Have you ever failed to voice your opinion because you feared the consequences? What was the situation (try to make it a significant one, and if possible, related to social ethics)? Why didn't you have the courage to speak (don't pick a situation where you wouldn't be expected to speak -- for example, as a child)? Please post your response by 6 p.m. Wed., Nov, 3.
(Bonus: What's the source of the above question? And what's the answer to it?)
Teaching Notes
You must become the flame on the candle. - Thich Nhat Hanh
Monday, November 1, 2010
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Is Media Ethics Education DOA?
It sounds like a joke Jay Leno would tell during his opening monologue on The Tonight Show. Hear about the graduate students at the prestigious journalism school? They got caught cheating on an ethics exam. Ha ha ha. Except that’s actually what happened at Columbia University
No one admitted cheating despite pressure from the school’s administrators and pleas from classmates, who feared the scandal would damage the market value of their degrees. Meanwhile, the teacher of the course, New York Times columnist Samuel G. Freedman, refused to comment. But if the disgruntled posts on RateMyProfessors.com are any indication, his students hadn’t exactly been soaking up knowledge. “Maybe he could e-mail his ‘speeches’ to the students instead of making everyone suffer through the most wasted class in j-school. . . ,” one read.
There’s an old cowboy saying that goes, “When your horse dies, get off.” Journalism ethics education is a dead horse. Or else those aren’t vultures circling in the sky.
No one admitted cheating despite pressure from the school’s administrators and pleas from classmates, who feared the scandal would damage the market value of their degrees. Meanwhile, the teacher of the course, New York Times columnist Samuel G. Freedman, refused to comment. But if the disgruntled posts on RateMyProfessors.com are any indication, his students hadn’t exactly been soaking up knowledge. “Maybe he could e-mail his ‘speeches’ to the students instead of making everyone suffer through the most wasted class in j-school. . . ,” one read.
There’s an old cowboy saying that goes, “When your horse dies, get off.” Journalism ethics education is a dead horse. Or else those aren’t vultures circling in the sky.
A Question for Socrates
The question of how ethics is learned, or even if it can be, is as old as Western philosophy. In Plato’s dialog Meno the title character asks, “Can you tell me, Socrates, whether virtue is acquired by teaching or by practice; or if neither by teaching nor practice, then whether it comes to man by nature, or in what other way?” Of course, Socrates, being Socrates, resists giving a definite answer. But we can’t. The sad fact is, students had better get an effective ethics education now or they may never.
Last summer I conducted an ethics workshop for some reporters and editors at the Poughkeepsie Journal, a small daily in upstate
But what I remember most is the air of defeat that clung to the staff as we sat on hard plastic chairs in the break room discussing the cases. I could hear in their voices the bitterness and cynicism of employees forced to follow corporate policies they despised. Recently, for example, the paper had started running display ads on the front page and section fronts, a much more grievous ethical lapse, their mumbled asides suggested, than anything the case studies might have to offer.
I don’t want my students to ever wear the gray, defeated expression I saw that day on the faces at the Journal. But given the downward direction in which the media are moving, and fast, how in the world can I prevent it from happening?
Teaching Media Ethics by Telling Stories
A friend of mine who teaches at a big Midwestern university recounts in class the events of her first week as a reporter for the Minneapolis Tribune. She was sent to Duluth to cover Democratic presidential candidate Hubert Humphrey on the campaign trail. When they were introduced, Humphrey vigorously shook her hand. “Oh yes, Susan,” he said, “I read your stuff all the time.” He couldn’t have read her stuff, though; she hadn’t written anything yet. “Just a few words,” she explains to her students, “but words that taught this fledging reporter a great lesson about pols and the little lies they tell.”
I usually find occasion during the semester to quote I. F. Stone’s dictum, “Every government is run by liars and thieves, and nothing they say should be believed,” to make the same point. But Susan’s story makes the point better. That’s because it has existential force. Her story vividly captures in a way a secondhand quote can’t the realities of a reporter’s life.
