Dilemma: Right vs. Right
For Fear of Not Passing, No Fear of Cheating
As a professor of mathematics and computer science at a large regional university in the south, Al regularly taught a remedial algebra course. The course typically enrolled students who had done very poorly in high-school math--a number of whom felt they were hopelessly incompetent in math and were frightened of failing yet again.
Al's course, which had 90 students, had five exams during the semester. After grading the first one, he made a mental note to pay close attention to a few students--including Sarah, a sophomore who did particularly badly on the exam. She confessed to him that she had never understood math at all but needed this course for her major. So Al was surprised to see that she was not in the room during the second exam. He did, however, think he saw a young man whom he hadn't seen before. When the young man turned in his test paper, Al put it aside to look at later. Sure enough, when he turned it over, it had Sarah's name on it.
On this point, Al knew, the rules of the university were particularly clear: He could have initiated action that would surely have led to the immediate and dishonorable dismissal of both Sarah and her friend. But he knew that such a dismissal would become a permanent part of their records. As such, it could forever warp their futures. To be sure, they had done something terribly wrong. And certainly, given the well-known levels of cheating in the university, the faculty had to send strong messages that such cheating would not be tolerated.
But did these two deserve to be singled out and academically destroyed? Was it fair to punish two individuals for the increased cheating statistics of their generation--especially when Sarah seemed to have been driven into temptation through an almost helpless sense of fear? Al found himself in a right-versus-right dilemma, with his strong sense of justice pitted against his powerful sense of mercy. So he called them in to see him. The young man, it turned out, was Sarah's boyfriend and a senior engineering major. Al let them know the serious trouble they were in, and sent them away for a week while he considered what to do.
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