Ethics: January 2008 Archive Page

A close professional contact who regularly takes on student interns shared this list of guidelines, which she has found necessary to include when orienting a new intern to the routine of office work.

Although the site is a non-profit educational organization, and thus the environment is more relaxed and forgiving than it might be in the typical business setting, I have seen student interns wearing sweats over a team uniform (with bags of gear piled in the corner).

Millennial students are very social creatures, and they are used to being able to choose how to channel their enthusiasm and interests. Students who are used to multi-tasking may be tempted to fill up slow spots with Facebook or Youtube, which may be acceptable in a work-study position that asks them to check out library books or just make sure people don't vandalize the computer labs. But most entry-level jobs require stretches of solitary vigilance -- by the telephone in the front office, in the hall waiting to escort a visitor to and from a meting, or simply waiting to get a word in edgewise while their immediate supervisor conducts routine business with a constant stream of customers or co-workers.

Seeing exactly what my contact felt had to be spelled out is a useful starting point for the professional development component of my "Intro to Literary Study" class.

1. The Center's daily dress code is casual business attire--no jeans or sports clothing.
2. The dress code for Center events is formal business attire, i.e. suit.
3. When you are working, friends may not visit you.
4. Cell phone use during work is strongly discouraged.
5. You are expected to focus on your work, make good use of your time, and avoid interrupting your supervisor or fellow students unnecessarily.
6. Please greet visitors, welcome them to the Center and ask how you can help.
7. When answering telephones, please use this format:  "Hello. You have reached [ORGANIZATION NAME]. [YOUR NAME] speaking. How may I help you?"
8. If you are stuck on a project or need direction, you are expected to make this known in a timely manner.
9. Remember that no task is too small. All tasks are important to the functioning of the Center. You are expected to do your best work on all assignments, and to contribute to the smooth functioning of the Center.
10. Team work is important to the success of all Center events. All interns are expected to take part in planning major events and to contribute ideas for carrying out projects effectively. When possible, you will have opportunities for decision-making and supervision.
11. Interns are expected to act professionally in representing the Center to other departments or even people from outside the University.
12. If you are unable to work during your scheduled hours, you must communicate this to your supervisor in a timely manner. Missing work or events without communicating with the supervisor is not acceptable or professional behavior.
13. You are expected to keep all work areas neat and organized. File folders are to be returned to their proper places before you leave work.
14. You are expected to document progress in planning and carrying out activities on the proper forms in the event folders.
15. You should maintain a folder under your name (Smith, Mary Spr08) on the Center computer that you use. Projects should be organized within your folder by title so that you supervisor or another student staff member can access materials in your absence. You should log in under the account provided to you, not your own account.

WON'T SOMEONE THINK OF THE CHILDREN??!!!!! Wired

Gulf Middle School resource officer John Nohejl didn't have porn on his MySpace profile, and he didn't link to porn. But one of the 170-odd people on his friends list, which seems mostly populated by students at his school, had a link to a legal adult site. Now the New Port Richey Police Department and the Florida attorney general's elite cyber crimes unit are investigating him for making adult content available to underage children.

Lauren Collins (The New Yorker)

Teen-age identities mutate so quickly online, and can be masked so easily, that by the morning after Megan was pronounced dead Josh Evans had vanished from MySpace. It wasn't until a month after her death that a neighbor named Michele Mulford told the Meiers that Curt and Lori Drew, who lived four houses down, had created "Josh" in concert with their thirteen-year-old daughter, a longtime friend of Megan's. (An eighteen-year-old girl who worked for the Drews was also involved.) The two thirteen-year-olds had recently quarrelled. Mulford's own daughter, also thirteen, had been given the password to the account, and had sent at least one unkind message to Megan in Josh's name. Megan had accompanied the Drews on several vacations, and they knew that she was taking medication. For nearly a year, on the advice of the police, the Meiers had kept quiet about the Drews' involvement in Megan's death.

New York Times:
Mr. Fischer was the most powerful American player in history, and the most enigmatic. After scaling the heights of fame, he all but dropped out of chess, losing money and friends and living under self-imposed exile in Budapest, Japan, possibly in the Philippines and Switzerland, and finally in Iceland, moving there in 2005 and becoming a citizen. When he emerged now and then, it was sometimes on the radio, ranting in increasingly belligerent terms against the United States and Jews. His rationality was questioned.

C|Net:

Under the agreement, MySpace has pledged to work with the attorneys general on a set of principles to combat harmful material on social-networking sites (pornography, harassment, cyberbullying, and identity theft, among other issues), better educate parents and schools about online threats, cooperate with law enforcement officials around the country, as well as develop new technology for age and identity verification on social-networking sites.

An opinion published in the Robert Morris University student newspaper:

The purpose of a university newspaper is not to depict students or the school in a negative light, but to talk about positive stories, current events, campus activities etc. Now imagine a high school kid looking to come to RMU, a parent wishing to send his/her daughter here...they decide to pick up the December 12th edition of the sentry...front page..."RMU Student Faces Multiple Drug Charges." What a great way to promote the school! This was in very bad taste for a front page article... Speaking for myself and other students I have spoken to, this is our school and we don't want articles like this on the front page of our school newspaper.

I'm the adviser of Seton Hill University's newspaper, and I don't tell the editor what to publish or where to put the stories. I do confess that I have encouraged them to save their heavy-hitting, critical stories for the issues they publish during the regular semester, and to treat the Summer Orientation issue as an opportunity to build community and recruit new staff members.  So the editor does need to exercise tact. Yet, recently the students published an issue with a front-page article about drug abuse on campus, and the university president said she was proud to distribute it to the board members.

Here's the comment I left on the RMU Sentry's website:

A very important function of a university newspaper -- something that a PR office cannot supply -- is giving students the opportunity to practice journalism. And students cannot practice journalism unless they have the editorial freedom to publish stories that will make some people uncomfortable.  Surely RMU already has a venue for publicizing all the positive stories.

Because the student faces a felony charge, and had already been suspended from classes and kicked out of the dorms as per RMU policy, the event seems newsworthy. I would like to have seen evidence that attempts were made to get the accused student's side of the story, but the article does include a quote describing what will happen if the student is found not guilty -- a clear reminder to the public that the courts have not yet heard the case.

Perhaps the author of this letter (Jason?) should join the staff of the Sentry and work his way up to being on the editorial board, where he can help make decisions such as where to place stories, whether to name names, and whether to publish critical letters to the editor without fully identifying the author.

If the students do their jobs as journalists, they will end up publishing stories that upset some people. Reporting that police have charged someone with a crime is not a violation of the suspect's privacy -- it's a matter of public record. Let's imagine that a student paper published a photo of a student being led across campus in handcuffs, when the police ended up realizing they had the wrong person, or for some other reason they released him without filing any charges. That would be ethically questionable.

From the Chronicle of Higher Education (subscription required)

Billed as a "social-network monitoring service" and marketed exclusively to college athletics departments, YouDiligence was on display at a trade show here during the National Collegiate Athletic Association's annual convention. The program is designed to conduct real-time searches of Facebook and MySpace for up to 500 objectionable words and phrases ranging from profanity to slang used to describe drugs. If it finds anything, it sends an e-mail alert to a designated athletics official containing a link to the offending page.

[...]

At Florida State, coaches and administrators have taken a top-down approach to educating students about the risks of being too carefree on their Facebook and MySpace pages. Mr. Lata and his staff have meetings with every team to talk about those risks. One coach requires all of her athletes to have her as a "friend" on Facebook, so that if they post questionable material, she will know about it.

Hmm... software searching for keywords, or coaches actually getting themselves involved with their players' social lives?