Some might think telling “war stories” is a waste of precious class time. I’ve a colleague who didn’t want to fall into the “trap” of regaling students with stories ad nauseam (“which, let’s face it, is easier than teaching or grading,” he said). So one semester he kept track. When he toted it all up at the end, he was surprised that he’d used less than an hour - out of 45 – talking about his newspaper experiences. And yet, he admitted, it was his stories that students seemed to remember most.
“Stories teach us how to live,” Daniel Taylor said in his essay, “The Ethical Implications of Storytelling.” What he meant was that stories preserve our experience for contemplation and evaluation. Although not all stories carry a heavy message, there’s an entire category of stories, so-called “exemplary tales,” that are told to convey a moral.
Our war stories are potentially just such tales. They can provide evidence, in ethicist John Barton’s words, of “how real human beings live through various crises and trials and remain human.” My colleague who kept tabs on his storytelling has described his stories as cautionary. Most, he said, deal with “screwups I learned from.”
But sometimes the storyteller and the audience can’t agree on what exactly the moral of a story is.
When Susan was a cub reporter on the Tribune, she interviewed the Beatles, who were on their second tour of the States. She got into their hotel room by dressing up as a waitress in an ugly, mustard-colored uniform and accompanying an actual room service waiter upstairs. Ringo took one look at her little plastic name tag – it read “Donna Brown” – and snorted, “What kind of name is that?” The waiter nudged her in the side. “Tell them what you real name is,” he urged. She did, as well as her reason for being there. Rather than throw her out, the Beatles politely answered her questions. They even let her phone for a photographer. The next day her story ran on the front page, with a photo of John sitting at a table and looking up at her and laughing as she poured coffee in his cup. She still has a glossy print of that photo somewhere.
Many of Susan’s students think she’s nuts for not having the photo hanging up in her office. They also think she’s nuts for saying she’d never participate in the same kind of stunt today. To her celebrity-struck students, disguising herself as a hotel waitress to get an interview with the Beatles seems soooo cool. They lose all sight of the fact that it wasn’t a story of vital public interest that demanded undercover methods.
Susan intends one lesson when she talks about her hard day’s night, but her students, living in a paparazzi-saturated culture, draw another. “It may be a lost cause,” she remarked to me.
Or maybe not. Negotiations over what the point of a story is can be part of the point of the story. In the process of negotiating, we test different interpretations, try out different themes. This is helpful. This is educational. Lawrence Kohlberg, the Harvard psychologist famous for his research on the stages of moral development, contended that “the teaching of virtue is the asking of questions. . . not the giving of answers.” Stories don’t necessarily have to yield clear moral rules to be of value. It’s enough sometimes if they just give us something to think about.
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One instance like this happened just last month, to me and my friends living in the same house. The unfair situation was when my landlord discovered a pile of dirty dishes in the sink. He immediately blamed the new tenants, even though the house was beyond disgusting before any of us moved in and one older housemate insisted it was the same girl as last year.
Unfortunately, this girl also works for the landlord by finding new housemates and collecting rent, plus she babysits his 3 kids. When he asked me about it, I plead innocent (I even cleaned the dishes) and being rhetorical, I asked if this was the same problem last year. He got angry and denied it all, and I wanted to bring up the girl but wondered if she was favored by him. I was also waiting for my parent loans to finally pay his rent so I felt placed at a big disadvantage.
The night he came over for a house meeting, with an 18-pack of Bud Lite and preconceived racist ramblings, he said he didn’t want to point the finger but wanted the problem to stop. Long story short, my friends and I would try to prove to him that the house was already disgusting, including the porches, but when that took forever for him to finally agree, we gave up on voicing our real opinion and ratting out his favorite housemate.
He saw the house in the same condition as the rest of us, and ordered his favorite to clean up several times before in front of some of us, so I was amazed at what was going on. At the end, we questioned why we didn’t stand up for ourselves further since we wasted an hour being blamed for something none of us did. We agreed that since he was drinking and acting belligerent (bringing a can for the ride back after drinking 3 cans in an hour, nonchalantly cursing at us and maintaining a thick veil of ignorance), it wouldn’t be worth it because he would’ve denied it and made our lives a living hell one way or another.
