I’m a student at a university with an honor code that is taken very seriously. Professors place a lot of trust in students’ integrity: they assign take-home exams with conditions (no access to textbooks, notes or Internet) and they leave offices containing answer keys unlocked at all hours. Although I have never taken advantage of this trust, it has occurred to me that it would be easy to do so with little probability of being caught. I imagine this puts struggling students in an ethically precarious position. Do professors (and people in general) have an obligation to avoid creating situations in which it is both tempting and easy for others to behave unethically? ILANA WALDER-BIESANZ, BOSTON
The intention of honor codes is to generate the very situation you describe as precarious: they’re supposed to create ethical temptation. The fact that you could so easily cheat is what makes the code meaningful — instead of policing you through conventional means, the university is placing students in a position where they must consciously choose to be honest. The problem you perceive is its own kind of educational trope. But when you add the words “and people in general,” it becomes less clear. It suggests that part of being an ethical person entails making it easier for other people to be equally ethical in everyday life. This quandary sometimes surfaces over questions of infidelity and — more uncomfortably — in situations where victims are viewed as partly at fault for the hardships that befall them (if a shop owner totally ignores shoplifting, is he enticing a potential shoplifter into becoming his worst self?). I’m not going to pretend there’s an unequivocal response to this query. I will, however, say this: Removing someone’s agency from a decision essentially forces him or her to adopt whatever morality you’ve designed. If you’re certain that people will behave unethically if given the chance, there’s a social responsibility to take that opportunity away from them. But that’s an almost impossible thing to be certain of.
This post seemed to be a very simple answer at first. My immediate reaction was - it is no ones obligation to control environments of ethical temptations. When first writing this post, I had a certain answer that suddenly became a hot mess of 2,000 words. I read over and found so many bias approaches, generalizations and assumptions. This topic is a very dangerous ToK subject being that there has to be a restriction between right and wrong. The column is a dilemma between morals and ethics - appropriate for this area of knowledge. Before analyzing, I’ve decided it’s important to distinguish morals and ethics. Morals are principles and habits that have been formulated around what is right or wrong. Morality is a personal compass of right and wrong. Whilst, ethics is a social system of rules of conduct recognized in respect to a particular class of human actions, or particular group of culture. Ethics are governed by professional and legal guidelines.
With that, we come to first look at Ilana’s personal experience with ethical temptation. As we are assuming, her University is against cheating. In this case, cheating would be using help from someone or materials during a take-home exam. Ilana writes to the ethicist claiming her professors offer an environment that eases and tempts cheating. She claims to never have took advantage of the trust in students integrity however she acknowledges the ease and likeliness of never getting caught. With that, she follows up with the question: Do professors (and people in general) have an obligation to avoid creating situations in which it is both tempting and easy for others to behave unethically?
Pretending the question is directed to me and focusing on Ilana’s situation, I’d say yes and no. The institution to which she attends has an honor code to which they take very serious in her description. She was not forced to attend a school with this system, in fact, she chose to go to the school. Furthermore, there is a probability that when enrolling into this institution, a contract requiring abidance to the system was signed.That being said, to an extent, the students did promise to follow the guidelines set and the teachers did inform them of it. However, the environment to which these rules are preformed may tempt students to go against them which comes to Ilana’s conflict. I say that yes, to an extent it is a teacher’s obligation to create an environment appropriate for the behavior they expect from their students. However, considering this a college level classroom, teacher’s aren’t obligated to baby sit and impose morals on students who are most likely considered adults by the law (18 y.o.). The students have most likely completed lower, middle and high school and have been to an education system, and have already took exams. They have already formulated their morals on the task - whether its ok to cheat or not. With that, I say, no it is not a teachers’ responsibility to create an environment to avoid ethical temptations. However, they shouldn’t disregard the possibility of this happening. With that, they must create a set of degrees to which one has broken the rules, and what type of consequence should occur to each of these degrees. All students and faculty should be aware of these rules, degrees and consequences and take it into consideration. Hence, I believe that a student has the right to know all the rules they’re expected to abide, given any situation or environment. However, is one is so worried about students acting against these rules, then perhaps they should facilitate this. Yet again, the teacher doesn’t have obligation to ensure everyones honesty. This is a personal decision that one makes, and they should make it knowing the possible consequences.
When we apply this to another situation, like shop lifting, this doesn’t change my opinion. Again, we all have different views towards stealing. Some people believe it is ok and others don’t. However, as a society, we have decided that stealing is not ok. And with that, ethical guidelines have set consequences to those who chose to steal. Shop owners have so much to worry about their store to make sure that they gain a profit and satisfy their customers that they shouldn’t sense the obligation to question and worry about each customer in the store and whether or not they’re paying. However, knowing that this has occurred a number of times already, they shouldn’t ease the process of stealing like not having security cameras or not putting a tag on the items.
With that, we come to the ethicists response, which was similar to mine. I agree with the idea that given the knowledge someone will act against ethical guidelines, you should as a social responsibility take away the chance of them doing so. However, how can we be certain of this? We can’t. But if there are set rules against it, then we do fear of it happening and so we consequently shouldn’t ease the occurrence of such “prohibited” things. I also agree with the ethicist’s idea that with set rules we do impose a certain degree of OUR morals on others. This is in fact true, however, like I said, Ilana wasn’t obligated to go this university, she choose to. However, this isn’t the case in many situations and so we can’t really ensure whether this is the right approach or not.
In conclusion, I believe that it isn’t someones obligation to ensure they’ve created an environment free of ethical temptations. After all, everyones’ morals are different, and so they will all act differently in an exact same environment. However, if one knows and fears of unethical behavior, then its best to avoid temptations like take-home exams. But like I said, no one is obligated to do so. We should all act under our own responsibility, understand the consequences of our acts and how they’ll not only affect ourselves but others as well.
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