Week 4 - Marissa Gomez-Alforja A03

Amy Block Joy brought up an interesting concept in "Ethics and 'Breaking Bad': Developing and practicing ethical skills". Knowing the right thing to do is not the same as doing what is right. This statement made me think... How can someone know what is right, but not do what is right? She states that she "was wrong to assume that knowing what's right will lead to doing what's right". Action-oriented ethics are not used/shown by everyone. I think it is pretty common for the average person to quietly mind their own business while thinking, "that was wrong". The "right" ethical thing is to do in certain situations is hard to gauge because things are not always black and white. There are no guidelines that tell you exactly how to handle a certain situation. You have to use your knowledge to the best of your abilities and come up with a plan of action. Joy believes that in order for a person to show action-oriented ethics, one must be really confident. I agree.

Probably one of the main reasons why there are not a lot of student activists is because a lot of these issues are unknown. DeBoer claims that college students treat college like a hotel party. Most students, I think, believe in the ideology of a college campus. They go to class, buy an occasional cup of coffee, or buy a sweater to rep their school, on top of their normal tuition. The idea of the university just wanting to bring in a lot of money is the last thing on their mind. Students are just trying to get through the day, let alone the years left at that university. The confident, "woke" students are the ones who will show action-oriented ethics. But why is it that there are only few confident students? How would students build their confidence in a situation like this so that there will be more student activists? I'm sure if students were aware of this issue at the university, there would be far more involvement and influence on change.

References:

DeBoer, Fredrick. "Why We Should Fear University, Inc." The New York Times Magazine, 9 September 2015, 1-8.

Joy, Amy Block. (2014). Ethics and 'Breaking Bad': Developing and practicing ethical skills. Compliance & Ethics

Image. (n.d) Retrieved from https://hackernoon.com/6-myths-about-ethical-open-source-licenses-3bfbd042b1dc.