With the Newhouse School of Public Communications and the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs, Syracuse University is home to many ambitious undergraduates hoping to launch careers in journalism and politics. After all, SU has a significant track record of successful alumni in positions of government and the private sector.

As the training ground of the country’s next generation of potential leaders, SU has a duty to instill its student population with a sense of moral responsibility and accountability. SU recently implemented the First-Year Seminar, or FYS 100, to address issues of diversity and inclusion, but the course has faced increasing scrutiny from students who claim that the course fails to get students to interact with the material.

SU’s failure to address social responsibility in its course requirements comes at a time when widespread mistrust in our institutions has increased over the past few years with surging resentment aimed towards our country’s coastal political and business elite. In a 2020 Gallup poll, over 80% of Americans responded that they observe a “great deal” or a “fair amount” of political bias in news coverage. In 2007, that number was 62%.

The media is not the only institution that has seen embarrassingly low levels of public confidence. In a 2013 poll conducted by Public Policy Polling, results showed that cockroaches were more popular than Congress. While the American people’s skepticism of the media and political leaders may be a reflection of heightened levels of partisanship, their distrust has been justified time and time again through an increasing number of scandals and wrongdoings coming to light. Just two years ago, former Ohio House Speaker Larry Householder was arrested in connection to an alleged $60 million bribery scheme, and in 2016, former U.S. House Speaker Dennis Hastert admitted in open court to molesting children.

To confront our leaders’ dishonest and deceitful behavior and address the shortcomings of FYS 100, SU should create a discussion-based applied ethics course that allows students to explore ethical boundaries in the workforce and encourages students to be more responsible social actors. A few select majors have such course requirements such as management and various majors in the Newhouse School of Public Communications, nevertheless, these programs only represent a fraction of the student body population. Coursework that exposes students to issues related to social responsibility and failures within our global and American institutions should be required for all students. Keeping all citizens informed is vital to our representative democracy and resisting abuses of power. Furthermore, by exposing students to fascinating stories of fraud and corruption like Martin Shkreli’s tenure at Turing Pharmaceuticals or Elizabeth Holmes’ scandal with Theranos, students are more likely to be engaged with the course and more open to conversation.

FYS 100 focuses too narrowly on issues such as diversity and microaggressions, while excluding broader systemic controversies regarding abuses of authority stemming from greed and lust for power. What SU needs is a course that covers a wider range of topics that address a multitude of disreputable behaviors that are unfortunately still common in today’s world. Additionally, FYS 100 places too much emphasis on topics, such as setting personal goals and transitioning to SU, that students could easily cover through a meeting with a guidance counselor. A discussion-based applied ethics course for all incoming students could retain FYS 100’s commitment to diversity and inclusion while expanding more on material that covers ethical gray areas in today’s institutions and workforce.

“Often, when individuals do the wrong thing, it is not just because they are wicked people, but because they fall prey to a number of social phenomena,” said Benoît Monin, a professor at Stanford’s Graduate School for Business. Touching on topics from social psychology such as the bystander effect could grant students the tools needed to fight against despicable behavior on campus and even after they graduate and enter the workforce.

Hypocrisy, falsehoods and unethical behavior have always been ugly features of American politics and power structures. We can not get complacent, though, and we ought to reject the sentiment that there is nothing that can be done. We cannot continue to allow corruption and negligence to deface the values and ideals we hold dearly in this country.

Other academic institutions have proved to be more committed than SU to promoting corporate and governmental social responsibility. For example, in 1987, Harvard invested $20 million toward the introduction of ethical training into their coursework. Such efforts should not only be applauded, rather they should be required. A curriculum that emphasizes the importance of our civic duties pushes students to discover their own value commitments and uphold the principles laid out in our Constitution. For Americans to regain trust in the country’s institutions, the people must perceive a renewed devotion to transparency, honesty and decency from the country’s leaders.

Gil Markman is a sophomore economics major. His column appears bi-weekly and he can be reached at [email protected].

Published on February 28, 2022 at 10:55 pm