Value Judgments

On March 3, four philosophy students will become UMBC’s first Ethics Bowl team to compete in the national Ethics Bowl tournament. The National Ethics Bowl will be held in Cincinnati, Ohio as part of the Association for Practical and Professional Ethics’ 20th anniversary meeting.

Although UMBC has previously participated in mock ethics bowls, this is the first year that the university has supported a registered team. The team placed third out of 16 in the Mid-Atlantic regional tournament, which was held on November 20.

An ethics bowl is structured similarly to a debate tournament. However, rather than being judged on whether their position is convincing, teams are judged on their ability to think through the moral implications of their possible decisions. The 40 teams invited to the National Ethics Bowl, who represent the top four teams from each of the 10 regional ethics bowls, were given 15 ethical issues to research. They will not know the specific question they have to answer until the day of the tournament.

“There’s excitement in having to think on your feet and find that loophole in your opponent’s argument. By the end you learn so much critical thinking-wise,” said Kayla Smith ’12, biological sciences and philosophy.

The ethics bowl team has met with Greg Ealick ’89, philosophy, and adjunct professor of philosophy, twice a week since the beginning of the semester to discuss the issues. The group has discussed moral dilemmas ranging from advertisements targeted towards children to alcoholic drinks enhanced with caffeine, from “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” to hybrid animals.

In order to prepare, the group learned to look at the issues from all sides and consider the repercussions of potential decisions. For example, for a case on punishments for violating a school’s academic integrity policy, the students thought about how their possible position might affect the student, their classmates, their professor, the university and their future employers.

“The first time you see a case you see it from a certain perspective, but when you take the time to discuss it you start to see things about it that you didn’t see before,” said Nana Owusu-Boaitey ’11, philosophy and biological sciences.

Danielle Albrecht ’13, philosophy and political science, agrees. “It’s only when we come here and discuss the problems as a group that all these different ideas start to come out and we see all these different possibilities. That’s part of what makes it so exciting, and what makes it really relevant,” she said.

The ethics bowl team members agreed that what they’ve learned preparing for the ethics bowl is applicable to their life outside the tournament as well. They cite the fact that they’ve learned to look at a problem from multiple angles and think quickly on their feet. “It helps you communicate with people who might disagree with you and it helps you to get your point across,” said Smith.

It’s also, the team said, made them trust their own thoughtful opinions. “It’s pretty confidence-boosting to present a viewpoint and know that you had some great arguments and made some great points,” said Michael Iafolla ’11, philosophy and English.

Still not sure what the ethics bowl team does?  Watch this video of the team practicing.

(2/25/11)

What do you countries think? US meets with Italy, France, and the U.K. to decide how to deal with Libya.

Now are you happy? Boeing wins hotly contested Air Force fuel tanker contract.

Psy-Ops drop pro-US leaflets.

In war, especially Afghanistan, it can be hard to identify who the enemy is.

It seems that the fog of war may have gotten so thick that a US general thought his foes included members of Congress.

Michael Hastings, the Rolling Stones reporter who ended Gen. Charlie McChrystal’s role in Afghanistan, dropped another bombshell report stating that Lt. Gen. William Caldwell wanted to

secretly manipulate the U.S. lawmakers without their knowledge.

How was this task to be done? Quite simply, the Army has people whose job it is to just this TO ENEMIES. As noted by the US Army (bold added):

The role of Psychological Operations is to alter the behavior of foreign populations in a manner consistent with United States diplomatic, national security and foreign policy objectives.

In fact, as the Rolling Stones article notes

Federal law forbids the military from practicing psy-ops [Psychological Operations] on Americans, and each defense authorization bill comes with a “propaganda rider” that also prohibits such manipulation.

Of course there is a chance that we’re not getting the whole story. Aides to the General have argued that the psy-ops officers were acting just as staff officers. However Danger Room’s Spencer Ackerman and Noah Schachtman provide evidence that this most likely is not true.

So why did a General act against a long standing law? Did Caldwell just go power hungry? Is this part of some evil scheme to mind control Washington? More likely M.S. at Democracy in America thinks

the army is pretty desperate to convince people the war in Afghanistan is going swimmingly.

What ever the reasons or justifications it looks like another mans career will end in Afghanistan.

