the corporate tax rate would encourage U.S. businesses to repatriate profits and it could stem the tide of outsourcing jobs. There is no hard evidence to believe this to be so. However, I contend we are in desperate economic times in the U.S. and need to think outside the box to improve the economy.

My suggestion is to institute a lower rate of 15% to be competitive with other industrialized countries, and keep it in place for two years. If this leads to repatriated profits, higher taxes paid to the U.S. government, and the in-sourcing of jobs, then the 15% rate should be made permanent. If, however, U.S. businesses do not send their profits overseas and continue to outsource jobs, it means one or more of three things: (1) they are motivated by lower wage rates outside the U.S.; (2) they may feel stifled by the excessive regulatory system in the U.S.; and (3) they may truly want to be closer to their expanding overseas markets.

Corporate America reacts to incentives to maximize profits that can lead to higher personal income through bonus and other incentive compensation, and rising stock prices. There is nothing wrong with it. It is a part of our system. However, we must begin to initiate policies to reduce the growing number of people in poverty, bring more into the middle class, and do what is necessary to reverse years of stagnant growth that has lowered the overall income of far too many currently in the middle class. In my view this is an ethical issue, not one based on paying a “fair share” of the taxes. Corporations have an ethical obligation and social responsibility to do what it takes to improve the economic circumstances of all members of its community -- a community that depends on jobs and economic activity. Our society cannot prosper without an ever-expanding middle class and lowering of the poverty rate in this country.  

Blog posted by Steven Mintz, aka Ethics Sage, on October 3, 2012    

Butt Chugging and Binge Drinking Raise Questions of Personal Responsibility

Should the Minimum Drinking Age be lowered from 21?

The latest demonstration of irresponsible student behavior on college campuses is “Butt Chugging.” Yes, it’s as bad as it sounds.  For the sake of transparency, I need to define it, explain why it is done (Can there be a valid reason?), and point out the dangers along with the more popular practice on college campuses of “binge drinking.”

Butt Chugging has made its way into the Urban Dictionary – a Web-based dictionary of slang words and phrases. It contains over 5 million definitions. It is defined as “the act of ingesting alcohol through ones rectum…to increase the alcohol’s effect and the speed with which one becomes intoxicated.” You probably heard about the scandal on the campus of the University of Tennessee.

Early last Saturday, 20-year-old Alexander P. Broughton of Pi Kappa Alpha was brought to the emergency room and showed a blood-alcohol level thought to be “well over” .4, five times the legal limit, according to the Knoxville News Sentinel. The police officers went inside the Pi Kappa Alpha fraternity house where the butt chugging event took place and found several young males passed out in their bedrooms with “bags from wine boxes, some empty and some partially empty, strewn across the halls and rooms."

University of Tennessee police issued a dozen citations for underage drinking. The University of Tennessee suspended the fraternity chapter indefinitely.

I could say a lot about butt chugging but the best way to characterize it might be to point out that CNN reporter Anderson Cooper included it in his nightly “RidicuList.” Even the Deltas in Animal House didn’t act this way. They had more sense!!!

The most important issue is why students engage in the practice or the more common binge drinking. From my experience as a college professor I have found too many students are influenced by the ridiculous videos that often pop up on YouTube and images that can be seen nightly on a variety of reality TV shows. Often the butt chugging events are captured by cell phones and may even go viral. I found a variety of such videos with thousands of hits. I suppose students are looking for their 15 minutes of fame.

Too many students seem to be searching for a quicker, “better” way of making fools of themselves. If they could only channel their energies into studying math, science, and technology, perhaps we wouldn’t have to rely on immigrants to fill these key jobs that US students are unprepared – or unwilling – to fill.

Binge drinking is a much bigger problem on college campuses and may be the result of peer pressure and the stress that students feel to get good grades, graduate, and get (any) job. In a previous blog I wrote about the “boomerang generation.”

Binge drinking is commonly described as consuming five or more drinks in one sitting, more than once a week. According to a survey by The National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA), “approximately two of every five college students of all ages have reported engaging in binge drinking at least once.”

From a broader perspective, the NIAAA also points out that "every year approximately 5,000 people under the age of 21 die as a result of underage drinking. This includes 1,900 deaths from car accidents, 1,600 homicides, 300 suicides, and hundreds of other accidental deaths such as drownings, falls, burns."

