No matter how many times I believe I have “heard everything unethical,” something comes along to take it to new heights.
Dartmouth College, that prestigious bastion of learning of the Ivy League, offers a course entitled: “Sports, Ethics and Religion.” It is a popular course and as a matter of fact, Dartmouth religion professor Randall Balmer, has 272 students who have signed up to sit at his feet and to be present to hang on to his very words..
Except no one much does that anymore. In fact, class attendance only accounts for 15 percent of the grade, so what the heck; why bother to show up at all?
But wait, it gets worse.
No thanks, I’ll click
In an article by Peter Jacobs for Business Insider (Nov. 12, 2014) entitled: “43 Dartmouth Students Suspected of Cheating in Ethics Class Designed for Athletes,” the writer explains:
“According to The Dartmouth (the campus newspaper), the 43 students allegedly skipped class, but got other students to sign in for them and answer questions using an electronic clicker. ‘Each clicker is registered with one student, who gains points for submitting answers to certain in-class questions.’”
At Dartmouth, and many other schools there is a clicker system. Each student has a clicker and it is often the only way the professor can really tell who is showing up to hear him speak. The clicker is for the students to sign in from most anywhere. There is, logically, one clicker per student. This particular class is designed for student athletes – but not exclusively.
Per the professor:
“I wanted to appeal to their interest, have a positive experience, allow them to succeed and build on that for their remainder of Dartmouth … Obviously it’s a great disappointment to me that many of the students, including many athletes, subverted the whole experience.”
You see, something started to eat at the professor. It was more than some empty seats. According to the article:
“On Oct. 30, Balmer measured how many students were in class. After asking the class a question to answer on their clickers, he passed out a paper version of the same question — ‘In the world of sports, what happened on August 22, 1926’ — to each student in the classroom.”
That is correct ladies and gentlemen; the professor actually handed out a piece of paper with the same question he asked them via computer. Though 272 students “said” they were in class via clickers, when the good professor handed out the papers, he had 43 sheets left over. What was happening was that friends of those in the class were bringing multiple clickers into the lectures.
So much for ethics!
Before we go any further (and before you break Google), on August 22, 1926, not much happened of great note in the world of sports save for several baseball games. If you like sports history, I will share that some teams playing that day are those that have long ago faded into the athletic sunset; they include the Philadelphia Athletics, Brooklyn Robins and New York Giants.
Back to ethics.
I want to congratulate Professor Balmer; he tried. However, I am neither shocked nor angered. As a society, we have set our expectations for students so low that I would be shocked if this didn’t happen in multiple colleges and in multiple classes.
As someone who speaks on ethics from coast to coast, I have seen similar behaviors manifest themselves in the corporate world, in the not-for-profit world, in government and in sports. Because our ethical expectations have been set so low, we have not only come to expect unethical behavior from others, but also from ourselves (but professor, everyone’s doing it!).
Make no mistake, 43 students may have been absent, but the unethical behavior falls on at least 86. The 43 were able to convince or coerce 43 others to cheat for them. Both groups are guilty and I could argue that the 43 who accepted the clickers from those absent are even more unethical; they have no spine
Choices and consequences
The geniuses a Dartmouth – and there are many, have broadly failed to grasp the most simple of ethical principles: choices and consequences. Forty-three students are about to see where their poor choices will land them, and as I said 43 others should be piled right in there with them.
Will this event end the world as we know it? Of course not. However, it sets a pattern for the students, especially for those who will suffer consequences and those who assisted them. One little unethical act will lead to another and they do escalate unless there is an awareness.
Life often works that way.