Social Media/Employment Clarifications

Hi All!

Just wanted to say thank you for all the feedback so far- also just wanted to mention a few things that were left out in the presentation.

First of all, the (very helpful!) idea that restrictions should be put in place when it would be beneficial to the employee and not harmful to the employer comes entirely from Prof. Tresan. This was a very useful point during our research, but I neglected to mention during the presentation that it was Prof. Tresan's original thought.

Secondly, a classmate pointed out to me that only certain criteria are actually protected by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. EEOC states on their website that the following federal laws prevent job discrimination:

• Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (Title VII), which prohibits employment discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin;
• the Equal Pay Act of 1963 (EPA), which protects men and women who perform substantially equal work in the same establishment from sex-based wage discrimination;
• the Age Discrimination in Employment Act of 1967 (ADEA), which protects individuals who are 40 years of age or older;
• Title I and Title V of the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990, as amended (ADA), which prohibit employment discrimination against qualified individuals with disabilities in the private sector, and in state and local governments;
• Sections 501 and 505 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, which prohibit discrimination against qualified individuals with disabilities who work in the federal government;
• Title II of the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act of 2008 (GINA), which prohibits employment discrimination based on genetic information about an applicant, employee, or former employee; and
• the Civil Rights Act of 1991, which, among other things, provides monetary damages in cases of intentional employment discrimination.

Additional anti-discrimination laws exist on a state-by-state basis, but the above are the only national protected criteria.

Thanks- Julia Curtis

Full Credit to Don Marquis and Jon Tresan

Hey all!

I presented on abortion this past week and I had, roughly, two arguments. One was on personhood. The second was the Non-Personhood argument; the Non-Personhood argument would be the "Deprivation Argument". I forgot to cite where I got the latter argument from. Originally, that argument comes from Don Marquis of the University of Kansas (http://faculty.polytechnic.org/gfeldmeth/45.marquis.pdf).  And I discussed it at length with Jon Tresan. So, Jon Tresan and Don Marquis receive full credit for that argument.

Presentation Response to Freedom of speech

1.      With regard to the topic of freedom of speech college campus, I am confused about the idea they mentioned that freedom and equality are often in conflict, I don’t think they explain how freedom and equality are conflict in this topic.  “To be equal would mean that the majority is experiencing the hate speech that many minorities are facing which is not the case or that nobody is experiencing hate speech.” I believe this explanation sounds more like FAIR not equal. It may be fair for majority also experience the same hate speech as minority groups, but it’s not what equality means. I think what equality really means is the quality or state of being equal, the quality or state of having the same rights, social status and opportunities, etc. In universities, it should mean that all students have the same right to be educated, to participate in activities etc. in spite of their gender or color of skin. Although hate speech is offensive to the group of people being attacked, I couldn’t see how it undermine the opportunity, or social status (equality) on college campus (after all, most people on college campus is nice and friendly). So I think the presenter may need to explain more on that.

2.      I

A Note on the SNAP Budget

It seemed potentially important to note that the total snap budget as of 2015 was $74 billion, not million. Hope that clears up any potential confusion about the conflicting numbers in the presentation.

Presentation Response - Punishment

The part of the presentation I found to be the least clear was the conclusion of the section on the prison industrial complex. Over the course of the section, there was mention of problems in the 6 components of the PIC, but not much discussion of specifically how they came to be. With mention of corruption and an unclear background, suggesting that people vote to prevent this seemed like an unsatisfying ending. Furthermore, where it says “It seems like it isn’t much of an issue outside of prisons,” it is entirely unclear what “it” is in this case. If “it” refers to privatization, I would suggest looking at schools or healthcare and other areas in which there are definitely arguments that suggest privatization is an ongoing and significant issue. Overall, the conclusion would just benefit from less vague language, and having more detail to pull from in the presentation in order to take a stronger and clearer position.
My strongest objection to the content is to the objection to Retributivism regarding its reliance on moral judgments to determine appropriate of punishment, as well as the similar challenge to Utilitarianism that it is empirically limited. The use of this objection seems to presuppose that there could hypothetically even exist an empirical (separate from biases  to put it most simply) method of determining punishment, which is a fairly significant claim. The idea of punishment itself seems inherently rooted in morality. In any theory, it seems punishment exists either to bring about good, uphold the good, or to be good in and of itself. What is good, however, is wholly subject to, at the least, beliefs about morality. Thus, if any conception of punishment by its nature draws upon morality (even when it ostensibly claims to be empirically based), objection on that basis seems a fairly weak one, unless one wants to actually make the further claim that because it is so subjective, punishment as a whole ought to be abandoned. If they don’t wish to take it that far, then so long as any means of determining punishment is limited by the use of moral judgments, the objection would need to be rooted in the approach to morality rather than the limitations of morality on empirical methods.

The greatest contribution of this presentation was the discussion on race and the death penalty. Specifically, in looking at the racial biases that emerged, the speaker brought our attention to what appears to be an issue with the second-order rules of our society. Specifically, despite our law system theoretically being set up in an equitable way, the rules and division of labor have not succeeded in dealing with the problems that arise from our societal biases, such as those that emerge from a culture of white supremacy. I think it’s a helpful illustration of different orders of rules in which we are able to see the potential failings of higher-order rules.

