Englih 102.003
Spring 2006
Dr. Stewart

Casebook

Your casebook consists of two items:

Articles: Every week you will compile 3 or 4 articles that pertain to the morals and ethics of various institutions. You can do this browsing the web or by reading actual print copies of magazines or newspapers. (If you use library materials, you will need a copy card.).

Print those articles, provide the bibliographic information, make notes on the article, and respond or comment regarding that article. In other words, you must explain to me why you copied this bit of text, how it relates to you (or how you relate to it), what you find convincing, useful, irritating, persuasive, and so on. Remember: no entry can be included without accompanying commentary on your part.

You will turn in your casebook when you turn in your project for an advisory grade. At that time you will write an overall introduction and organize it into clear sections with a brief introduction to each. You will figure out the organizational logic--i.e. why you've arranged things the way you have. Keep up with collecting; I'll grade you down if it's obvious you spent a Sunday putting it all together. And please don't just print off a bunch of articles and expect me to make sense of it. You must show me what you're finding and why you're finding it worth collecting. If you find enough material from enough sources, it's possible you'll have the bulk of your research for your research project done by the time we get to it.

Situations/Scenarios: Every week, identify in writing two situations that call for moral or ethical decisions, ones that seem to to have multiple sides to the issue or multiple appropriate answers or ones that have no answer. These situations/scenarios can be real or you can simply think them up. I expect about a paragraph giving the background. This is what an entry might look like:

When I was putting myself through college, I worked as a bartender. Most of the people who came in were regulars and really good people. In fact, many of these people tipped me more because they knew that money was short and college bills high. Occassionally, however, some people who were not so nice came into the bar. One man (I won't call him a gentleman) started coming in regularly. He spent a lot of money buying his own drinks and buying drinks for other people. His bar tab might easily have been over $100 in one evening. At first, I thought he was relatively nice, but one night he started making racial slurs and jokes. I told him I didn't appreciate his attitude (as nicely as I could). At that point, I was tempted not to serve him any more alcohol. If I owned the bar, I would've asked him to leave. But I didn't own the bar. Should I have asked him to leave or stopped serving him? The bar didn't belong to me, thus my decision would've impacted the owner's bottom line. Was it my place to say something? What should I have done?

Please note that I sometimes specifically ask you to discuss situations/scenarios in terms of Good People. All other times, your situations/scenarios can look like the above.

I suggest that for your and my convenience, that you put this together in a 3-ring binder.