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Capital Punishment: Analyzing The Demise Of The Death Penalty's Usefulness, Emma Reyes Apr 2024

Capital Punishment: Analyzing The Demise Of The Death Penalty's Usefulness, Emma Reyes

Richard T. Schellhase Essay Prize in Ethics

As there are evident flaws within the practice of capital punishment, I urge the United States federal government to question ways in which they should change how the death penalty is implemented into law. I propose that lawmakers consider fully abolishing the death penalty as a means of eliminating ethical and economic concerns within our judicial system. However, if this option does not seem possible, I instead propose the federal government act in revising the current practices used within the capital trial process. Previous research has found that the continued use of the death penalty can cause risk of economic …


Consent In Conversation: Education Of Sexual Violence In Maya Angelou's I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings, Emily Benning Apr 2023

Consent In Conversation: Education Of Sexual Violence In Maya Angelou's I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings, Emily Benning

Richard T. Schellhase Essay Prize in Ethics

Maya Angelou’s memoir, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, is just one of many titles challenged and banned in public schools for “sexually explicit” content. On page 71 of her 281 page autobiography, Angelou discloses that she was raped at 8 years old by her mother’s boyfriend, and despite it being followed with scenes that emphasize the value of healing through literature, public attention has been directed to the (non-consensual) intercourse itself as a reason for censorship. As censorship efforts have expanded in the past two decades, challengers have continued to add more ban-worthy qualities to the list …


Unchallenged Myth: Abolish The Family And Structure, Julian Barocas Apr 2023

Unchallenged Myth: Abolish The Family And Structure, Julian Barocas

Richard T. Schellhase Essay Prize in Ethics

There are aspects of society we are taught not to question: government, education, capitalism. These are portrayed as immutable truths that, if presented with a gap in their logical system, are dependent on sidestepping them, referring to the aforementioned immutability, and relying on the status quo to keep their position as societal structures. Sophie Lewis’s most recent case for phasing out the nuclear family structure, Abolish the Family: A Manifesto for Care, demonstrates how the family is another one of these seemingly universal concepts. The unacknowledged reality of the family is historically one a tool of control rather than …


Persistence In The North Pacific: The Makah People And Their Fight To Protect Their Cultural Heritage, Jeff Cocci Apr 2022

Persistence In The North Pacific: The Makah People And Their Fight To Protect Their Cultural Heritage, Jeff Cocci

Richard T. Schellhase Essay Prize in Ethics

In the Pacific Ocean, just off the coast of North America a whale swims blissfully unaware of its own significance. It is a Gray Whale; scientists would call it Eschrichtius robustus and at nearly forty feet long, it is large enough that it does not have to worry about sharks or other carnivorous animals. Yet there are those that are brave enough to hunt the whale. They are the Makah People of the Olympian Peninsula, in upper Washington state. By doing so, they place themselves at the center of a complex ethical debate amongst activists, scientists, and the general public. …


Uneasy Is The Head That Imagines The Burden, Michael Adelson Apr 2022

Uneasy Is The Head That Imagines The Burden, Michael Adelson

Richard T. Schellhase Essay Prize in Ethics

This paper deconstructs and criticizes the very notion of “an obligation to help humanity.” I argue that such an idea of an obligation is an evolution of the ideas that emerged in the 19th century regarding the “white man’s burden.” Referencing historical allusions to the 19th and 20th century European ideas of the white man’s burden, the concept of a greater obligation to help others can be demeaning and self-aggrandizing, creating a modern, updated “new white man’s burden.” As dispositively confirmed through my own anecdotal experiences in higher education, an obligation to help humanity, specifically non-white peoples, …


Reparations For Racism: Why The Persistence Of Institutional Racism In America Demands More Than Equal Opportunity For Black Citizens, Alexander Lowe Jan 2016

Reparations For Racism: Why The Persistence Of Institutional Racism In America Demands More Than Equal Opportunity For Black Citizens, Alexander Lowe

Richard T. Schellhase Essay Prize in Ethics

No abstract provided.


Ethics In Exhibitions: Considering Indigenous Art, Rachel Bonner Jan 2015

Ethics In Exhibitions: Considering Indigenous Art, Rachel Bonner

Richard T. Schellhase Essay Prize in Ethics

No abstract provided.