Topics Ethics

Question Suppose that a group of students petitions their college to divest from certain unethical corporations. In support of their petition, the students argue that since it is their tuition payments that fund the college, they should have a say in the way that money is spent. The college administration responds as follows. Although tuition payments account for much of the college's funding, a large portion of that funding comes from other sources, such as grants and alumni donations. In fact, the investments in dispute are funded entirely by way of these other sources. Therefore, it is not the students' money that is being used in ways they deem objectionable, and their complaint is unfounded. I think you can see what I'm driving at. If several groups fund the activities of an organization, such that no one group provides <i>all</i> of its funding, it seems like there's no clear answer as to which group is funding any activity. We could say that tuition pays for faculty salaries, while alumni donations pay for investments; or we could say that tuition and alumni donations each account for a percentage of all college expenditures across the board. Any division in spending that we might postulate seems basically arbitrary. And this is problematic if we think that supporting an organization provides grounds for making demands of that organization. (I've used the example of a college, but I think that my question could also be posed generally. For example, tax payers often make similar complaints of their government.)

Accepted:
January 2, 2013

Comments

Interesting! Your focus on a college may well be more complex than your last example involving the entitlements of taxpayers concerning their government. Concerning the latter, it seems that, at least in a democracy, the taxpayer can join forces with others and control the government through voting. Presumably in most colleges students do not elect their administrators, staff, and faculty, but they can do a vote of no-confidence in the administration through their student governing body (usually a senate), and often student evaluations are taken seriously in the hiring and tenuring of faculty. Concerning your specific example, you refer to "a group of students" contending that their petition for divesting the college's funds from (for example) supporting arms manufacturing based on the grounds that the funds themselves are generated by the students. In that case, I think you make a good point about cases of when the funding is not tuition-driven. But I suggest that students do not always or often make their case on the basis of tuition. The students at my college, for example, identify themselves as members of this community. As such, when students have advanced certain causes which the administration has complied with (students have had success in getting us to cut back on waste, on only serving meat that was the result of humane farming, and so on), they have simply made their case on the merits of the action and then, sought to get a majority of students, faculty, and staff to see the moral need to comply with what they think is best. So, this is more a matter of students seeking for us (as a whole community) to be better stewards of the resources we have, rather than students claiming a certain ownership of college funds based on their tuition contributions.