In this article, we challenge the traditional view of ethics and student affairs that prompts questions like "what place does moral education have in the academy?" Simply asking this question fosters the myth that we have a choice as to whether or not ethics and moral education are part of higher education. In fact, ethics is a part of our everyday interactions with our colleagues, staff, and students. Our management styles, teaching philosophies, and manner of addressing the housekeeper all reflect our moral values. Given the unavoidable presence of ethics in our daily lives, the more appropriate question becomes, "how shall we teach ourselves and our students to recognize the values that guide our daily actions?" Students constantly receive formal and informal teachings about ethics, and we feel that it is the responsibility of true educators to help students determine which approaches to ethics resonate with their values. The temptation exists to try to "teach our values" with the goal of changing students perspectives. Instead, we advocate teaching individual values with the goal of showing students how to identify their own moral preferences.

We offer a process of moral evaluation to guide us through the process of identifying the role that ethics plays in our lives. By recognizing the undercurrent of ethics in all that we do, we gain a new understanding of our encounters with others and have a different language to describe problems when they arise. Seeing ethics as a process to facilitate communication and set some standards for our conduct gives a common language that is useful in both everyday and crisis settings.

In this article, we challenge the view of the role of moral education in the academy that prompts the question “What place, if any, does moral education have in the academy?” Simply asking this question implies that we have a choice as to whether or not ethics and moral education are part of higher education. In fact, ethics is a part of our everyday interactions with our colleagues, staff, and students. Our management styles, teaching philosophies, and manner of addressing our co-workers reflect our moral values. Given the unavoidable presence of ethics in our daily lives, the more appropriate question becomes, “How shall we teach ourselves and our students to recognize the values that guide our daily actions?” Students constantly receive formal and informal teachings about ethics, and the temptation exists to try to teach our values with the goal of changing students’ perspectives. However, we feel that it is the responsibility of true educators to help students determine which approaches to ethics resonate with their values.

In a series of conversations almost three years ago, we realized that we both felt dissatisfied with the state of ethics scholarship in the student affairs literature. The dilemma-ridden style of ethics did not reflect our experiences. Thus, we describe an approach to ethics that illustrates its impact in our everyday lives, and advocate a process of moral evaluation that encourages individuals to explore their own moral preferences and the way these beliefs impact their daily interactions. By better understanding how ethics impacts all areas of our lives, we hope to shift current conversations toward a more balanced view of ethics.

Ethics is one field that helps us answer questions like "What is the most appropriate response in a given situation?" Morality provides some kind of standard for conduct, character formation, and for life. While not always reflected in everyday discourse, philosophers and theologians draw a technical distinction between ethics and morality. Morality is one kind of action guide or way that we shape our interactions with the world. This life guide includes norms and virtues, among other things, which help us formulate responses to specific people and things. Morality addresses how we should act while ethics analyzes why we maintain these particular moral norms. Ethics functions at a different level from morality in that it seeks to answer broader, more theoretical questions like “What is good?” or “What is virtue?” (Frankena, 1980, p. 4). While the meta-level of discourse is quite interesting, it does not impact our argument and we will use the terms ethics and morality interchangeably.

In broad terms, morality seeks to help us answer the question, “How should I live and interact with other people?” Part of this question concerns particular values which help us define our conduct and mold our experiences. Together with what we believe about ourselves, our situation, and the world, morality determines how we should act or shape ourselves (Frankena, 1980, p. 19). Part of morality includes specific skills for resolving conflict, but it also responds to questions about how we do and should treat other people under more routine circumstances. Ethics provides various methods for assessing the attitudes, actions, and values of professionals; revealing these roots can provide an invaluable tool for understanding our actions in routine and antagonistic situations.

Before considering ethics in relation to our everyday lives, we must have some sense of the different approaches to ethics. In the following chart, we offer three perspectives that look at the agents involved in any given situation, the rules being considered, and the circumstances surrounding the actions. Clearly, all three approaches to ethics interact and influence each other, but the chart offers a glimpse of their key concerns. This chart is simply an example of the many different ways people approach morality. Understanding a variety of ethics theories can help us discover which combination best suits our values.

With these three elements in mind, try to answer the following questions: Do you tend to pay more attention to the nature of the agent, her actions, or the circumstances in particular situations? Does your moral emphasis fall primarily on identifying moral character, adhering to principles, or maximizing good outcomes based on specific factors related to the case? We will revisit these kinds of questions in greater detail when we offer a process for moral evaluation. We are aware that any discussion of ethics runs the risk of becoming too theoretical and abstract, but we hope that you will use this piece to examine your approach to ethics as a student affairs professional. As Margaret Barr and M. Lee Upcraft have stated, “We cannot afford to let ethical statements and ethical practice remain abstract concepts. A commitment to ethical and responsible behavior provides the essential framework to guide our behavior in the future and aids us in approaching that future with optimism” (1990, p. 17). Re-orienting ethics discussions to bring into focus the morality of everyday interactions will help realign the role ethics does and should play in our professional lives.