Kidney Transplant and his Uncertain Path

It is probably safe to say that you haven’t thought about your kidney today… correct?

Maybe you should, your kidney is a pretty valuable thing… both in AND OUT of your body. That is because kidneys are the most sought after organ for transplants.

Right now more than 87,000 Americans are in need of a kidney transplant, 17,000 will likely receive a new kidney while 4600 will die because they did not get one in time.

The rarity of kidneys has got medical folks looking for answers.

The National Kidney Registry is trying educate people about kidney donor-ship (the living can make donations, not just the dead).

But there is unsettling news in the world of the kidney.

A new system for choosing potential kidney recipients is causing controversy.

The United Network for Organ Sharing (UNOS) is considering altering the kidney transplant list. They are proposing to give priority for the healthiest kidneys to the younger and healthier patients.

Currently the system runs on a traditional waiting list format.

UNOS insists that “It’s an effort to get the most out of a scarce resource.”

But critics are shouting cries of age discrimination.

While UNOS hopes new kidneys in younger patients will give the valuable organs more mileage, critics fear the controversy might turn potential donors off.

Should you or a loved one be in need of a new kidney… where would you stand in this “waiting list” debate?

When Mary Wyatt ’74, American studies, was a little girl, she loved to retreat to a secret space in her backyard. There, in a patch of grass surrounded by a grove of apple trees, she spent lazy summer days lying on her back and gazing up at the passing clouds. Flash forward to the present day, where the concept behind Wyatt’s favorite childhood ritual – connecting to nature in a ‘sacred’ space – plays a central role in the organization for which she serves as executive director.

While the parallels between Wyatt’s favorite childhood indulgence and her current job may be pure coincidence, she insists that the ties between her education at UMBC and her professional life are not. As an American studies major, Wyatt indulged in an array of interests – literature, history, music, sociology, art, pop culture – all related to the experience of being an American.

“It infected me with a desire to do something with my life that would really make a difference – in a place where I could actually make a ripple, here in America,” she says.
Although it would be almost two decades and a number of jobs (including positions in property management in Annapolis and in finance with the Rouse Company), Wyatt never lost sight of her aspiration.

In 1992, after a hiatus from the workplace to take care of her children, Wyatt decided she was ready to return to the workforce full-time. A quirky job advertisement in a local newspaper caught her eye. It began: “Renaissance man seeking assistant with good communication skills…”

Wyatt found herself employed by Tom and Kitty Stoner, husband and wife entrepreneurs interested in launching a private foundation whose focus, when Wyatt met them, wasn’t entirely clear. “They knew they wanted to do something that had to do with the environment, and the healing power of nature,” she says.

For the next few years, Wyatt and her new employers researched established foundations whose goals and objectives they respected. Then, they went on a weekend-long retreat in Vermont. In a whirlwind brainstorming session, the three of them drafted a mission statement, a vision statement, and a business plan for what would become the TKF Foundation.

The TKF Foundation, a private grant-making foundation, formed in 1996 on the premise of inspiring and creating “open spaces, sacred places” – open, that is, to people from every culture, religion, and economic background, explains Wyatt.

Since its launch, the TKF Foundation has funded over 100 “open spaces, sacred places” projects and supported scores of neighborhood-level greening projects in Baltimore, Anne Arundel County, and Washington, D.C. Of the many proposals it receives annually, the foundation chooses organizations that best share its vision: the creation of ‘sacred spaces’ for the purpose of facilitating an increased sense of community and deepening human connections.

At the helm of each of these projects is someone the TKF Foundation considers a “firesoul,” a person whose passion and vision serve as the driving forces behind the creation of a public green space where users might find respite, even an antidote, to an otherwise stressful and sometimes isolating world. “We look for kindred spirits,” Wyatt says.

Though Wyatt resists naming a favorite sacred space, she believes some of the foundation’s projects have made a considerable impact on their target communities.

One is a garden recently created at the Maryland Correctional Institute at Jessup. “To see these guys in prison grow something from seed, it’s amazing,” Wyatt says.