Historically, states had a patchwork of laws, some restricting drinking to 21-year olds while others allowed it at 18 years old. President Ronald Reagan signed into effect the National Minimum Drinking Age Act (NMDAA) in 1984 to standardize the 21-year old requirement for all states. Many special interest groups promoted NMDAA. Perhaps the most influential special was Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD). MADD claims that the higher minimum legal drinking age has saved thousands (if not hundreds of thousands) of lives.

You may know of some parents who allow their kids to drink after turning 18 and before 21. The reason often given is since my son/daughter can join the military and fight in a war at 18, then s/he should be able to drink at 18. Another is if my kid can vote at 18 why not allow him/her to consume alcohol at that age? Some parents believe it will lead to more responsible alcohol-consumption practices down the road.

My feeling is as parents we need to set boundaries and stick to them. I also believe kids want boundaries and act more responsibly as a result in part because they come to believe their parents care about what happens to them. Learning to wait until 21 establishes those boundaries and, I believe, will lead to a sense of accomplishment for our youngsters once they make it to that age without consuming alcohol. This is an important lesson to learn in life – set a goal, stick to it, and celebrate your success.

I recall an incident on my college campus last year when a female student who engaged in binge drinking was raped. She barely remembered the incident or that she was unable to ward off her attacker because she was close to being unconscious as a result of her excessive alcohol consumption. I shudder to think how it will affect her life and future relationships.

Butt chugging, binge drinking, and underage drinking are serious problems that have significant potential to ruin the life of the individual engaging in those acts as well as others around them. All too many students engage in such behavior because they do not seem to understand that their actions have consequences. They approach life from a what’s in it for me or how will it make me feel perspective without thinking about how their actions might hurt others.

I’m concerned about the rationalizations put forth by some to lower the drinking age. I suppose it has become common place to identify problems these days by labeling them as disorders. Some have said those abusers of alcohol may suffer from "alexithymia." That is, they have troubles using words to help themselves feel better. They can talk easily and clearly about their feelings - but putting their feelings into words doesn't help them manage those emotions.

I don’t mean to belittle a disorder and recognize it may exist. I simply raise the following questions in closing: Don’t we have free will? Shouldn’t we learn to take control of our own lives and not have it defined by others? Isn’t it part of being a responsible person to control our desires, actions and behaviors and learn to do good for the sake of helping ourselves and others? Shouldn’t we take responsibility for our own actions?

I fear we have morphed into a society where all too many tend to blame others for their woes.

Perhaps Albert Einstein said it best so many years ago: “Man must cease attributing his problems to his environment, and learn again to exercise his will – his personal responsibility.”

Blog posted by Steven Mintz, aka Ethics Sage, on September 28, 2012

Should Students be permitted to Carry Guns on College Campuses?

Students Packing: iPhone 5; Apple iPad; Apple MacBook Air; and a Gun

The Wall Street Journal reports that at more college campuses across the country, students are winning the right to pack a gun. Many colleges have long been allowed to make their own decisions about whether students can carry firearms on campus, and most still forbid it. But gun-rights advocates working through the courts and state legislatures have managed to secure a significant expansion of gun rights at public universities. Gun-rights advocates argue that only state legislatures—and not colleges and universities—have the power to regulate guns under a legal doctrine known as pre-emption.

A major force behind the push to ease restrictions on guns on campus is an organization called Students for Concealed Carry. Started in the aftermath of the Virginia Tech shootings, the organization has grown to include chapters across the country, and it lobbies state lawmakers and school officials to allow people with proper permits to carry guns on campus.

David Burnett, the group's national spokesman and also a nursing student at the University of Kentucky, said he believes anyone who is responsible, law-abiding and trained should carry a gun. "If criminals knew that, they'd be more hesitant to attack".

I've never been a believer in the notion that the knowledge others' are packing a weapon might slow down the rising trend of violence on college campuses and on our streets. Violence begets more violence. We live in a violent society. It is depicted all the time on the internet, in video games, television, and in the movies. The answer is not to put guns in the hands of more citizens, although I do understand the emotional response of families devasted by killings that touch home for the need for "justice" to be served, albeit sometimes couched in the form of a revenge motive.

On March 6, 2012, undoubtedly motivated by the killing of 12 students and a teacher at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado on April 20, 1999, the highest court in Colorado struck down the University of Colorado's gun ban. And, the Oregon Court of Appeals ruled in September 2011 that the state's Board of Higher Education had no authority to prohibit weapons on college campuses.