We depart from most of the ethics literature in the field of student affairs by placing more emphasis on everyday ethics. Most of the work on ethics in student affairs deals with the role of ethics in conflicts; this is indirectly suggested by the placement of the chapter on ethics in the Handbook of Student Affairs Administration (Barr, 1993). In this fundamental text, Harry Canon’s chapter on ethics falls between Don G. Creamer’s chapter “Conflict Management Skills” and Marsha A. Duncan’s chapter “Dealing with Campus Crises.” Although this anecdotal evidence is not proof that ethics has not received a balanced treatment in student affairs literature, part of our goal is to dispel the perceptions created by associating ethics with conflicts and crises. Since this conflict-oriented approach to ethics has received a great deal of attention in the student affairs literature, we focus on a broader role for ethics in the lives of student affairs professionals. For more detailed descriptions of this perspective, see works by Kitchener (1984, 1985), Canon and Brown (1985), Nash (1997), and Upcraft & Poole (1991).

Ethics can contribute much more to student affairs than merely providing a tool for discussion and discipline. We are not looking for a kinder and gentler way to tell co-workers and students that they made a mistake. Our approach to ethics is far more concerned with uncovering the way we evaluate situations than with determining who acted unethically. Ethics can help us ask questions like "What factors in our community gave rise to this behavior?" or "How does our relationship with this person influence the way in which we attempt to change her actions?" Seeing ethics as a process to facilitate communication and set some standards for our conduct gives a common language that is useful in both everyday and crisis settings.

In addition to shifting away from a crisis sense of ethics, a focus on everyday ethics can help define individuals' relationships with students and colleagues. Taking a stance on major issues is clearly an important part of any job, but equally important are the day-to-day interactions with a secretary or advisee. Such interactions define us as professionals as much as, if not more than, our positions on issues like affirmative action or cohabitation in residence halls. We can observe this reality in action in any institutional committee. When studying a topic like student safety, the person convening the committee could select any number of people to participate. Individuals’ interests and opinions play some part in the decision, but so do judgments about whether a person is cooperative, respectful, and reliable (and political factors, of course, influence the decisions). For example, does the person treat others with respect and fairness? Do her decisions seem arbitrary and simply an exertion of power? These ethical considerations often carry considerably more weight than the individual’s position on the issue.

Shifting away from conceptions of ethics that focus on problems serves several purposes. First and foremost, attending to the ethics component of our everyday lives helps us see that ethics is not just another mechanism for assessing praise or blame in a situation. Seeing how ethics is imbedded in the pattern of our daily encounters will make us more comfortable with its methods, and this heightened comfort will assist us when we do face conflicts. We are morally compelled to make judgments in some situations that may require saying things like "jeopardizing the safety of other students is unacceptable." Part of the difficulty with questions about our professional character is that we as student affairs administrators define the kind of professionals we want to be in an environment that is always changing.

Balancing an ability to adapt to the changing needs of students with the need to remain relatively consistent when working with our colleagues is not an easy task. Managing the multiple roles of the student affairs professional requires a process of reflection to guide decision-making in a variety of realms. Viewing a given field with the methods and concepts of ethics provides a “corrective lens.” William F. May, a renowned ethicist at Southern Methodist University, writes, "Ethics relies heavily on the distinction between what is and what ought to be. Such corrective vision, however, challenges not so much the world the descriptive sciences see as the world distorted through the bias of institutional structures or through the prism of human imperfection and vice" (May, 1983, pp. 13-14). Given the complexity of contemporary universities and colleges, having tools to analyze the biases of institutional structures can help the profession of student affairs shape its evolution.

The previous section presented a “toolkit” that includes several different approaches to ethics: agent, action, and consequences based ethics. This section outlines a process by which you choose which “tool” best describes your approach to ethics. Our method of moral evaluation guides us through the process of identifying the role that ethics plays in our lives. By recognizing the undercurrent of ethics in all that we do, we gain a new understanding of our encounters with others. Before we can engage each other in meaningful discussion about morality, we must have a strong sense of our morality and appreciate that many different approaches to ethics exist. Seeing ethics as a process to facilitate communication and set some standards for our conduct also provides the academic community with a common language that is useful in both everyday and crisis settings. The questions outlined below may help you decide whether an agent, action, or consequences-based ethic best suits your professional and personal values.

