Background
You are the chair of your university’s nine-
The subject of this month’s meeting is a letter from the Provost, Mary Lingram, to you as the chair of the Student Council. In the letter (Document 2.1), Provost Lingram discusses the university’s plan to reduce plagiarism by purchasing a site license to CopyCatcher.com, a plagiarism-
You distribute copies of the letter to the other members of the Student Council, and you can see that they don’t look happy. After a minute, you ask, “What do you think?”
Crystal Noack responds first. “Well, speaking as someone who’s over twenty thousand dollars in debt,” she says, pausing for effect, “I’m not wild about paying a for-
“Yeah,” agrees Adam Levanger, “I don’t plagiarize. How is it fair that I have to pay?”
“How do we even know how big a problem plagiarism is in the first place?” Laura Kim asks. “The Provost didn’t say anything about how pervasive it is here.”
Sa’id Hamdi says, “What about my rights as a student? I don’t get a say in whether my paper gets uploaded to CopyCatcher? Isn’t there an intellectual-
“Okay, it seems that this is kind of complicated,” you say. “How about we do this: Let’s take a look at the site and see if we can understand how it works. By Monday I’ll write a post to our discussion list, soliciting your arguments. I think the best strategy is to look at the ethics of how this would affect us, not the cost—
“That’s right,” Adam interrupts. “Six bucks a year is three coffees.”
“Okay,” you continue. “If we don’t like it, it has to be because it violates our rights, or something like that. So let’s come at this from the ethics angle. But we need to think about what the Provost said about how it’s in everyone’s best interest if people realize we’re not all a bunch of cheaters. If you all post to the list by the end of the week, I’ll post a draft of a letter to the Provost by Monday. Then we’ll take it from there.”
Download the document below, and then begin your assignment.
Download a copy of Document 2.1.
Your Assignment
Once you’ve familiarized yourself with the case background and document, complete the assignment below. Your instructor will tell you how he or she would like you to submit your work.
1. Analyze the ethical implications of the university’s plan to require that all students subsidize a site license for Copycatcher.com. Consider the plan from the perspective of the four ethical standards (rights, justice, utility, and care). Do all of the standards pertain? Which standards enable you to make apersuasive case for your recommended course of action?
2. Present your findings in a letter to Provost Lingram.
Reflecting on Your Work
Once you’ve completed your assignment, write a reflection about your work using the prompt below.
1. Were you initially in support of Provost Lingram’s proposal, or did you share the concerns of the students in the case scenario? Did your opinion about the proposal change after you considered it from the perspective of the four ethical standards? Why or why not? Did you find using the standards to be an effective method of ethical evaluation? In the text box below, write a reflection of one or two paragraphs about what you learned from analyzing the ethical implications of the provost’s request.