RALEIGH—Unethical behavior is rampant on college campuses and in society today, the director of the Kenan Institute for Ethics at Duke University said Monday at a luncheon sponsored by the John Locke Foundation.
“The pressures and opportunities for dishonesty have increased in many arenas,” Dr. Elizabeth Kiss said.
Kiss said the institute tries to raise awareness of the importance of ethics in schools, businesses, and the community. The institute works with various sectors of the community to promote ethical behavior.
For example, the institute gives awards to schoolteachers who teach ethics and character education in innovative ways, collaborates with young adults in a forum about ethics in society, and partners with the Center for Academic Integrity to promote ethics on campuses nationwide.
A survey of college-bound seniors in 1998 revealed that many young people do not perceive cheating as a serious ethical problem, Kiss said. For example, many of them have taken part in unauthorized collaboration on school projects, copied information without proper citations, or falsified laboratory results.
Similarly, one-third of employees reportedly observe misconduct at work, such as lying, withholding of information, using intimidation, and misusing company money, Kiss said.
Corporate and academic scandals, linked to crises in core institutions such as the church, government, and professions, can create a cynicism about society, Kiss warns. Cynicism allows people to discredit ethics altogether by believing that “all students cheat, all politicians are corrupt, and all businesspeople lie,” Kiss said.
In order to resolve the problem, “we must transform our organizational cultures to pay attention to the implicit and explicit ways in which businesses and schools communicate their organizational values; we must make ethics an integral part of our culture,” Kiss said.
In response to the crisis, students on campuses across the United States have introduced honor codes and have opened dialogue about ethics in school and in the community, Kiss said. The Kenan Institute and other similar organizations also have begun programs to promote ethical behavior on campuses and in businesses nationwide, Kiss said.
The institute joined with the Center for Academic Integrity to create a program that promotes a “community of integrity,” Kiss said. Honesty, trust, fairness, respect, and responsibility are the core values of integrity. Academic integrity is the foundation for a vibrant community of teaching, learning, and scholarship, Kiss said.
In order to promote these values, educators must talk about them, measure themselves by them, create opportunities for students to practice them, model their behavior after them, and help students navigate by them, Kiss said.
The Kenan Institute has created an eight-step program to create an ethical culture in businesses. The program infuses an ethical code into every facet of company life, Kiss said.
Twenty percent of a population will always ignore ethical codes, Kiss said. Another 20 percent will behave ethically despite unethical behavior around them. The other 60 percent of the members of a group are responsive to the culture of their environment, Kiss said. Those people need to work and go to school in universities and businesses where there is a value-based culture.
Ashley is an editorial intern at Carolina Journal.