The truth is, she is his favorite and the older housemate that wasn’t at the meeting said if we even mentioned her, there would be war because the landlord wants to have sex with the culprit, so it’s her word over his.
This is one of the only few times I didn’t speak up for myself because the consequences could vary in any direction, and he was already targeting one of my friends throughout the entire debacle so his mind was made up. There’s was also no use in defending yourself against a self-righteous, Neo-Conservative drunk that desperately wants to have sex with a girl that’s the same age as his daughter. He’s out of his damn mind.
BONUS: Wizard of Oz film and the answer is “Courage”
I believe that I am a very outspoken individual but there was actually an incidence this weekend where I did not voice my opinion because I feared the consequences of my actions would not end well. As you all know, Halloween transforms New Paltz in the crazy place where all of a sudden, people throw away their logic and reasoning after a few drinks, or possibly some “loko”. The story begins as my friend and I decided to get pizza on Saturday night and providing that it was Halloween, the store was packed. As I am waiting for my slice to finish being cooked, a woman begins aggressively pushing her way through the crowd. When she finally makes it to me after pushing her way through several people, she stops and turns around and attempts slap me. The slap barely grazed my face, but filled with anger and confusion I felt the only thing left to do was question the girl and find out why she tried to slap me.
Immediately upon exiting the pizza shop I see the woman standing there with two guys. I ask her to explain her actions and she responds by saying that she felt somebody pull her hair causing her to swing at the first person she saw. I slowly began to explain the stupidity in her logic to her which caused her to again, attempt to swing at me. As she begun to swing her two male friends grabbed her before she could actually throw the punch.
At this point, I decided the only thing left for me to do was walk away and leave the situation alone knowing that there would be no benefits from an altercation like that. I was filled with anger and outrage because I could not believe the audacity of this individual. As I leave the scene, a police officer approaches me about the situation. I explain the circumstances of the events to him and my ethical values and beliefs on violence towards women. The police office responds by telling me that I took the right actions when handling the situation.
Although one of the few times I tend to hold my tongue, I didn’t speak up for myself because it would have only caused the situation to end poorly. Continuing to argue with this person could have possibly caused one of the male friends to intervene in the situation and I believe fighting is not a suitable way to resolve a situation. Also, a wise told me not to argue with fools, because people from a distance, can’t tell whom is whom.
The answer to the bonus question is courage and it is from the cowardly lion in the Wizard of Oz.
I’ll be honest. I really can’t think of a situation where, in some capacity, I don’t voice my opinion. Even if it’s subtle, with me having an enraged look on my face, people know how I am feeling. It’s usually a good thing, because it lets people know if I am unhappy about a situation, but it makes answering this question exceedingly difficult. I can, however, think of a time where it would have been easier just to back down, and not stand up for myself, but I refused. Not quite the original question, but it feels relevant to me.
Over the summer, I was a tennis camp counselor. I have been doing this job every summer except one since I was 14 years old, and I’m pretty good at it, if I do say so myself. I like the kids (most of them), and enjoy the antagonistic relationship I share with a lot of them.
One day this past summer (my birthday, to be exact), I told my kids (ranging in age from 11-15) to pick up the balls on the court so we could go to lunch. One 11-year-old boy, who frequently went out of his way to annoy me (all in good fun though), refused and sat down. I jokingly threatened to hit him with the racquet (huge smile on my face the entire time), and he laughed and went to do it.
A few seconds later, a coach with a different group (who I have hated since I was 14…but that’s not important) immediately calls me over to his court. I go over to him, only to have him start demanding to know what had happened. I explained how it was all in good fun, and he starts shaking his head saying that the kid was “under his protection” and that I can’t treat kids that way. Now, taken out of context, I can see why people would think it’s wrong. But I never actually hit the kids (even if they hit me), and am always careful not to take the teasing too far. The coach refused to see this.
