Ethics of the Canned Food Drive

Recently, I've encountered an ethical dilemma in my own life regarding one of the most indisputably positive events hosted by my high school: a canned food drive. The  drive was a competition between classes to determine which class could collect the most canned food to donate to the local food pantry. The food collected would be graded on a point system, with cans under 5 oz being worth 1 point, canned vegetables and such being worth 2 points, and canned meats and such being worth 3 points. The winner would receive a victory breakfast and the food pantry would receive enough cans to be well-stocked for the holiday season. It was a very clever and important annual event.

With one day left to contribute cans, my class was neck and neck with another class for the first place position. We had one last night to gather cans and rally to beat the other class, so we all pitched in money and a few of us went on a shopping trip to try to get enough points to come out on top. However, after we arrived at the grocery store and crunched some numbers, we were surprised to find out what the highest point-to-dollar ratio item actually was: soda pop.

At 2 points per canned drink and only $10 per 24 cans, soda was undoubtedly the most valuable item in terms of points. This is where the ethical dilemma arose: would it be ethically wrong to spend all of our money on soda to maximize our points in the competition?

The major ethical obstacle we encountered was simple: although it may be valuable in terms of points, soda is among the least nutritionally valuable items we could possibly donate. Although it was listed as a valid item in the food drive competition, in reality soda was of limited value to any hungry person, and it seemed morally wrong to buy soda when the money could be spent buying more nutritionally-dense foods such as canned vegetables.

However, as a class we had already spent a huge amount buying other foods for the drive, including a variety of canned vegetables, meats, pastas, soups, and other nutritionally valuable items. In light of this, spending a fraction of the money on soda seemed much less egregious, and since nothing else came close to soda in terms of point value, we would be giving our class the best chance at winning if we maximized our soda purchase.

Plus, who were we to decide that the people that utilized the food pantries wouldn't be interested in soda over canned green beans?  In donating to the food pantry we were indirectly deciding what these families should eat. Personally, I know that I enjoy having a soda every once and a while, and my quality of life would be decreased without such an indulgence. From this perspective, problems arise via the conscious decision to not donate any soda and therefore indirectly claim that families using the food pantry should not get to drink soda, even though we ourselves may choose to do so.

In the end, we decided to compromise. We ended up spending a small fraction of our money on soda (which still managed to buy a lot of cans) and spent a vast majority of the money on more nutritional food like canned vegetables. We didn't achieve as many points as we could have had we only purchased soda, but we still managed to get a lot of points and also contributed more nutritional value to our food donation.

The Ethics of Affirmative Action

Source: psmag.com

As a high school senior currently dealing with the stress of college application season, I thought it would be fitting this week to take a look at an issue that have caused controversy in the college admissions field for decades: affirmative action policies.

Affirmative action, a policy designed to account for the inequality that minorities deal with in a competitive admissions environment, was first installed by President John F. Kennedy In 1961 via Executive Order 10925. The exact wording of the document instructed federal contractors to take “affirmative action to ensure that applicants are treated equally without regard to race, color, religion, sex, or national origin.” The policy itself was a huge step forward for the Civil Rights movement and one of the first major policies designed to fight inequality in the competitive job market, but many fear that in the college admissions environment, the policy has simply become about filling quotas.

While there are many angles and perspectives to address about this issue, I, of course, would like to examine it from an ethical one.

Those supportive affirmative action policies argue ardently that the policies are necessary in order to help correct the effects of decades of inequality that has existed in the country. They assert that although racism has lessened in this country and laws have become more equal, minorities are still suffering the aftereffects of past inequalities especially in terms of educational disadvantages. They assert it would be unethical to ignore the disadvantages that these minorities are still confronting, and that not taking action via a policy the promotes minorities to be educated would be an unequal approach that would fuel the disadvantaged trend that minorities are trying to shake off even today.

However, there are many who argue that affirmative action’s policies are not effective in helping disadvantaged minorities, and in fact, are highly unfair to non-minorities. Opponents assert that the ones being helped by these policies are not the minorities that come from truly disadvantaged backgrounds, but privileged individuals who just happen to be of a certain race. Therefore, they argue, affirmative action is not making the college admissions process a more equal playing ground. Further, they are that it is unethical to force non-minority students (namely white males) to bear the burden of decades of inequality by being purposely disadvantaged themselves.

In the end, no one is arguing that affirmative action is a perfect policy. Even supporters admit that it does a flawed job of helping to bring inequality to the truly disadvantaged groups of students. However, the foundation of the argument comes down to whether or not affirmative action does more good than harm--the core of any good ethical dilemma.