Make a list of the values in your moral life.
Here are some questions to guide this process: What moral values are important to you (being honest, doing unto others as you would have them do unto you, maximizing the greatest good for the greatest number of people, honoring your ancestors, etc.)? Do these reflect your cultural upbringing? Do you feel that you try to be a good person? How do you define “good”? Do you think that our responsibility is to leave people alone and let them make their own choices as long as they do not interfere with others? Or do we have an obligation to try actively to improve our communities and others’ situations? Do you try to treat all people with similar respect or do you give preferential treatment? Is this preferential treatment justified? Are any of these values informed by religious systems?

Is there a difference between the way you conduct yourself in your professional and personal roles?
If so, is this difference necessary or is it something you have accepted from the community? For example, at home you may be very nurturing and value your relationships, but at work you find that you are more interested in rules and justice. Is this necessary in order to maintain a sense of professionalism at work? Do you sometimes sacrifice personal relationships at work in order to preserve communal stability?

What do you think about rules in general?
Do you tend to live your life in a way that follows principles or do you often find ways to bend rules and look for exceptions? When you do break rules, how seriously do you take this? Do you feel guilty for a long time and try to avoid breaking the rule again or are you able to move on relatively quickly? For example, if you break the confidence of a student when talking with a co-worker, do you see this as part of your job (seeking advice or support from other people) or breaking an implicit promise? When working with others on an issue, do you first look for which principles or policies apply or are you more interested in particularities of the situation?

What role do circumstances and consequences play in your moral decisions?
When trying to make a decision about how to act, do you spend a lot of time thinking through the circumstances of the situation? Do you think that particular situations allow you to justify behavior that you may not engage in otherwise? For example, would you lie to save a student from expulsion if you thought the judicial system was being unfair? Do you focus on evaluating the potential consequences of your actions? If you thought that performing a specific act would create undesirable consequences, would this be enough to dissuade you from acting? For example, if you could extricate yourself from a sticky situation with a colleague by lying, would you do so? How would you justify this behavior if you were “caught” in the lie? Does it make a difference if the consequences affect you only or if they also affect the lives of others?

How do virtues, principles, and your community interact in your life?
What characteristics are most important to you? How would you describe the most important components of a friendship or a working relationship? What virtues do you absorb from your community that you may not acknowledge explicitly? Is working long hours considered the virtue of a strong work ethic, or does your community value professionals who lead balanced lives? In your personal moral life, if you think that courage is a virtue, would you break a rule in order to perform a courageous act? If a friend confided to you that she broke a university policy that didn’t hurt anyone else, would you lie to the university police in order to protect her? Would you do this for anyone or just for some people? How do you draw the distinction?

How do principles and relationships connect in your life?
f you have to balance breaking a rule with nurturing a relationship, which is more important to you? Do you value a sense of fairness and justice? How does this operate in your relationships? For example, if two underage students were caught drinking in their residence hall rooms would you sanction them equally, or would you want to know more about their situations? Does each relationship warrant special consideration that cannot be compared to others? In a less personal context, would you advocate changing a policy that was damaging your relationship with students? What responsibilities do we have to ourselves, our colleagues, students, and institutions?

This process of moral evaluation is designed to help student affairs professionals explore the role that ethics plays in our lives. By recognizing the undercurrent of ethics in all that we do, we gain a new understanding of our encounters with others and have a different language to describe problems when they arise. Many of us have experienced the frustration of working with someone who has different opinions about how a policy should be implemented. Understanding our own ethics can provide some guidance for discussing these “rubs” before they turn into full-blown conflicts. Yet sometimes we do lose our way and face crises, in which case a map guiding us back to the trail can be helpful. The philosopher Edmund Pincoffs comments, “The moral philosopher can be thought of as prescribing a regimen for a healthy moral life rather than a cure for particular moral illnesses” (Pincoffs, 1971, p. 554). Gaining some perspective on how ethics functions in our everyday lives can go a long way toward preventing the damage that accompanies prolonged conflicts.

Focusing on crises limits the role for ethics in our lives in the same way that focusing on one aspect of student life at a university can constrain the university’s potential for growth. Despite the commitment of the student affairs movement to developing the “whole student,” Terenzini, Pascarella, and Blimling (1996) describe a more dualistic “division of educational labor.” Traditionally, faculty and academic professionals are expected to promote students' academic and cognitive growth, whereas student affairs professionals are charged with enhancing students' affective growth. Attempts to introduce a broader understanding of student "learning" have led to the development of formal statements like The Student Learning Imperative, released by the American College Personnel Association in 1994. In this document, student affairs professionals are charged with fostering conditions that enhance student learning and development and contribute to their institutions’ academic missions.