Long story short, when I refused to admit that I was wrong for “hitting” the kid, the coach insisted that I do push-ups as punishment. I laughed in his face. He started yelling for me to do 10 push-ups, but I flat out refused. When he asked why, I yelled back about how I wasn’t one of the kids, and told him that he had no right to treat employees (he’s not even the boss, by the way) that way, and that if he had a problem with me he should take it up with the camp director.
I followed up with the camp director and told her what he said to me, and when she asked him about the situation later on, he denied the entire thing even happened. When other counselors (and coaches) found out what had happened, they applauded me standing up to him, because what he was trying to do was complete bullshit. I knew I was right in this situation, which is what gave me the courage to stand up to him. I wasn’t afraid of the consequences, because I knew I didn’t do anything wrong.
Currently I am living in conditions where I feel I can't voice my opinions. I've lived with many roommates in the past 3 years and have lived in some pretty shitty situations, but never one where I didn't even feel welcome in my own home.
So here goes, I live with a neat freak and I am not a neat and tidy person, I'm no slob I'm just not neat and tidy. We had a few small problems where I kept my feelings bottled up for fear of tension in the house. Recently we had a party and the cleanup was done faster and better than it ever has been, but this wasn't good enough. I had friends up and we did clean when we came back from our plans that were made before plans of a party. The problem was it wasn't fast enough. the neat one and I agreed to do the recycling together but Sunday came quickly and with that the business of Monday and the craziness of Tuesday. It was now Wednesday and as I was making dinner after class I hear her huffing and puffing all over the place and don't realize it's because of me until I hear her throwing glass bottles and yelling to herself in the entry way. I start to get frustrated, because she hadn't expressed any of her feelings directly to me. I barely finish my dinner and I go to leave to get the boxes out of my car to help. Then all hell breaks loose. She mutters "There's no point now" and I flip. In this case I because I kept my feelings bottled they exploded in the form of "FUCK YOU!" as I ran screaming out of my house to a safe place on campus.
Since then there has been a tension in the house. I quickly apologized the next day but the issue was never brought up or talked about.
Because of this lack of communication I feel unwelcome in my own house and I feel like I can't be anywhere but my room. I don't think she is the bad guy in this situation I just think we have a communication and an understanding problem. If I had the courage to confront her about our issues this probably wouldn't have happened.
Bonus: Cowardly Lion "Wizard of Oz"(it was answered already but worth a shot right?)
There's one situation that still haunts me today that relates to my employer. I'm currently taking time off but will be working for them again in the spring and because of that I don't want to go into the details. They claim they're doing something and portray that to the customers. The sad thing is I believe everything's in place to carry out what they promise. It's just a lack of communication between corporate and management and a lack of caring on the part of management that things don't get done the way they say they do. I don't speak up because I've already voiced my opinion on one issue going so far as to email the CEO. I got a call back from the district manager telling me to go through the chain of commands before emailing the big shot. I'm thinking if I want to see anything get done, the quickest way might as well be emailing the CEO, and if I had his number I wouldn't hesitate in giving him a call. I've already shaken things up with advice on how to better operations and cut cost. They'll accept that, but they're less willing to listen to me about an issue where they're carelessly not doing what they say they do, that if they were to, it would slightly increase cost. But my worry is if every company lies about even one thing with their customers and the public, than this world is in deep shit.
During the early years of high school, I was dating a guy who I had liked for a long time, and he really liked me, too. However, as the relationship progressed, I became really scared -- I suppose of the commitment and seriousness that I was foreseeing. We never talked that much in school and I was always nervous around him, but after I started to feel so afraid, it got even worse. To this day, I regret everything I did, even though the guy and I resolved things and a kind of friends now. I began ignoring his calls, and avoided all contact with him, just because I didn't want to talk to him about how I was feeling about everything. I did all of this even though I knew that he knew how I felt (we had many mutual friends with big mouths). I knew the right thing to do, but, at that period in my life, I didn't have the strength to follow through. The ethical thing to do was to be honest, to not leave him hanging, to have a little courage and fess up.
