I thought last November, as my college (and I personally) wrestled with a thorny decision about a student-produced play involving characters who were members of the KKK, that we had faced one of our most significant ethical challenges. At the time, I was probably right. But no one could have predicted the ethically-complex decision that would present itself to college and university leaders this summer when our world was struck by the coronavirus pandemic.
A class I was co-teaching with our Provost this past spring, Ethics and Sports, ended as almost all college courses did — on-line with students reading, discussing, and doing final projects remotely. In the months before the shutdown, we had been engaging in robust conversations about the many ethical issues present in sport past and present. In one particular class, I walked the students through a model of ethical “fitness,” highlighting the importance of strength, flexibility, and endurance as metaphors in approaching ethically sound decisions.
When speaking about strength, we talked about the importance of facts. We discussed how to establish the reliability of sources and data before making an ethical argument. As an example, we researched the issue around equal pay for the U.S. Women’s National Soccer Team. How much, exactly, were they being paid and how did that compare to how much men’s team players were paid? What was the nature of the collective bargaining agreement the USWNT had signed off on? Was payment linked to success, revenue generation, or something else? It was complex, but the class soon learned to dig in and embrace that complexity and its importance in coming to a defensible ethical position about the USWNT demand for equal pay.
A supportable, defensible ethical decision, we were teaching, was more than an opinion. It was a position of values for sure. But values that could also be supported by fact.
And then the coronavirus struck. While trying – often unsuccessfully — to continue to deliver a meaningful course to our students for the remainder of the semester, our Provost and I were working 24/7 in our “other jobs” as senior leaders at the College. We were drinking from the proverbial fire hose about the facts and science around the virus, how it spread, how it could be mitigated, and what measures a college would have to take to make a student and faculty return to the classroom in the fall one we could ethically defend.
Following the lesson we taught our students about developing strength by researching facts and data before jumping to a decision, not a day went by when we didn’t read the latest reports from public health officials, opinion pieces in newspapers, articles in higher education publications, and bewildering statistical models. I talked to friends and family members who work in the public health field, colleagues at other colleges and universities, public and private secondary school administrators, our local town leadership, my staff in student affairs (most importantly my director of health services) and many others in the elusive search for data that would clearly guide the decision that was bearing down on us. Should we re-open our campus for in-person classes this fall?
Make no doubt. The facts are critical. They became the cornerstone of the difficult decision we had to make. The ethical dilemma was obvious: Should we re-open, taking significant health risks in our quest to continue the critical mission of our residential liberal arts college? Such a decision could ensure that our most vulnerable students and employees could return to the economic, and social security that our in-person campus experience provides. Alternatively, should we protect our students, faculty, and staff from a frightening virus that is decimating our country by telling our students to stay home and learn on-line for another semester? That decision felt like we would be depriving them of the community they are desperately craving and potentially harming them and the employees who depend on their work at the college for their livelihood and economic security.
Ultimately, the facts led us to the decision. The rise in cases, the inaccessibility of tests with quick results, additional information about how exactly the virus was spreading and how an outbreak could impact our small town on Maryland’s rural Eastern Shore, were too much to ignore. But what I had forgotten, until the day the decision was confirmed by our Board that we would revert to an on-line learning model this fall, was that the facts were just the foundation for a decision like this. Yes, they are important and I will continue to teach our students to be critical thinkers and dig for reliable data. But facts don’t shield you from the intense struggle inherent in any decision like this. They don’t stop you from questioning your decision. And they are cold comfort when you have to face the reality that even the “right” decision will harm some people in some way: people who you care about, people who find joy in working with young adults on a college campus, and the young people themselves who face at least another semester of isolation and hardship.
Just having the facts doesn’t make the decision. A difficult ethical decision like this, requires, as one our board members referenced several times “a North Star” and to follow that once the facts are collected. The facts are a collection of data points. But ultimately, values enable you to look at all of those points and start walking in the right direction. One value that rose to the surface was, in utilitarian fashion, protecting the greatest number of students, faculty, staff, and members of the town and county in which we exist.
I don’t regret our decision. It was the right one for our campus and our community and was indeed based on facts. Facts that demonstrated that the potential harm was significant and that our decision would mitigate the risks inherent in reverting to our normal model of students living in residence halls and going into classrooms every day. But the tipping point for the decision was an agreement that the data, combined with our values weighted the scales for an on-line semester.
Perhaps that knowledge will ease the painful reality that this “right” decision will make the lives of some members of our community far more difficult. One of the problems with these decisions is that you never know where the path not taken would have led. I’m doubtful that the future will definitively prove to us this decision was right; but we have to believe today, because we made a sound and defensible ethical decision, that it was right.
In the meantime, I’ll continue to preach the importance of collecting facts to our students; those facts will help them make and defend difficult decisions in their lives. But I will also remind them that facts don’t relieve you of the responsibility to ground ethical decision in core values. Facts will put you on firm footing. Once there, you can consider your values, look around, find your North Star and start walking toward it.