Presentation Response- NCAA

This post is in response to the recent presentation given on the NCAA and some of the legal issues surrounding the compensation of student athletes. While overall the presentation gave several compelling reasons for compensation to be reconsidered, the strongest objection to that argument lies in the observation that the president of the NCAA has a salary of over 1.1 million dollars. While this may seem “excessive,” it’s certainly not a unique situation. There are many other large not for profit organizations whose leaders receive a similar salary (University of Rochester President and CEO Joel Seligman was reported by the Democrat and Chronicle last year to have an annual salary of $1 million). If the NCAA is a large and complex organization, requiring extensive knowledge and experience to run effectively, why should its president not be compensated at a level comparable to other large nonprofits? One may disagree with the president’s income, but it is part of a larger phenomenon, not something that can be opposed just for this organization.

Is the Law Actually Behind on Sexual Assault?

This was mentioned in class, but I'm not sure what to think of it. The way I understand it, whenever consent is not given to ANY sexual act, then it is sexual assault/rape. So, in the example, when the woman mentioned in class gave consent to sex, but not to what she experienced, the MOMENT she said "no" or "stop" or ANYTHING that communicates that she no longer consents, EVERYTHING that follows is sexual assault/rape. This understanding- as long as it's a correct understanding- seems to be exhaustive. ANYTHING that happens after no communication of consent OR after it is communicated that one does not consent, is sexual assault. If two people are having sex, and at ANY POINT (that is, at the beginning, in the middle, right before climax, whatever possible example you can think of) a person says they no longer want to continue or they are no longer giving consent or they say to stop, ANYTHING that follows qualifies as sexual assault/rape. I may have said the same thing multiple times here, but I wanted to ensure that I got what I was thinking out clearly, so you can all respond as best as possible.

Being Held to Ignored Contracts

This was a topic we glazed right over in class, but one I don't think should be allowed to be. The point Professor Tresan made was that there are contracts that we don't read but agree to nevertheless, and that because of that we shouldn't be held to them. I don't think that's quite true. I have two examples to illustrate why, and some additional reasoning of my own.

First, Professor Tresan mentioned specifically how most people don't read the Terms of Service, and as such, we shouldn't really hold ourselves to the contract otherwise created by clicking the "I agree" box. Well, a while ago (I apologize for not having an exact date), a  customer who was installing a PC Pitstop program read the EULA (end user license agreement, which is essentially the same as terms of service, and you still have to click "I agree") and found in there a clause that said if they e-mail the company, they'd receive a $1,000 check. The person did so, and received that $1,000 check.

Now the point of this example is if we can expect to hold companies to anything they say in these "generally not read" contracts, why is it they can't expect us to be held to them? That seems hypocritical and completely contradictory; for one party to have to agree to a contract but the other to be allowed to ignore it doesn't make sense, and shouldn't be allowed.

The second example spawns from the same point Professor Tresan made, but a different part of it. He went on to say we shouldn't hold people to whatever is in the terms of service *because it is generally understood that no one reads them.* This seems extremely problematic.

An example: when congress received the official intelligence report for whether or not there are weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, ONLY ONE CONGRESSPERSON READ IT. The rest of them had their secretaries or someone else that works for them read it, then brief them on it. Now, in that intelligence report was a disclaimer that said something along the lines of "It is my professional conclusion that based on all intelligence gathered, it is highly unlikely that there are WMDs in Iraq." (The reason that was JUST a disclaimer was because of the actual project and how it was worded; the analysts were told to "Find evidence that there are weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq" instead of "Collect intelligence to see if there are WMDs in Iraq or not," so everything that followed the disclaimer was whatever evidence could be found to prove there are WMDs.) That ONE Congressperson that read it voted against the war in Iraq. We all know how that war turned out.

Now, I'm inclined here- and I believe with good reason- to say that Congress did something wrong here. I'd charge that they failed to do their duty, and that they should face some sort of consequence for it (maybe it's outdated now, but then they SHOULD HAVE). But almost no one read the report, but instead got briefings. It was generally understood that almost no one was reading it, and instead getting briefed on it, So, if the claim made in class is correct, then they shouldn't be held to having to read that intelligence report, and so they did nothing wrong by not reading it which led them to vote to go to war. This line of reasoning shouldn't stand.

For my own reasoning: the fact that you (and most people) simply didn't read it doesn't grant any immunity. That's why there are lawyers to make sure contracts are read and understood- because the contract is supposed to be binding whether read or not (as long as it is agreed on and consented to). So, if it's available to you, and you agree, it should be binding no matter how many people do or do not read. The fact that a person doesn't read it is no one's fault but their own. They are still giving consent by clicking "I agree," and thus should be held to what is explicitly said, even if there seems to be an implicit consensus that most people haven't read it.

I'm interested to see how others think.

Compulsory Voting & Affirmative Consent

          Recently there have been a number of policy proposals in popular discourse aiming to address a perceived problem in the US democratic system. The problem is that of "voter turnout", the fraction of eligible voters who actually vote. (This is contrasted with the slightly more nuanced "registered voter turnout", the fraction of registered voters who actually vote. The latter is less meaningful due to self-selection among registered voters, especially in the US where registration is manual and voting is not compulsory.) Compulsory voting and related measures such as automatic voter registration are employed in many OECD nations with the intention of bolstering voter turnout for national elections. The data show that the US lags behind a significant majority of OECD nations in voter turnout. Further, the data unsurprisingly suggest a positive correlation between compulsory voting and related measures, and voter turnout. 

[interactive chart available here]