I was afraid of what my boyfriend's reaction was going to be. He was (still is) one of the nicest, most sincere people I had ever met, and I didn't want to look at his face, or hear his voice, when I told him how I felt. Fear with the motivation for my cowardice, in other words. It really sucks that I did what I did, because I ended up really hurting him, and I myself ended up pretty depressed, as well. It really messed up our high school years, actually. But, I learned from it, and I have never done anything like that since. I've always been forthright when faced with similar situations.
And, although it's already been answered, the bonus question is from The Wizard of Oz, and the answer is courage.
Honestly, I’m a pretty opinionated and outspoken person. Sometimes not to my detriment, I often have trouble shutting up actually. That’s what made this question so hard to answer; I’ve been racking my brain trying to remember a time when I didn’t speak up.
I think one of the only times I didn’t voice my opinion was here at school. A few semesters ago, I had a professor who could constantly bash my work. I really felt that much of the criticism was unfounded, and had a personal bias. I’m not saying that it is not within a professor’s job to comment, criticize or adjust students’ work. I know that, respect that and support it. In fact I feel I’ve grown the most as a writer from the (constructive) criticism and comments I’ve received in my classes. But this was different.
Not only did the constant criticism make me question my desire to even become a journalist, it clouded my passion to write, in all my classes but specifically that one. I wanted to tell that professor that I thought their condescending way of teaching was wrong, I wanted to tell them that they should inspire their students, not discourage them. I wanted to tell them that if you offer an exorbitant amount of negative feedback, you must include suggestions on how to improve along with it. But I didn’t. I shut my mouth, took the criticism, and took the grades I was given. It was the most miserable semester I’ve ever had.
I guess I didn’t voice my opinion because I was intimidated, I also feared getting a lower grade than I already knew this teacher was going to give me. I think there’s also a sort of idea that’s instilled in us from youth, that we shouldn’t question our teachers, that they are all knowing. Either way, to this day I always wish I had just kind of given that person a piece of my mind, because who knows, maybe they’re still making students feel the same way I felt that semester. But again, I didn’t.
I have a very distinct moment in mind of a situation where I did not speak up because I feared the consequences. Over the summer my boyfriend and I were coming home from the beach and on the way home he wanted to stop at a store. I decided to wait in the car because he said he would only be a minute. As I waited there with the windows down, a group of younger looking high school students were walking by, and at the same time another boy about their age was walking towards them. As the other boy passed by, the "leader" of the bigger group said something to him about a time when he had embarrassed the boy. The kid said something back to him and kept walking but the group just laughed and leader made another comment, calling the boy a loser. I just sat there looking at the group, shaking my head in disgust of their bullying. I felt like opening the door of the car and approaching the leader to scold him about what he did. Then again, they were a group of rowdy boys. They did not seem to be dangerous but they were intimidating; plus I did not want my boyfriend to walk out and get him involved in some sort of altercation with a group of teenagers. So I just sat there and watched the group continue on without any remorse about the bullying that they partook in.
Instead of sticking up for a defenseless kid I said nothing because I was afraid of what the group would say to me. I really regret not doing anything and I'll never forget how I failed to take action and stand up for that boy.
I have failed to voice my opinion several times because of the consequences I knew would ensue, even when i knew in my heart that I should say something. Most of the times i can think of are stupid though, like my friends being mean to other people or just harsh on someone who didn't entirely deserve it. While I knew I should shut my friend up, I didn't feel the same need to defend the person he was yelling at, and although i knew he was wrong I thought it would be better to back up my friend than to help the one he was being a dick to. I guess I was more worried about my friend being mad at me than how the other person felt. Hopefully, if this situation occurs again, I'll have the courage to stand up to him and tell him hes being an idiot, as opposed to just standing idly by and being a witness.
As many other people have said in this blog, I mostly always voice my opinion even if it means I get punched in the face (which has actually happenned) but there is one time I can think of where two people were fighting in my place of work. It started out as a joke and then one person crossed the line. I knew that the person crossed the line and ultimately it caused the other person to cry and it became a big ordeal. However, I did not voice my opinion becaue although I did not agree with the way one of the people was talking, it was not involving me particularly and I was working the rest of the day and did not want to deal with the tension that would come along with working with this person for the following six hours. I let it go for the moment but then the next day made a comment saying he should apologize to the person he made cry.