In both cases, the courts declined to consider whether the Second Amendment empowers students to carry weapons on campus. Instead, they held that state laws largely removed the matter from universities' control.

Students are now permitted by law to carry guns on public campuses in five states—four more than two years ago. The movement to ease gun restrictions on college campuses gained momentum after the 2007 killings at Virginia Tech, with advocates arguing that students, if armed, would have been able to stop the shooter who left 32 people dead.

Until the carnage at Virginia Tech, the 1966 sniping rampage by Charles Whitman from the University of Texas’s Austin campus landmark 307-foot tower had remained the deadliest campus shooting in U.S. history. Whitman, a former university student, opened fire from the 28^th-floor observation deck, shooting people on the streets 231 feet below. Sixteen people were killed and another 31 were wounded before police killed him about 90 minutes later.

Other killings include on April 3, 2012, when a student at the small, private, Oikos University in Oakland, California allegedly killed seven people at the college's campus; the student told authorities he was upset with being expelled and had sought out a female college official who was not present.

Earlier on in 2008, a gunman opened fire in a lecture hall at Northern Illinois University killing five people and injuring 17 before turning the gun on himself.

As a college professor I am concerned about the possibility of my students packing a gun along with their electronic devices. I realize it is no laughing matter but my mind can’t stop obsessing on a student I once had who argued for ten minutes about a grade even though, after reviewing his paper, I refused more than once, to change it. He seemed to feel entitled to the higher grade even though he didn’t earn it. Or the student who stormed out of my office after I told him to study harder and party less after he smelled of alcohol in an office meeting.

I hate to think about it but might have those students threatened my life with the gun they were packing if California passed a concealed weapon law that permits college student to carry a gun on college campuses?

The answers to growing violence in our streets and on college campuses are complicated. The sad part is neither of the Presidential candidates appears to want to address the issue. To me it is one of the most important issues facing our nation. One sign of a civilized society is in solving problems through discourse and not violence. Have we become so de-sensitized to violence that we have forgotten the message that a civilized society that can no longer feel outrage, can no longer be civilized?

Blog posted by Steven Mintz, aka Ethics Sage, on September 25, 2012

Cyber ethics education

Teaching Young People about Cybercrime

In a recent Workplace Ethics blog I addressed the issue of cybercrime and how it affects us on a personal level and in business organizations. The purpose this blog is to look at the causes of cybercrime amongst our youngsters and cyber ethics education to address these issues. As with all ethics education, it should start at an early age, be continuous throughout one’s educational experiences, and be supported in the home.

New research has found that peer influence and low self-control are associated with juvenile cybercrimes, including computer hacking, online bullying, digital piracy, and viewing online pornography.

Criminologist Thomas Holt at Michigan State University and colleagues surveyed more than 400 middle and high school students and found that those whose friends committed cybercrime were more likely to do the same. Previous research tended to focus on college students rather than younger offenders.

Holt stresses the need for parents’ awareness of their children’s social circle and Internet activity. “It’s important to know what your kids are doing when they’re online and who they are associating with both online and offline.”

According to the study, published online in the American Journal of Criminal Justice on June 17, 2011, a lack of self-control is also correlated with cybercrimes in middle and high school students, but Holt said this aspect is harder for parents to deal with. “These are the more risk-taking, impulsive kids; they’re more likely to act on opportunity,” he explained. “So understanding your children’s potential for behavior is important as well.”

Holt said that parental-control computer programs can help, but he noted that children are often able to evade such software.

“It’s not just enough to have a Net Nanny,” Holt said. “Parents need to be more proactive with their kids and discuss these ethical dilemmas to using a computer, such as whether it’s right or wrong to steal music or to download something without paying for it.

I feel strongly that cyber ethics education is a must. Students tend to react more positively to discussing right and wrong behavior when they are personally invested. After all, it is difficult to discuss with youngsters the ethics of some Congressional representative; they can’t relate; they have no frame of reference. However, using computers to steal information or bully others is front and center in their consciousness.  