Since much research indicates that students develop holistically and that change in one area of their lives affects other areas, student affairs professionals assume a great deal of responsibility as they attempt to influence student development (Terenzini, Pascarella, & Blimling, 1996, p. 149). Given this responsibility and the potential for creating positive and negative experiences in students' lives, the field of student affairs administration requires constant internal and external evaluation. Research on outcomes provides one mechanism for evaluating the systems enacted in student affairs divisions. However, individual student affairs professionals associate directly with students, and methods for evaluating these interactions are equally important. Our approach to ethics is presented as a way for student affairs professionals to reflect on their roles in higher education and to consider what virtues are desirable.

The skills and knowledge base needed to prepare professionals for the profession of student affairs have received ample attention in the literature; however, it is worth considering whether there are certain virtues that might make student affairs professionals more successful. For example, characteristic three in The Student Learning Imperative recommends that "Student affairs professionals collaborate with other institutional agents and agencies to promote student learning and personal development” (1994, p. 120). This suggests that student affairs professionals who possess virtues that foster collaboration may be better able to meet the goals of these characteristics. If an individual is known to be cooperative and open-minded, do you think she would be more likely to succeed as a student affairs professional than someone who did not possess these traits?

For student affairs professionals, incorporation of a virtues-based approach to ethics in our professional lives presents unique challenges. Understanding and developing our moral character, no matter how challenging this may be, can lessen the sense of a segmented life and may remind us that we can never “turn off” the character we portray. Whether we like it or not, when we perform specific actions, we send a message about our moral character. Virtues-based ethics suggests reflecting on our acquired virtues and how they motivate our actions so that this message really reflects our character. As intentional or unintentional mentors to students and colleagues, we have the responsibility to develop an awareness of the virtues we value and how they are expressed (or not) in our own lives.

Mentoring and the development of habits are two main processes for developing moral character, yet both require a significant amount of time and skill in order to effect change (Batchelor, 1993). We must ask ourselves whether college-aged students are capable of character changes mediated by another person. Robert Nash cites several studies that indicate that a healthy skepticism about teaching moral character is warranted, given the complex factors influencing character development. An awareness of the difficulties of shaping moral character and of the profundity of this task suggests that we proceed with “caution and humility whenever we attempt to teach the virtues” (Nash, 1997, p. 51). Nash’s caution emphasizes our belief that moral education is inevitably a part of the academy and it is our obligation to explore what moral approaches we bring to our professional lives.

We concur with Nash that the process of moral reasoning starts with the mastery of major approaches to ethics, an awareness of our own biases, and open-mindedness to learning about ourselves and the perspectives of other individuals (Nash, 1991, p. 4). We do not believe that any single ethics approach captures the values of all people; however, there are common values held by communities which define them as such. Instead, we advocate a combination of educating students to recognize their moral preferences and providing them with basic values which facilitate their participation in a community of educated citizens.

American College Personnel Association (ACPA). (1994). The Student Learning Imperative: Implications for student affairs. Washington, D.C.: ACPA.

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Barr, M.J., & Upcraft, M.L. (1990). New futures for student affairs. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Batchelor, S.W. (1993). Mentoring and self-directed learning. In M.J. Barr & Associates (Eds.). Handbook of student affairs administration (pp. 378-389). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.

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Kitchener, K.S. (1985). Ethical principles and ethical decision making in student affairs. In H.J. Canon & R.D. Brown (Eds.), Applied ethics in student services. 17-29. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

May, W.F. (1983). The physician's covenant: Images of the healer in medical ethics. Philadelphia, PA: Westminster Press.

Nash, R.J. (1991) Teaching philosophy of education as moral conversation: A lengthy memo to my graduate students. Unpublished paper, University of Vermont. (published later as Nash, R.J. (1997). Fostering moral conversations in the college classroom. Journal on Excellence in College Teaching,7 (1).

Nash, R.J. (1997, Fall). Teaching ethics in the student affairs classroom. NASPA Journal, 35 (1), 3-19.

Pincoffs, E. (1971). Quandary ethics. Mind, 80 (320), 552-571.

Terenzini, P.T., Pascarella, E.T., & Blimling, G.S. (1996). Student's out-of-class experiences and their influences on learning and cognitive development: A literature review. Journal of College Student Development, 37 (2), 149-162.

Upcraft, M.L., & Poole, T.G. (1991). Ethical issues and administrative policies. In P.L. Moore (Ed.) Managing the political dimension of student affairs. 81-93. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Patricia M. Lampkin is the Associate Vice President for Student Affairs at the University of Virginia. She is a 1978 graduate of the HESA program.

Elizabeth McGovern Gibson, MA is the Coordinator of Research and Education Programs for the University of Virginia’s Palliative Care Program. She is also a doctoral student studying ethics in the Department of Religious Studies.

This article is excerpted from their NASPA Monograph entitled Mountains & Passes: Traversing the Landscape of Ethics and Student Affairs Administration, to be published Spring 2000.