COMM 317: Bong hits 4 ethics (& announcement)

What would Aristotle have thought of *Morse v. Frederick? It's the U.S. Supreme Court case about a student who unfurled a banner saying "BONG HiTS 4 JESUS" (students who have had COMM 207, or who will take it in future, please notice lower-case "i") across the street from Juneau High School on national television?

What would Immanuel Kant have thought of it?

And Jeremy Bentham? What's the greatest good for the greatest number here?

We all know what the Supreme Court thought about it . Chief Justice John Roberts, writing for the court, held: "Because schools may take steps to safeguard those entrusted to their care from speech that can reasonably be regarded as encouraging illegal drug use, the school officials in this case did not violate the First Amendment by confiscating the pro-drug banner and suspending Frederick [who unfurled the banner and made, literally, a federal case of it]." We'll discuss that in class today, and we'll discuss the ethical implications, if any, of unfurling banners that may or may not advocate illegal drug use at what may or may not be school events.

You'll get the opportunity to blog about it, too. Try to have some fun with it. (Yeah, yeah. I know what that must sound like.) But Aristotle lived 2,400 years ago. Kant was a German "Herr professor" at the University of Königsberg (now Kaliningrad, in Russia) during the late 1700s. Bentham was an English magazine editor of the early 1800s (whose body is still on display in a wooden cabinet at the University of London where he still has a tie-breaking vote on the College Council, and, no, I am not making any of this up). Find out a little bit about them. (I just checked Wikipedia, so you may want to verify, especially on Jeremy Bentham.) Try to imagine: How would these guys have reacted to the 21st century in general? But do lead back to this question: How do their systems of ethics address the facts and principles of "BONG HiTS 4 JESUS?"

I want us to use a simplified version of each of the three ethical systems as we look at case studies throughout the rest of the semester. Think of "BH4J" as our first case study.

But first, this message.

On Tuesday, March 11, we will meet in UA4 the computer lab in the Ursuline Academy annex building on 6th Street. To get there from Dawson, go out the south door and follow the sidewalk to the old Ursuline campus. The 6th Street annex is the first building on your left. Go through the gym, where "Declare a Major Day" and the chicken dinners of yore were held, and up the ramp on the south side of the room to the main hallway. Our classroom is on your left facing 6th Street.

We will watch Public Broadcasting System host Bill Moyers' "Buying the War," a show that aired April 25, 2007, on the role the Washington Post, the New York Times and American television networks played in selling the March 2003 invasion of Iraq to the American people. Think of this as our second case study. The invasion was based on faulty information, as we now know, and Moyers suggests the media fell down on their job because it was well known in 2002 and 2003 that at least some of the information was faulty.

As you watch, be thinking of the same three questions: (1) What would Aristotle think of this spectacle? What Kant think of it? (3) What would Bentham think? I'll bet they would have loved the technology, but all three might have wondered to what purpose it was being used. American media coverage of the runup to the invasion of Iraq raised plenty of issues of professional ethics defined more strictly, too. But for the time being I want us to focus on Aristotle, Kant and Bentham.

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* Full style of Morse v. Frederick (in case you ever wondered): Deborah Morse and the Juneau School Board, et al., Petitioners v. Joseph Frederick.