Dr. Marvin Berkowitz of St. Louis University conducted an analysis of the behavioral development factors that must be considered in searching for an optimal age range for instruction of cyber ethics. Dr. Berkowitz concluded that the 9-12 ages was a "very reasonable" age to target for a first time strategy of cyber ethics instruction. Several factors led to this conclusion. This age range is considered a "gateway" age and has been used by other groups to begin message delivery; e.g. substance abuse and sex education. Absent hard data on the age at which children actually begin to go on line, we can generally assume that by age 13 children have routine access to the Internet. The 9-12 ages is also the point in development where children begin to understand abstract values, for example, privacy rights, and can begin to evaluate the consequences of their actions. It is important to be able to think abstractly, particularly when working in a medium that is routinely described as "virtual."

Dr. Berkowitz explored seven issues that could be potentially addressed in a cyber-ethics awareness campaign. Dr. Berkowitz suggests that each cyber specific issue encompasses one or more "derivative" issues. For example, the cyber issue of computer hacking contains the derivative (or core) issues of theft, vandalism and privacy. Copyright issues contain the derivative issues of theft and ownership. Other cyber behavior problems can be dissected in the same way. It is important to identify these derivative issues as they are often dealt with in value, ethics and character education.

General character education has been found to have great preventive power, even when the specific issues in which they are contained are never discussed. Thus any discussion, formal or informal, of behavior, ethics and responsibility has the potential to develop core values essential to acceptable online behavior.

Technology is neither good nor bad, nor even neutral. Technology is one part of the complex relationships that people form with each other and the world around them. How we use the technology – for what purpose – is what determines whether it is used for good purposes or bad purposes. As in most things in life, it all depends on one’s attitude and beliefs about right and wrong. Albert Einstein once said: “Weakness of attitude becomes weakness of character.”

Blog posted by Steven Mintz, aka Ethics Sage, on September 12, 2012

Catch Me if you Can

The Harvard Fraudster

Perhaps you remember the Steven Spielberg movie, Catch Me if you Can, starring Leonardo DiCaprio, that told the story of Frank Abagnale, known for his history as a former confidence trickster, check forger, imposter, and escape artist. He became notorious in the 1960s for passing $2.5 million worth of forged checks across 26 countries over the course of five years, beginning when he was 16 years old.

Abagnale became one of the most famous impostors ever, claiming to have assumed no fewer than eight separate identities as an airline pilot, a doctor, a U.S. Bureau of Prisons agent, and a lawyer. He escaped from police custody twice (once from a taxiing airliner and once from a U.S. federal penitentiary) before he was 21 years old.

Abagnale served fewer than five years in prison before starting to work for the federal government. He became a consultant and lecturer at the academy and field offices for the FBI. He also ran Abagnale & Associates, a financial fraud consultancy company.  Like all too many criminals, he was rewarded for his criminal efforts by talking to others about how to avoid making the same “mistakes”.

On December 16, 2010, life imitated art when former Harvard student, Adam Wheeler, pleaded guilty to all 20 counts against him, admitting that he duped the Harvard admissions office and defrauded the University out of over $40,000 in grants and prizes.

Wheeler’s story seems to have been inspired by the movie. He committed larceny, identity fraud, falsifying an endorsement, and pretending to hold a degree. He was sentenced to 10 years’ probation and ordered to make restitution of $45,806 to Harvard University and to continue the psychological treatment that he had begun since his arrest.

Wheeler conceded that he dishonestly gained admission to Harvard by fabricating SAT scores, falsifying letters of recommendation, and forging high school and college transcripts. He also admitted to plagiarizing essays and a research proposal that earned him a Hoopes Prize, Sargent Prize, and Rockefeller research grant while he was a Harvard student.

It seems that Wheeler went one step too far in his quest to fool all of the people, all of the time, when he applied for a Rhodes Scholarship. He claimed to have a 4.0 average. He did not. His résumé said he had coauthored four books with a Harvard English professor. The professor he listed did not coauthor books with undergraduates, and college students, even at Harvard, typically do not have four advanced books to their credit by senior year. Wheeler also wrote that he was fluent in Old Persian, Classical Armenian, and “Old English”.

Wheeler just couldn’t keep away from playing the game. But the tale began unraveling during the interview process for the Scholarship, when a Harvard professor noticed inconsistencies and alerted administrators. Wheeler was expelled from the school and the criminal investigation was launched.