Trying to recall a time where I resisted the urge to speak my opinion of something is difficult to pinpoint. People that know me well would probably agree that I am very passionate in my beliefs and have no shame in preaching them to those around me.
However, I will say that there has recently been a person who frustrates me to my core. I do not believe I can say anything to this person however, because they are of a higher authority than I am.
My dance team on campus, Culture Shock, is in a hectic preparation for our most important show of the year, Dance Evolution. Because we are granted an annual budget for team expenses, a lot of paper work and ordering via Student Association is done on a daily basis.
To make a long and complex story short, almost 85 percent of our costumes that were ordered with a certain "someone" have yet to come in. With the show in three days, the E-Board is up to their neck in stress. After making plenty of phone calls trying to track these shipments down, the E-Board discovers that this "someone" received e-mails stating that these costumes were unavailable. We never received notification of this.
Now, imagine my irritation with this "someone" for neglecting to inform my team of the costume statuses. After confronting her, I got a simple "Oh yeah, I did get those".
Ordinarily, I would certainly have expressed all of my angry feelings about "someone's" unprofessionalism, but I fear that this type of confrontation will affect the team's relationship with SA and our ability to make purchases in the future. Because we are granted a generous amount of money, I definitely do not want to jeopardize our financial status.
This type of situation is hard to deal cope with considering my type of character, but ultimately, the team's relationship is what needs to be maintained. I guess you can say, I take one for the team.
I am currently dealing with a situation where I can't voice my opinion as much as I would like to.
So, like Amanda, I am also on the Culture Shock Dance Team. This Saturday is our biggest show of the year, and right around this time, our entire team is under a lot of stress. Dance Evolution is a production that takes an entire semester to put together. We are funded by SA but do not perform on campus. Every year, we perform at the New Paltz High school, which is another great amount of paperwork, on top of Amanda's costuming experience. So, not only are we going through troubles right now with our costumes, and "biting our tongues," to maintain our professionality, I have also been struggling in communicating with the director of facilities for the New Paltz High School.
Being that we perform at the high school, and I kid you not, this is a huge show, we go through a lot of paperwork. We cover insurance, lots of security, lighting and sound technicians. All of this has to be ok-ed by a man, who will remain unnamed. This no named man is new to the position, taking the place of last year's facilities coordinator. For a new guy who knew nothing, he was very rude about it. We had all our paperwork in and ready for approval over a month before, and he never approved our paperwork. Without his approval for the school, we could not confirm our show. It was a month before the show, and he still did not get back to us. Not only was this man completely unprofessional, he was unreliable and untrustworthy as well. He would agree to something one day, and then reject it the next, but without his consent, we could not have the school. Every time I spoke to him on the phone, I wanted to express how unprofessional and rude he was, but was afraid that if I did, we would remain school-less. By my feel for his personality, he seemed exactly like the type who wouldn't do something just because he didn't like people, even if he was in the wrong.
Just for this man, Dick (the name my team has adopted for him), I have been doing flips, cartwheels and leaps making sure that he got everything he wanted, and being nice about it.
I never keep my mouth shut, but when there are so many sensitivities, you take it for the team, put a smile on your face, and as my dance teacher once said, kill them with kindness.
Bonus: wizard of oz, the cowardly lion.
By the way,
I will be sending a formal complaint to whoever I need to about my man Dick the day after our show.
and if you are free, come to Dance Evolution this Saturday at the New Paltz high school at 6pm.
I've worked at Starbucks in Target for almost four years now and for the first three I had an incredible boss who was easy to talk to and easy to confront. However, after getting married and realizing that he wanted more with his life than being a 25-year-old guy managing a Starbucks, he moved on to (what I hope to be) bigger and greater things. I went back to college and it didn't affect me. Yet, when I came back for the summer to work, a new boss had taken his place and basically ruined my summer.
