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Date
Jan 9, 2024
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Uploaded by MasterBarracudaMaster958
Charisma Johnson
Business Ethics
Fall 2020
October 12, 2020
What is Ethics to you?
Word Count: 1806
Word & Quote Count: 1810 & 2
What does ethics mean to you? When I think about ethics, I think about how you are
supposed to do the right thing when there is a situation presented to you. There is always going
to be one way that you would like to react but there is always going to be an ethical way.
Applying for college is a very stressful situation, wondering if the college of your dreams is
going to admit you for the fall semester. For those students who applied to Harvard, Dartmouth,
Duke, Carnegie Mellon, MIT, and Stanford are no different. They too were going through a
stressful situation, wondering if they were going to be selected into the programs of their choice.
It is not unusual for one to become curious about their acceptance and when presented with an
opportunity to see theirs early, take it. However, ethically those students would choose to wait for
their results and not breach any type of protocol.
Some might assume that the duties of a business-school admissions official may not be as
difficult of a job as it really is. Those officials are to carefully look over thousands of student
applications and select those they truly feel would be great assets to their programs. I strongly do
not feel that Harvard and MIT overreacted when their potential students breached the trust that
was instilled within them. The admissions offices hold high standards for their potential students
because they are believing that they will act with integrity and show that they can act ethically.
Choosing to reject those students from attending their campus because they chose to not behave
ethically is the exact notion that should have be done. Breaching the security whether using their
own information and rigging the system to bypass and get to the page they needed to or
“hacking” and using someone else’s name to see their results is not ethical. Some may view the
deans and the admissions office as not justified to decide in teaching those students a lesson.
However, they are certainly justified because they are running an establishment that sends people
off into the “real” world and they should be teaching those students how to behave. College and
school are not just about learning the materials to pass the class, it is also about building and
shaping your character.
Applying for college was a stressful time for me, wondering which college I was going to
choose to attend. Whether or not I felt I had the right grades to even be applying for that specific
college in the first place. When I finally decided on what I wanted to do for myself when it came
to college, I was nervous. What if I did not get in, what if I did not explore a better option? It was
scary, because that is your future and if I had seen an opportunity to see my results early and
maybe plan things out a little differently, be ahead of the game – would I have done it? No, as
nosey as I am and want to know all the information right then and there, I know that deep down
that is wrong and not ethically correct. It is cheating the system and cheating the systems is not
how I would have wanted to start or finish my academic career. Yes, a decision like that is most
definitely a moral decision. You have to choose between right and wrong, do I do the right thing
because that is morally and ethically correct or do I choose to disobey what I know to be moral
and cheat the system. I knew that I had to be morally correct and not breach the trust between the
university and myself.
There is a many way that this situation could be viewed, you have egoism, utilitarianism,
Kant’s ethics, Ross’s pluralism, and rule utilitarianism. To examine the viewpoint in egoism is
the say that for a person to breach the moral code then it must be for their own personal agent,
their own personal gain. Each student decided that for their own agenda they were going to see if
they were accepted into the school of their dreams or not. “Personal egoists claim they should
pursue their own best interests, but they do not say what others do. Impersonal egoists claim that
everyone should let self-interest guide his or her conduct.” [Shaw, 2017 (pg. 46)]. This act of
breaching is done by personal egoists, other students did not persuade their peers to escape their
moral and ethical code. They all simply did it for their own personal gain and nobody else’s.
When we view this situation through the eye of utilitarianism, you can see that none of the
students decided to act on this. To be a utilitarian, you must keep the balance and make sure that
the good out ways the bad. By breaching the system and accessing their acceptance or rejected
letters, the did not take into consideration those who we be affected by their actions. Thus, they
did not keep their peace by being an active utilitarian. Seeing that most of the applicants who
breach the server URL and peeked at their admissions determination wrote a letter, we can gather
that they knew deep enough that what they did was unethical. They did not need to wait to be
told that they were wrong, as soon as an announcement was made about the breach, those
students knew within themselves what they had done. “Rule utilitarianism maintains that the
utilitarian standard should be applied not to individuals’ actions but moral codes as a whole.”
[Shaw, 2017(pg. 69)] Rule utilitarianism can tell us that even though those students decided to
breach the system on their own, it affects everyone morally as a whole. That is because their
actions fall on to the dean, the admissions office, their peers, their families, etc. They all get
affected and must deal with the consequences because the moral code was broken.
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Many people do not realize the severe impact their actions have on another person. They
are morally responsible for all the people around them, there are people that have others look up
to them as a leader. When you are thinking ethics, you must think ethically for all those around
you. There are many situations that question your ethical stand points, it makes you pause and
think what is morally correct here. Those students failed to look at the bigger picture and many
people were affected by their actions. The admissions office looks like their being too harsh on
the applicants for breaching the system and accessing their results as reason for rejection. People
have felt that they should not have went as far as to say those applicants could not attend the
campus, but rather could have made them write a paper and perhaps do some service tasks on the
campus as to make up for their unethical actions. I do not believe that their actions were harsh,
they were perfectly justified to reject those students from attending their university.
When you are applying to college and you answer their questions and write your
submissions essays, you are certifying that you are an excellent candidate for their programs.
That you hold a high character and have morals and integrity. Once that application is submitted,
it is expected that you uphold those characteristics and values upon getting accepted and
attending the university. It was completely wrong for those applicants to breach the system and
peek at their files. Just because there is something sitting in front of you does not mean you have
to act on it. Those students should have reported the post instead of using it for their own
personal gain like an egoist. It has been said before that the students should have that of the
aftermaths that this type of breach was going to bring. Those who did not breach the system and
peek into their files suffered just as much as those who did. Even those they were not the ones,
they still suffer because now maybe their applications are going to be looked over a little harder
because now the admissions office needs to be very careful as to whom they allow into their
programs. When generation comes into play, a lot of people like to say that is plays a big factor.
That those yesterday are different than those of today. I one hundred percent agree, the applicants
from the previous years would not have thought to breach the system like this. Were there
hackers of every generation, yes, of course. Were there serious breaches like this one? No, those
of previous years have more morals and ethics than they do today.
In all reality it is hard to say whether the actions of those who tried to cheat the system
and not wait their turn for their results would or would not make good leaders. Having an error in
judgement does not mean that you are permanently that way or would always have those views
and take those actions. Being unethical one time does not mean that you will always be
unethical, people often have a misjudgment during a situation and choose to go a route that one
would not normally take. Many fine businessmen and women have made an ethical or moral
mistake one time or another, it does not make them incapable of being good leaders. Is there
some fault to a degree that the university is to blame for not having a more secure system?
Knowing that there are hackers out there in the world, besides the fact those students hacked the
system – there are many other who hack as well. This is grounds for the top of the line security
system. Even though the university did not have a higher security system, the students still knew
better than to follow through with peeking into their files. They chose to make that unethical
decision, that had not fault by the university.
When truly thinking about what ethics means to me and who I am as a person. I believe
that we all have choices that we can make, as tough as they may be, we must still make sure that
our ethical views do not falter. Those students chose to let their ethical views falter and the
universities handled the situation in such a way that other can only hope to learn from the
mistakes of those applicants. Those applicants as well can only learn from what they have done
and never do it again. You always have a choice, it is always important to handle each situation
you are presented with, with integrity and ethics.
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