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ETHICS IN ACTION 5

Ethics in Action

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Ethics in Action

Research an institution of higher education that has experienced a crisis situation that had an ethical or integrity component. Analyze whether the situation violates HLC’s Criterion Two.

An example of an institution of higher education in the United States that has experienced a crisis situation which had an ethical or integrity component is Southern University. In this crisis situation, the registrar of the school was accused of having changed the grades of hundreds of students (Diverse Education, 2004). This was in the month of March in the year 2003 and it came to the limelight that the registrar of the institution had changed the marks of about 541 students. The registrar had thereby made about 2500 illegal transactions with the students as stipulated in the accusations raised against him. The story came to the light after one of the young women in the school presented herself as having acquired a masters degree but they was no record to prove this. This prompted the firing of the registrar since it was against the university laws and regulations.

This situation violates the HLC’s Criterion Two in a number of ways. One of these is that as the registrar of the organization, he is expected to operate with integrity when carrying out the financial, personnel, academic and also the auxiliary functions. This depicts that he should follow all the rules, policies and processes that are aimed at achieving fairness and ethical behavior in the governance and administration of the school (Casper College, 2017). As a member of the staff in the institution of higher learning, he is supposed to embrace integrity and he thus violated the law by making the illegal financial transactions with the students and also changing their grades. The other thing that proves that the registrar violated the HLC criterion two is that he misused the privileged of making autonomous decisions in the interest of the institution and assuring integrity. Being a symbol of integrity in the organization, the registrar was not expected to entertain any form of exam irregularity among other irregularities in the institution. He thus betrayed the school and violated Criterion two by failing to act true to the members of the public who has hopes on the institution and those who relies on the performance of the students in the institution to make the decision of whether to consider their children to join that institution of higher learning.

Make a recommendation to avoid the situation in the future. Provide evidence to support your position.

One of the recommendations that I would make in order to avoid the situation in future is to reduce the powers of the registrar in the organization. In this I would ensure that the grades of the students in the institution go through a number of stages before they are dispersed to them to ensure that they will not be altered at any of the levels. The other thing that I would recommend is that there should be a number of people bestowed the responsibility of working with the registrar so that they can act as a check and balance and curtail his powers to do the things that violate the ethics and integrity of the institution of higher learning. This will help in ensuring the balance of the powers bestowed to the registrar in order to avoid such an instance where he is receiving false financial favors from the student so that he can later their grades. There should also be a banning of making any financial transactions with the registrar in the school and any student who is caught should be suspended. This will help in ensuring that all financial transactions are made directly to the accounts office. When there are people appointed to act as watchdogs, they greatly aid in ensuring that checks and balances are achieved in the powers of the registrar in the institution.

References

Casper College, (2017). HLC Accreditation: Criterion Two. Retrieved from http://www.caspercollege.edu/about/accreditation/hlc/criterion-2

Diverse Education, (2004). Grade-Changing Scandal Rocks Southern University. Retrieved from http://diverseeducation.com/article/3640/