Project 1: Code of Ethics

This new Code of Ethics addresses several issues prevalent to Notre Dame students. One of the biggest issues is that of cheating, which is addressed under the rule 3.4. With the rise of the Internet, it has become quite easy to cheat, with sites such as Chegg offering paid subscriptions to get access to a myriad of common college homework questions. Sites such StackExchange are a haven to many coders as there are answers to almost any coding question or task imaginable. While some of these types of sites can be very useful for learning material, it is important to know recognize the distinction between using the resources to learn concepts and using them to get answers to a specific problem. Another big issue is the rule 3.2. Everyone at Notre Dame got in here because they cared about their grades in high school. While it is important to do as well as your ability allows in classes, the grade at the end of a class is not the most important element. The goal of all your classes should be to genuinely learn the material. All too often, it is easy to get by in a class by just cramming before an exam, or doing the homework without completely understanding it. This is something I am sometimes guilty of, and I need to remind myself that my primary concern should be to learn the material, not to just get an A.

There are weaknesses with this Code of Ethics. For one thing, this Code of Ethics does not cover every conceivable moral or ethical issue an engineering student at Notre Dame might encounter. If you are counting on the Code of Ethics to provide a clear moral consensus on any situation you encounter, it may not live up to that expectation. Furthermore, this Code of Ethics is black and white. Many situations in the real world are grey and the morals of them amorphous. It is difficult to establish a written Code of Ethics to deal with such issues.

If the purpose of a Code of Ethics is to inform people on what is ethical and what is not, I don’t think that a Code of Ethics is all that useful. I feel that most of the things in a Code of Ethics are things which a moral person tries to follow already. On the other hand, people who would not naturally incorporate an innate moral code into their practices, is not the type of person that would care to follow a Code of Ethics. I would say that a Code of Ethics rarely gives new insight or is helpful in forming a person’s moral code. That being said, I felt that creating this Code of Ethics was actually quite beneficial. It allowed me to think about what morals I hold as most important and reflect on how well I follow the Code of Ethics. I think that this is the real use of a Code of Ethics. Rather than an instructional tool, it is an impetus for personal reflection on how ethical you are.