Another TKF-funded project Wyatt finds particularly inspirational is a garden in the unassuming fenced backyard of a rowhouse on Baltimore City’s Belvedere Avenue, which houses the nonprofit Advocates for Survivors of Torture and Trauma. “They get here [to Baltimore], find a room somewhere, and are afraid to come out. This helps them reinvent their lives,” says Wyatt, noting that the garden not only has brought some clients out of hiding, but also has encouraged them to grow vegetables they once ate in their native lands.

Having established over 100 thriving sacred spaces regionally for diverse clients – hospitals, schools, jails and beyond – the TKF Foundation is now embarking on its next and perhaps final phase.

In addition to continuing to support existing regional partners through 2015, the foundation plans to fund up to five new sacred spaces nationwide. Each of these projects would serve as a demonstration and research site to study the impact of nature on the human spirit.

“The research will prove what we [at TKF] believe – that nature is sacred,” Wyatt says.

— Elizabeth Heubeck ’91

Back in 2001, Kaliope Parthemos ’93, psychology, got some career advice that has resonated with her over a decade of public service.

Parthemos was clerking for Baltimore Judge John C. Themelis at the time, and she recalls that he turned to her one day and said: “You belong in the courtroom and you belong as an advocate. Don’t be one of those people who talks about how things should be done, but has never actually worked it and lived it. You know the people. You understand the people. Go fight for the people.”

As Baltimore City Deputy Mayor of Economic and Neighborhood Development, Parthemos is now engaged in that advocacy every day. She oversees 17 city agencies, addressing issues from transportation to tourism to the arts – a great fit given her keen appreciation of Baltimore’s cultural institutions and its underground art and music scene. Some of her current projects – including a “Vacants to Value” housing initiative and a push for “healthy food zones” to transform some of Baltimore’s food deserts – have tackled deep-rooted challenges to Baltimore’s public health and safety.

Parthemos sees her own career trajectory as very individual – based on opportunity as much as her longstanding interest in social issues and her passion to serve the needs of Baltimore’s children. After graduating from UMBC and working as a social service caseworker in Baltimore, she took a law degree at the University of Maryland School of Law.

Having grown up in the Baltimore City public school system, she saw her subsequent job as a public defender focusing on juvenile law as a way to effectively serve Baltimore’s youth. When Parthemos left the public defender’s office in 2006, she intended to start her own practice, but public service beckoned again when Stephanie Rawlings-Blake – a friend and colleague who served on Baltimore’s City Council and eventually became mayor in 2010 – recruited her to work in the city’s administration. Reflecting on her time at UMBC, Parthemos says that her experiences with Choice – a UMBC/Shriver Center program that offers youth in Maryland’s juvenile justice system a wide array of resources, counseling, employment skills development, educational support, and after-school and weekend activities – gave her an opportunity to witness first-hand the struggles that many of Baltimore’s children face when unfairly dealt a tough deck in life.

Parthemos’ work with Choice and the Department of Social Services has informed her approach to serving the needs of Baltimore’s children and other residents while also managing the city’s unprecedented budget problems.

“When we came into office we had a $120 million budget deficit,” notes Parthemos. One of her first tasks was negotiating with area non-profit organizations, hospitals, colleges and universities on a controversial “bed tax” to help plug the budget gap. She attributes the success of that effort, which the Daily Record reported will net the city $20.4 million over six years, to balancing the needs of these groups and their value to the city with the need for new revenue.

Parthemos is now enmeshed in another difficult budgetary challenge: assessing how to spend the city’s limited recreation funds to best serve city children. “They don’t deserve a building that’s basically glued together and only has one person at the door that’s basically just allowing kids to come in, with no actual structured activities in place for them,” she says. “What we’re hoping to do is have a smaller number of recreation centers… but ensuring that the kids have a safe environment with structured activities.”

Parthemos says that her training as a lawyer and the educational experiences that enabled her to make friends from different socioeconomic and cultural backgrounds has been a key to meeting the challenges she faces in city government. She laments that some Baltimore residents do not have such opportunities to meet people outside of their own circles: “It strikes me really profoundly… how limiting that is to one’s ability to grow and one’s ability to see something through someone else’s eyes.” Being an effective public servant, she says, means “understanding the city of Baltimore, understanding the people, understanding the struggles that people have on a daily basis.” It also means combining awareness of those challenges with knowledge about how government agencies “interact with one another in order to create the services and systems that Baltimore City residents require and should have.”

— Dinah Winnick