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By Paula K. Mirk, Director of Education, The Institute for Global Ethics

Originally published in the Winter 2011 e-edition of Independent School Magazine.

The dilemma we present here is real, told to us for your consideration. We change only names and occasionally some of the details to protect privacy of the individuals and/or organizations involved. If you have an ethical dilemma that you would like to share, please contact the editorial staff at Independent School (ismag@nais.org) or by contacting Amber Kruk (akruk@globalethics.org).

Jan is a first-generation Chinese American attending an independent day school in the Southwest U.S. She attends “Chinese school” as well as her day school, but she doesn’t take Chinese school as seriously as her independent school, since it is just an after-school opportunity to improve her Chinese language skills and study Chinese literature – and as with most of her classmates, Jan attends the school at her parents’ insistence. Each year, there is an essay contest at Chinese school, and the winning essay is published in the local newspaper. Jan is a gifted writer with a strong voice and insight, and while the after-school experience was not important to her, she found that she put energy and inspiration into her writing for the essay contest.

On the day their essays were to be submitted, Jan learned that a classmate was handing in an essay he had not actually written; a friend much more proficient in Chinese had given him the essay to submit.

“I knew there was a chance that that essay could be selected as the winning one,” Jan explained. “Thus, there was a slight dilemma over whether I should tell my teacher that my classmate cheated or not do anything. I didn’t know for sure if that essay would win, so would there be any harm in not telling my teacher? I… did not want to cause a huge fuss.”

Framed as such, Jan may be thinking about this issue in terms of the “right vs. right” paradigm: justice vs. mercy. Sure there was cheating going on, but when do we choose the battle and insist on laying down the law (or blowing the whistle so that others can lay down the law), and when should we shrug and say, “Don’t sweat the small stuff?”

Jan suggests that, had this taken place in her “regular school,” she might have felt differently about the issue. “I can’t really explain, but Chinese school is not taken nearly as seriously as regular school by anyone, so I thought that it wasn’t such a big issue. However, now as I look back, I feel that, if that essay had won, then some people out there would have been hurt. Ultimately, that classmate’s essay didn’t win, so I guess this is my ‘woulda, shoulda, coulda’ dilemma!”

Suppose you were a teacher or administrator at Jan’s day school, and you heard about this story. How would you handle this situation? Would you be tempted to explore Jan’s attitude about plagiarism, or does she have a right to her own point of view about “credit” regardless of school policy – especially since this writing did not take place in school? In other words, do you view this as a conflict between right and wrong, based on the notion of “giving credit where credit is due”? Alternatively, if this is a tension between two rights for you, which paradigm seems most important – that of one individual, either the plagiarizer or Jan, and the wider community of writers; that of rules vs. exceptions; or is the real driver here honesty vs. loyalty?

If you were to ask Jan about the choice that would result in the greatest good for the greatest number of people, would she, in retrospect, choose speaking up or letting this one slide? Which guiding principle carried the day for her in this case? Was it simply a matter of not making a fuss or was there something larger – about the context and its lack of importance to her – that contributed to Jan’s decision? Was she putting herself in the shoes of the “lazy” student who had not bothered to write an essay, and deciding that given the nature of Chinese school, she could sympathize?

This dilemma takes place in Chinese school, but there are certainly many contexts in which it might apply. How important is “ownership” in determining “what is right”? If students do not feel invested in a learning process, is a lack of moral courage or moral action more understandable? In other words, if we can see why Jan didn’t speak up about the plagiarism in her story, where do we draw the line in other classrooms or learning settings for our students?

There is much to ponder from a simple, passing example that Jan had thought little about until learning about the “right vs. right” nature of most ethical challenges.

© 2010 Institute for Global Ethics (IGE). All rights reserved.

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Excerpted from Decision Skills for Colleges. Copyright 2008, Institute for Global Ethics

The end of the semester is always busy for students, but this one is especially bad for Jen. She is taking five classes and working in order to help her parents pay for college. She barely has any personal time to spend with friends or just relaxing. On top of all that, her grandfather, whom she loves dearly, has just gone into the hospital.

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Based on a real life dilemma.

Brinn McNally is a part-time faculty member at a mid-sized university located in Boston, Massachusetts. He has worked for the University in his current capacity for less than five years, but is well versed in the university’s policies he has agreed to uphold.

In McNally’s survey course on American History, an international student turns in her first term paper. During the grading process, McNally discovers that the student’s work is a textbook case of plagiarism. The majority of the paper is copied directly and without attribution from the references listed at the back of the student’s paper, and little of the work is the student’s own.

The university has a strong policy about plagiarism, which is outlined in the course syllabus that McNally knows this student received. When confronted about plagiarizing her paper, she claims that she did not realize what she was doing was plagiarism, since the academic culture in her own country is very tolerant of such copying. McNally explains to her that the policy, as outlined, requires that he fail her, but that he would consider her explanation over the weekend.

In this justice-versus-mercy decision, McNally thinks that on one hand it is right to fail her and maybe even eject her from the class, because there would be no chance for her to pass the course after failing this assignment. He would be just in his decision because the rules were clear. On the other hand, it is right to show mercy and ask her to rewrite her paper. If she truly did not understand the rule, it would seem unfair to penalize her so harshly, especially if this was just a case of cultural mistranslation.

What should McNally do?

© 2008 Institute for Global Ethics. All rights reserved.