Let me explain. First of all, she was in her later 40's, a horrid haircut from the 1980's, and felt she knew everything about everything. Well, she didn't. Although I was younger, obviously, I had more experience than her when it came to being a barista, something that in fact does take skill. Yet she made it her duty to make sure any little slip-up I did would be noted and I was consistently scolded. Yes, everyone has had a sucky boss, but it got worse.
We get two breaks during our shifts, one 15-minute break and a 46-minute lunch break. Yet this particular boss smoked a lot of cigarettes and took (at least) three 15-minute breaks throughout her shifts. She also began making drinks for herself and not paying for them, saying she would run to her car after break and return with the money. This would never happen, and we're not allowed to have free drinks (at my particular Starbucks). This went on for the remainder of the summer. She also began threatening to fire workers in other sections of Target, which not only wasn't her job but not her place to speak. Many other workers would complain about her but never said anything to HR or other managers. She continued to scold and threaten, steal and reek of cigarettes.
I would consistently return home from work frustrated and never wanting to return. My dad kept telling me to say something, but when the end of the summer hit and I still hadn't, I decided not to. I knew I wasn't returning for awhile after going back to college, and I finally made the decision to not return to that Starbucks again. I should have said something, yes, but in all honesty, I was in a constant state of fear that I would get a poor recommendation for a future job after working at this one for so long. It just didn't seem fair.
Would I say something if I had the chance to go back? I think yes. I should fight the man (or woman in the case) and stick up for myself and others.
To quote the Cowardly Lion, "Read...read what my medal says. Courage!..." There have been times where I have failed to speak up and voice my opinion. I can remember back in high school there was this one teacher who interjected personal politics into just about everything or every lesson. Each thought that was said before the class about certain topics had a certain spin on it and I thought it was wrong. Teachers shouldn't be imposing their personal beliefs onto students, especially in an environment where teenagers are so susceptible to anything that is said or done in front of them. It got to a point where parents were calling in to complain about the teacher. Eventually the teacher quit.
I was afraid to speak up because I was afraid of what would happen. Yes, I didn't like the teacher, but this person had a family and children to feed. I didn't want to be the one responsible to start a chain of events that would lead to someone losing their job. Even though now I realize that even though I didn't say anything this person quit anyway maybe I should have. But what's done is done and all I can do now is learn from the past.
Growing up, speaking up for what I believe in was always highly encouraged. My grandmother never encouraged violence, only verbal and respectful communication as a way to get my point across. I can’t really say that I have a hard time confronting people about what offends me or makes me uncomfortable. I’m pretty out-spoken and sometimes even in the wrong moments. But most of the time I do try my best to wait until a time that I find most appropriate to voice my opinion, whether it is a situation where I should speak to a person alone or a situation in which I have to calm myself down in order to have an effective conversation.
One thing that we have spoken about in class is not treating human beings as pieces of nothing, as pieces of instruments or material. There have been many times where I've been walking home from the train, sometime alone or with grandmother, and the disgusting, hungry stare of a man haunts my trip. Sometimes they like to add “hey sexy” or “where you going baby?” “Fuck you; I am not your baby” I want to say. But I don’t.
I know telling them to go fuck themselves is useless but I also think that if I say “hey, you shouldn’t look at me that way, it offends of me,” it wouldn’t work either. It scares me- the idea that treating women as entertainment is so instilled in the minds of many men.
When I first thought of this scenario I asked myself if this was an instance where I am not expected to speak up, is it? I think I could if I wanted to especially in the middle of the day where people are around and it’s not likely that anybody would get hurt. Most of time I wish I would, and there have been times where I have. But, there are many people (not just men, and not all men of course) that will continue treating women as pieces of meat, people that see nothing wrong in staring at women as if they were nothing but sexual things.
Just the other day around 11 at night, during a small party at my apartment, cops knocked began knocking on the door. Af
ter turning off the music, I opened to door to two cops who almost immediately said, "Don't worry, your not in trouble, we're just looking for someone in relation to a robbery." Despite this pronouncement, it's always nerveracking to have cops at your door when there are any number of things that you wouldn't want cops asking questions about.
