August 2008 Ethics Dunces

100 College Presidents

It is one of the great ethics dodges, and can still seduce people who should know better.

A good term for it would be “values surrender.” It works like this:  

There is harmful conduct that a society has determined, through debate, experience and logic, needs to be prohibited because of its far-reaching, undesirable effects on the quality of life and the public welfare. But people still persist in doing it, despite education, cultural disapproval and laws.  Resisting the spread of this conduct becomes expensive, time-consuming and frustrating. Nobody seriously believes that the conduct is good, but authority figures become weary of defending the prohibition and being held responsible for its failures, as more and more people do it anyway. So they give up. They decide that the best way to “solve” the problem is to declare that wrong is right, that the disapproved conduct is now acceptable, and to end the prohibitions, be they legal or cultural. This is the point where the ethical rationalization or fallacy “everybody does it” becomes true: enough people do “it,” whatever it is, that the culture literally surrenders. Okay! Get divorced as soon as your marriage hits some bumps. All right! There’s nothing necessarily wrong with having kids before you get married. Fine! Let everyone drug themselves into uselessness. Polygamy? Yeah, it’s exploitive and abusive to women, but how do you enforce it? Fine: go ahead. Gambling? We can’t stop it, so let’s legalize it and have the state promote it…it beats having to raise taxes. At any moment there are lots of values surrenders, small and large, being considered or happening right under our noses. Civil conduct in public. Being quiet and respectful of others in libraries. Dressing appropriately in public. Vulgar and obscene speech. Maybe we should legalize steroids: it’s too hard to test for them anyway. Prostitution: people have been practicing it and seeking it for centuries; let’s just make it legal and be done with it.  

And next? Next is whatever values society loses the will and the courage to maintain. Don’t presume that you know where the line will be drawn. History shows us that there is almost no downward limit to what conduct societies will permit out of fatigue, folly and intellectual laziness.  

Now about a hundred college presidents have signed a statement urging reconsideration of the drinking age, and asking whether it should be lowered from 21 to 18. The well-established fact that the higher legal limit saves lives---figures indicate that about 900 18-20 year-olds are saved every year because of the current restriction---isn’t sufficient to justify it, apparently, according to our ivory tower leaders. Why? Because they don’t like enforcing anti-drinking policies, which are violated regularly, sometimes with tragic results. And when the tragic results occur in their institutions’ dorm rooms, the college presidents are hit with criticism, and sometimes lawsuits. They certainly don’t like that. If the drinking age is 18, however, they are off the hook. Thus this craven call for “debate” is just one more values surrender. The college presidents who signed this statement are willing to sacrifice nearly a thousand young lives a year because they are tired, frustrated and afraid. But instead of admitting that, they couch their surrender as an invitation to dialogue. 

For the record, here are the values these leaders of higher education are trying to surrender:

• Responsibility (to their communities and their duties as educators)
• Trust (of both students and parents)
• Accountability (for the safety of young adults in their charge)
• Integrity (as they pursue self-interest over the interest of those they are supposed to care for.)
• Honesty (in their misrepresentation of their motives)
• Care (for students who depend on their wisdom and experience.)
  

I would not entrust my child to any institution led by an individual who would take part in such a sweeping values surrender. Calling these college presidents Ethics Dunces is an understatement.