The Way We Live Now: 4-22-01: The Ethicist; Help-Wanted Help
I am a recruiter for a temp agency. Many companies that use us practice nationality-, sex-, age- or race-based discrimination. I can cooperate, making me personally guilty and legally liable. I can dispatch applicants solely on ability, knowing they are not welcome. Or I can cease to deal with such clients, forfeiting revenue. Is there a positive alternative to simply leaving the industry? -- Anonymous, N.C.
What you describe is not only unethical; it is criminal. 'This has been illegal since July 1965,' says Daniel Pollitt, the Kenan Professor of Law Emeritus at the University of North Carolina. 'Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 forbids most of this. Age and disability discrimination were added later.'
While it is difficult for a single individual to resist such pervasive iniquity, passive acceptance is not an honorable option. Fortunately, there is the positive solution you seek: call the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the federal agency charged with enforcing Title VII. And, Pollitt adds, the E.E.O.C. is conveniently located: 'They've got offices in Charlotte and in Raleigh.'
I am an attractive female, almost 30, attending college, and I like one of my professors. He is in my age range and is single but says it is not ethical to date students. I understand that and have offered to drop his class. So what gives? Could this just be his way of saying, 'Hey, I am not interested'? -- J.W., Fresno, Calif.
Many colleges have rules governing this situation. If you violate them, you can get the object of your affections into serious trouble, and there's nothing seductive about that. Such codes are designed to protect students from sexual harassment, always a risk when there is a power imbalance in a couple -- for example, when one gives grades to the other. So first learn what the rules are. If your school forbids relationships only between a professor and a current student, then wait until next semester to pursue this fellow. Consider him an investment in your sexual future.
Love is notorious for disregarding any rules that try to govern it, and it is true that more than one student-teacher intrigue has evolved into a happy (or not so happy) marriage. However, if Professor Dreamboat declines to date you, it doesn't matter if he's guided by his head or his heart (if those are the relevant body parts): you're out of luck either way.
My well-fed and well-cared-for cat is an inveterate 'mouser.' She often returns from hunting with a live mouse and then begins her play ritual -- throwing it in the air and catching it, swatting it around, etc. Eventually, she eats it whole. Should I intervene and save the mouse such cruel suffering, or should I let nature take its course? -- Jeffrey Adler, Salem, N.Y.
Much that is natural is entirely dreadful -- smallpox comes immediately to mind -- and so we persistently seek to thwart nature's most painful manifestations. That's pretty much what civilization is all about. You ought not passively tolerate cruelty to animals, even a mouse, just because it's practiced by a cat. Would you let your cat rob a bank and rough up the patrons? (You know, if it were a superintelligent cat that could write a robbery note and hold a gun?) You should intervene not to reform the cat but to protect the mouse from suffering.
Incidentally, if your cat is so well fed from eating canned food in your kitchen, she is not exactly in a state of nature as I (and all those animal shows on public TV) understand it.