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The Finer Points of Privacy
By Leona Baker |Â February 16, 2011
(NORFOLK/VIRGINIA BEACH) A mother becomes concerned when she doesn't hear from her daughter, a junior in college, for over a week. The daughter, who suffers from a serious health condition, typically communicates with her mom several times a week.
The mother travels to the school to investigate and meets a friend of her daughter's who is also alarmed by her disappearance. But the college's president says the school is obligated to protect the daughter's privacy and won't allow the mother to enter her room or search her computer files to find out what is going on. What should the mother do? What would you do?
This was the dilemma presented to two teams of four students who faced off in the championship round of the12th annual statewide collegiate VFIC (Virginia Foundation for Independent Colleges) Wachovia Ethics Bowl, held in the Monumental Chapel on the VWC campus, February 14. The theme of this year's Bowl was "Ethics and Privacy."
The scenario of a mother's obligation to protect the well-being of her college-age daughter versus a college-age daughter's right to privacy was just one of the debates entered into by teams from independent colleges and universities from across Virginia.
Eight Virginia Wesleyan students competed in this year's Ethics Bowl. The host school is allowed two teams of four. Wesleyan team members this year included: Jordan Bondurant, Junior; Ryan Dulac, Senior; Ksera Dyette, Senior; John Maravich, Senior; Andrea Medrano, Junior; Senior; Ryan Paphites, Sophomore; John-Michael Sheehan, Junior; and Jacqueline Togno, Junior. The VWC team was featured in a recent story in the Virginian-Pilot.
The Ethics Bowl was established by the Virginia Foundation for Independent Colleges as a means of engaging students with complex ethical dilemmas based on studies of individual ethics cases involving real-world scenarios. Virginia Wesleyan College won the first annual VFIC Ethics Bowl in 2000, held on the campus of the University of Richmond. The last time VWC hosted the Ethics Bowl was 2005.
The Ethics Bowl is an invaluable learning and networking experience for all of the students involved, says Dr. Eric Mazur, faculty advisor for the VWC team.
†It has been a pleasure and an honor to advise these students,†Mazur says. †They are among the best kinds of students to be found at VWC, but also, I think, very representative of their fellow classmates.â€
Ultimately it was Sweet Briar College that emerged victorious in the final round of this year's Ethics Bowl. It was a battle of the sexes with the women of Sweet Briar taking on the men of Hampden-Sydney College. Both teams argued that the mother should contact the police and collect information from her daughter's friends and professors, but the Sweet Briar team maintained that she should not eliminate the possibility of breaking the rules by entering her daughter's room in an effort to protect her from possible harm.
The 2012 VFIC Ethics Bowl will be held Feb. 12-13 on the campus of Shenandoah University in Winchester, Virginia.
See also: Ethically Speaking: Virginia Wesleyan hosts and competes in annual VFIC Ethics Bowl, Feb. 13-14.