OPINION & EDITORIAL
Ethical behavior should be encouraged at universities
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Also by Matt Modell:
- Taking responsibility for your decisions (April 24, 2003)
- An honorable and just battle (November 20, 2003)
- Fixing the problems of ASM (November 25, 2003)
- The key word is 'illegal' (December 4, 2003)
- A fond farewell to UW (December 11, 2003)
Related Stories:
- Professors complicit in plagiarism (October 19, 2005)
- Study day would improve student morale (March 28, 2007)
- Partisan pouncing (January 23, 2002)
- Person-of-the-year decision is a no-brainer (December 3, 2002)
- Duke scandal multifaceted (April 21, 2006)
by Matt Modell
Wednesday, December 10, 2003
WorldCom, Enron and Imclone are only a few of the multi-billion-dollar corporations accused of fraud and betraying investors.
At UW-Madison, a number of students were accused of cheating on an accounting exam last spring. Last week, at least one student in a political science class was suspected of cheating.
The central failure in all these instances is a total disregard for ethical principles.
Ethics is a trait you would hope administrators not only have, but also would promote through example. Unfortunately, this is not the case for UW administrators Assistant Dean Consuelo Lopez-Springfield and Letters & Science Advising Director Neil Richardson.
The UW Pre-Law Society officers signed a two-year contract with a national corporation that gave both benefits to the company and the Pre-Law Society. Any contract has issues that must be examined before that contract is signed.But once both parties have legally signed the contract, these issues are moot — they must honor the contract.
However, despite the legality of the contract, Mr. Richardson and Ms. Lopez-Springfield not only disagreed with the contract, but also actively encouraged the breaching of this contract by Pre-Law Society officers.
In fact, according to Richardson, “Contracts end when one party breaks them.” This is a sentiment that Lopez-Springfield, the University’s pre-law adviser, did not disagree with.
This idea should be both offensive to those in and considering the legal profession — not to mention just factually wrong.
If a person or party enters a legally binding contract and then breaks the contract before its term has expired, this is considered a breach of contract. A breach of contract does not automatically void the contract. If a breach occurs, the party in breach is legally responsible for financial damages in civil court and would usually still be required to honor the contract.
Getting away from the legal issues, what messages are these two administrators sending to students? Advocating students to break a legal contract because they disagree with it, when it was properly signed, is both incredibly authoritarian and promoting poor ethical behavior.
Sadly, when the issue of ethics was raised, Richardson’s response was, “I don’t care about ethics.” A quote that really exemplifies why cheating in the business world, at universities and across the country, has been a growing problem — because few people care.
Instead of promoting unethical behavior, all administrators and advisers must take the high road by educating students, not lying and not claiming loopholes that do not exist. Maybe telling the Pre-Law officers that contracts are over when one party breaches the contract is what these administrators truly believed, but, if this is the case, maybe they need to consult attorneys before trying to force students to do something wrong.
Unfortunately, this story of disappointing behavior by one of these administrators does not end here — in fact, it only worsens. Within a few weeks of the initial meeting between these two administrators and PLS officers, one officer needed a document signed for a law school application, certifying this student was in good standing.
This form was not a letter of recommendation, just a certification of enrollment and status. This is the type of duty that deans are expected to perform on a regular basis — assisting students is actually one of the reasons the University pays administrators.
However, when this student approached Assistant Dean Lopez-Springfield, she denied the student’s request for a signature because she apparently felt some of the officers had mistreated her at the last meeting (even though this student probably said no more than 10 words total at the meeting).
Was this student’s request denied because of a lack of good standing? Of course not — this student had the forms signed by the registrar’s office without problem. Apparently they were even friendly!
Evidently, the $73,893 Dean Lopez-Springfield is being paid by the University this year does not include assisting pre-law students, even though one of her duties is “pre-law adviser.” PLS officers and Lopez-Springfield had an ideological difference and a disagreement over the interpretation of the law, yet this particular dean decided to take a grudge against a group of students over a non-academic issue and hold it against a student in the academic setting.
At best, this behavior by Dean Lopez-Springfield is immature and irresponsible; at worst, it is malfeasance that should include some form of discipline by senior UW administrators.
The unprofessional and ethically lacking behavior exhibited in both of these situations should not be considered acceptable to students or the administration. One of the reasons for ethical failures is that those in leadership positions fail to set an example for the rest of society. Hopefully these two examples represent the exception and not the rule; otherwise people should expect to see many more WorldComs and Imclones in the not-too-distant future.
Matt Modell (mmodell@badgerherald.com) is a senior majoring in journalism and political science. He is also the finance director for the Pre-Law Society.