On November 11, 2011, Wheeler allegedly violated the condition of his probation that prohibits him from portraying himself as a Harvard student or claiming that he ever attended Harvard. Apparently, he submitted a resume to U.S. Green Data, Inc. that said he had attended Harvard. His attorney argued that he should not be sent to jail because he needed to be working and was emotionally “fragile”. [Lying and deceiving and covering-up will do that to you.]

The lawyer claimed that after Wheeler lost his job, he felt financial pressure to pay rent for his apartment and the $45,806 restitution to Harvard ordered by the court. Wheeler had only just found a new job—performing manual labor—a week ago before he was summoned to court for this alleged violation. According to his attorney, Wheeler was not a flight risk because he voluntarily appeared in court for sentencing and would return to court whenever he is called back. “Going to jail would be particularly harmful for Wheeler because his absence could cost him his job and return him to a precarious financial state”.

Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, three times, four and more, shame on the legal justice system.

On December 23, 2011, Wheeler was sentenced to one year in prison.

So what’s the lesson to be learned from Wheeler’s story? Sadly, it is that crime does pay. Here is a guy that broke virtually all the rules in the book for honorable behavior and took the pursuit of self-interest to a new (low) level.

Actually, I like his own assessment of his character in an e-mail sent to fellow Harvard students:

“My own, brief, assessment of my character is that I am sententious, crypto-tendentious, slightly pedantic with a streak of contrarianism, a fascination with any pedagogical approach to Shakespeare, and a decent sense of humor.”

Wheeler also remarked on his made-up time at MIT:

“At MIT I was, to put it poorly, suckled upon the teat of disdain. That being said (fortified by a reflexive snort), I was inspired thereby to apply to Harvard, where the humanities, in short, are not, simpliciter, a source of opprobrium”.

Who could argue with that logic? Who can understand what he said? And there’s the rub. The red flags were there but ignored.  A blatant faker like Wheeler should have been outed much sooner than he was.

The moral of the story is we have to be more vigilant in assessing the behavior of those around us because they can do real harm whether to institutions, such as Harvard, or to folks in our community. All we need do is think about the actions of James Holmes, who, during a midnight showing of “The Dark Knight Rises”, killed 12 and wounded 58. It appears he tried to reach out for help, and red flags existed, but those in the know found it easier to dismiss the warnings. It reminds me of the sex scandal at Penn State. The warnings signs were there but it was easier to hope the problem would go away than be proactive and avoid a disaster before it happens.

Blog posted by Steven Mintz, aka Ethics Sage, on September 7, 2012

The Role of Ethics in Religion

Can we be Ethical without being Religious?

A longstanding debate has been whether ethics plays a role in religion. Most religions have an ethical component. Ethics, which is a major branch of philosophy, encompasses right conduct and good life. It is significantly broader than the common conception of analyzing right and wrong. Ethics deals with ideas such as Right, Good and Duty and these concepts were discussed in ancient Greece by Plato and Aristotle in the 3rd & 4th Century BCE.

A central aspect of ethics is "the good life", the life worth living or life that is simply satisfying, which is held by many philosophers to be more important than traditional moral codes. The ancient Greeks called it eudaimonia or happiness. The ancient Greeks believed happiness was brought about by living one’s life in accordance with virtue – positive traits of character. Virtue in the highest sense, in an adult who has been brought up well, will not just involve good personal habits such as courage and temperance, but also friendship and justice and intellectual virtue. The essence of virtue is in the wholeness of the person brought about by integrity.

The influential philosopher, Immanuel Kant defended the idea of God as a basic requirement of ethics. We ought to be virtuous and do our duty, he said. Kant believed virtue should be rewarded by happiness, and it would be intolerable if it were not so. Since it's clear that virtue often does go unrewarded in the present life, Kant argued that the soul must be immortal. Virtue must receive its due recompense in a future life, and there must be a God guaranteeing that it is so rewarded. The existence of God and the immortality of the soul were what Kant called the postulates of practical reason - the assumptions without which, so he claimed, ethics and a moral life would not be possible.

Revealed religions like Zoroastrianism, Judaism, Christianity and Islam do prescribe some clear and unambiguous rules to follow. If their scriptures were authored or dictated by God, then the commands in them are God's own commands. They cannot be changed if human circumstances change or ethical ideas progress.

If religion has a role in moral decision-making, then what should be that role? In America, for many individuals, their religion is a centrally defining characteristic of who they are, such that they would be nearly incapable of making ethical decisions independently of their religious beliefs. 