To try and preface the rest of the story, in the Southside Apartments, things are always stolen and nothing is ever solved, so it's very possible whoever they were looking for in my building could have stolen from me.
Nonetheless, whether it was my fear of having the cops at my door any longer or the sense of not wanting to "rat out" anyone (i knew the kid they were looking for didnt live next door but was there at the time) I told the cops I didn't know who they were talking about.
In terms of social ethics, it was in both my best interest as well as society's to just speak up and attempt to bring justice to the kid, but fearing any possible further consequences for me, i stayed quiet.
It often takes a very extreme circumstance to get me to truly speak my mind, unless it is amongst people I feel comfortable with or a situation that I feel very strongly opposed to. One very memorable instance happened to me during high school, where most of these moments in my life probably took place.
One day in the cafeteria during our lunch period, I was sitting with my still-somewhat-new friends who all happened to be very outspoken and just generally people everyone knew not to fuck with. Nikki*, my closest friend of the group was one of those very attractive (solely on the outside) and "popular" girls that we hope will only exist in high school but we later find out never truly disappear from society, but you get the idea. So, on this fateful day, there was this very socially awkward classmate that sent over his friend to our lunch table with the intention of asking out my friend. She clearly was not interested, and in fact she found it funny that someone so far beneath her own caliber would ever consider asking her out that she decided to use the meanest method of dealing with the situation that she could. Instead of simply and politely replying, "Oh, no thank you," or "Sorry, I'm just not interested," or anything else that could possibly let him down easily, she said, "Yes, absolutely!"
Now, this may make her seem like she could just be trying to be nice and give him a chance, but in reality she just thought it would be funny to lead him on.
While I sat there and watched her come up with this horrible plan and the rest of my friends agreed and found her hilarious, I started to feel terrible. But instead of putting my foot down and expressing how I felt, I just sat there in silence. I knew how wrong it was and how terrible I would feel on the other end, but I just didn't speak up. I was terrified of Nikki and how she would react to me disagreeing with her.
Eventually, she had to break it to this poor boy that they were not really dating and that she was a truly horrible person. When the story got around to our other classmates, they also couldn't believe someone would do something so horrible.
I still regret never saying anything in that situation because it makes me feel like an accomplice even though I never told her it was a good idea or that it was fair. Luckily, not long after that I stopped being friends with Nikki and grew much more outspoken and started to learn when to say something.
*Names have not been changed, because this girl was the worst friend I've ever had and probably the worst person I've ever known and in turn she deserves no privacy.
When I was living with my parents there were occasions where I didn't voice my opinion because I feared being thrown out of the house again. Once, my stepparent made a derogatory statement about some out of the box food product being for poor people and tasting nasty. I turned around and I said that there was nothing wrong with being poor and didn't say anything else because they proceeded to get irate about it. Later, my stepparent and parent were fighting and my stepparent said that I talked down to them and that they wanted to punch me in my "fat face." This lead to me not really saying much in relation to anything my stepparent says that is wrong even though now my youngest sibling is exposed to their vitriol.
There is one instance stands out in my mind where I failed to voice my opinion. I ran a television studio in high school where morning announcements were recorded and students used the production space for their own projects. Senior year I would let other seniors hang out in there during their free periods. One kid found a videotape of one student who was pretty socially awkward giving a video game review. A group of kids showed it to me before posting it to the internet.
I didn’t agree with them posting it but if I voiced my opinion I would get into some trouble. If they posted it anyway I would be the first suspect, I was the only one with a key to the room. They knew that, and if I tried to stop them they would have turned on me and said I did it. My school took every action against cyber-bullying and consequences would be severe. I could have lost my position after three years in the program, or worse faced suspension or possible expulsion right before graduation. However if I played along and played dumb there would probably be no evidence and therefore no repercussions.
I let it go on and the video went viral. Everyone in the school saw it and was quoting it for the rest of the school year. While the kid complained and the school was trying to find out who made the video everyone who was involved kept quiet and there was no action taken. I got my friends password and took down the video a week later. It wasn’t an ethical decision by any means but I hope if I ever were in a similar position I would have more courage in my decision making.
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