Further, some of our most basic moral sentiments are directly connected to religious ideology.  For example, most people agree that things like murder and adultery are always wrong, regardless of circumstances.  Most major world religions echo these sentiments, and it can be argued that the ancient codes of conduct these traditions embody are actually the original source of our social intuitions.  At a minimum, we do seem to regard religion as a good source of basic moral guidance, making it unwise to argue that there ought to be no connection between religion and ethics.

The link between religion and morality is best illustrated by the Golden Rule.  Virtually all of the world’s great religions contain in their religious texts some version of the Golden Rule: “Do unto others as you would wish them do unto you”. In other words, we should treat others the way we would want to be treated. This is the basic ethic that guides all religions. If we do so, happiness will ensue.  

I’ve studied other religions and identified the following religious tenets that speak to the Golden Rule:

 

Religion          Expression of the Golden Rule                                                       Citation 

Christianity     All things whatsoever ye would that men should do to        

                              you, Do ye so to them; for this is the law and the prophets.              Matthew 7:1

Confucianism  Do not do to others what you would not like yourself.

                               Then there will be no resentment against you, either

                                in the family or in the state.                                                             Analects 12:2

Buddhism           Hurt not others in ways that you yourself would

                                find hurtful.                                                                                           Udana-Varga 5,1

Hinduism           This is the sum of duty, do naught onto others what you

                                 would not have not have them do unto you.                                  Mahabharata 5, 1517

Islam               No one of you is a believer until he desires for his brother

                            that which he desires for himself.                                                             Sunnah

Judaism           What is hateful to you, do not do to your fellowman.

                             This is the entire Law; all the rest is commentary.                           Talmud, Shabbat 3id

Taoism             Regard your neighbor’s gain as your gain, and your

                             neighbor’s loss as your own loss.                                                          Tai Shang Kan Yin P’ien

Zoroastri-        That nature alone is good which refrains from doing

anism                  another whatsoever is not good for itself.                                          Dadisten-I-dinik, 94, 5

 

Some people, especially religious people, say that there can be no morality without religion. They say that without God, ethics is impossible. In my religion, Judaism, a revealed religion, ethics or morality is the attempt to arrive at a view of the nature of human values, of how we ought to live and of what constitutes right conduct. In order to arrive at a view, it sets goals and assesses actions by the extent to which they further these goals, e.g. if happiness is a goal then the action which produces most happiness to all affected is the right one.
 
Revelation too, through the written and oral law, directs people to an understanding of the nature of human values, of how they ought to live and of what constitutes right conduct; such teachings and examples are scattered amongst various verses and sources.  Examples of such moral teachings are:-
 
You shall do right and good (beyond the call of duty)
Love your neighbor
Correct behavior between man and man
Discipline or training of character under the law
Piety beyond the law
The need to be respectful, earn a living; engage in learning and culture and so forth.
  
The role of philosophers is to accurately try to define and promote ethical concepts based upon logic and reason.  A religious person on the other hand, follows his or her code of conduct because he believes that it is proper behavior and reaction to the varying challenges and circumstances which arise during the course of life. 
 
I end with two quotes. The first is from Kant: “In law a man is guilty when he violates the rights of others. In ethics he is guilty if he only thinks of doing so.”

The second one sums up, I believe, the moral challenges of our time. Archie Carroll, a noted ethicist said: “As religion and faith are being driven out of the public square, the Judeo-Christian ethical foundations that have sustained our country since its beginning, are being lost and are being replaced with a humanistic amorality, a self-centered, pragmatic indifference that will ensure that our moral compasses will fail to point us in the right direction in the future.

Blog posted by Steven Mintz, aka Ethics Sage, on September 4, 2012

Sports Ethics

Gamesmanship Crowds Out Sportsmanship

Think about it. In the last month we’ve heard that the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency stripped U.S. bicyclist Lance Armstrong's seven Tour de France titles because of allegations that he used a performance-enhancing drug. Eight female badminton doubles players from South Korea, China, and Indonesia were disqualified from the London Olympics after trying to lose matches to receive a more favorable place in the tournament. The Badminton World Federation stated that it punished them for "not using one's best efforts to win a match" and "conducting oneself in a manner that is clearly abusive or detrimental to the sport." Major League baseball suspended one of its best players this year – S.F. Giants outfielder Melky Cabrera – for 50 games for using a performance-enhancing drug and attempting to cover it up by using a website to create evidence to support a claim that the outfielder inadvertently took the substance that caused a positive drug test.

This doesn’t even begin to identify the problem with ethics (or lack thereof) in sports. All of the above seem tame when viewed from the perspective of institutionally-driven unethical conduct in sports. I refer to the bounty scandal at the New Orleans Saints and the cover-up of child sexual abuse occurring at Penn State.

Ethicist Kirk O. Hanson points out that to understand the role ethics plays in sport and competition, it is important to make a distinction between gamesmanship and sportsmanship. Gamesmanship is built on the principle that winning is everything. Athletes and coaches are encouraged to bend the rules wherever possible in order to gain a competitive advantage over an opponent, and to pay less attention to the safety and welfare of the competition. Some of the key tenants of gamesmanship are:

• Winning is everything
• It's only cheating if you get caught
• It is the referee's job to catch wrongdoing, and the athletes and coaches have no
• inherent responsibility to follow the rules
• The ends always justify the means

Some examples of gamesmanship are:

• Faking a foul or injury
• Attempting to get a head start in a race
• Tampering with equipment, such as corking a baseball bat in order to hit the ball farther
• Covert personal fouls, such as grabbing a player underwater during a water polo match
• Inflicting pain on an opponent with the intention of knocking him or her out of the game, like the Saint's bounty scandal
• The use of performance-enhancing drugs
• Taunting or intimidating an opponent
• A coach lying about an athlete's grades in order to keep him or her eligible to play

All of these examples place greater emphasis on the outcome of the game than on the manner in which it is played.

A more ethical approach to athletics is sportsmanship. Under a sportsmanship model, healthy competition is seen as a means of cultivating personal honor, virtue, and character. It contributes to a community of respect and trust between competitors and in society. The goal in sportsmanship is not simply to win, but to pursue victory with honor by giving one's best effort.

Sports are an important part of the American psyche. We cheer for our heroes and feel disillusioned when they fail us by cheating to get ahead. We root for our favorite team and feel betrayed when they don’t give it their all.

Sports have huge impact people's lives, as they create unity, promote values and community pride. We have an unstated set of ethical standards in sports including fairness, integrity, responsibility, and respect. All the athletes, administrators, coaches, officials and supporters taking part in sport, must take the personal responsibility to ensure that the sport is fun and fair for everyone.

Morals, ethics and values are more than rules or laws. These are implied on duties or actions that one should take and help judge what is right or good for a person. If someone does not perform in that way, then their behavior is contrary to sports ethics.

One of the common problems of following morals and values in sports is that these differ from one player to another. It thus becomes an obligation of coaches, team captains and leaders to instill basic sports morals and ethics to their individual players and as a team. Most important, sports leaders should serve as a role model for players and walk the talk of ethics. Clearly, this did not occur when New Orleans Saints coaches put a price on the head of a player for the opposing team.

When you come right down to it, sports are mimicking what is wrong with society today. In the last few years we’ve witnessed the irresponsible actions of financial institutions that acted out of self-interest without regard to the interests of consumers. Local government officials accept payments from lobbyist groups and give preference to their needs and wants over what is good for the community. And who can forget the ineptitude of the General Service Administration (GSA) in its defense of the job it did assessing the General Services Administration’s ethics programs in 2010, the year in which GSA hosted a conference in Las Vegas that has recently become a scandal for the agency.

We need to do something about the lack of a strong ethic in sports before it is too late. In the last few years, countless ethical issues have arisen in the world of college sports. A series of scandals involving players receiving improper benefits and coaches involved in recruiting violations have challenged the integrity of college athletics, leaving many to wonder if sports are compatible with the goals of higher education.

Sports and competition create challenges to proper behavior at the earliest of ages. As pointed out by Hanson, every year millions of young boys and girls sign up to play in local youth sports leagues across the country. From hockey to Little League Baseball, many youth dream of one day playing under the lights, in a packed stadium, in front of thousands of screaming fans. We know that for most young people, that dream will never become a reality.

That raises the question of what is the real role of youth sports in society? Is it only to recognize the select few destined for athletic greatness and to weed out the rest? Or is there an inherent value for youth in playing sports, even if a career ends in the third grade? If so, what is that value, and how can we it maximize it?

Blog posted by Steven Mintz, aka Ethics Sage, on August 29, 2012