I think the University of Richmond’s handling of the name changes was flawed in several ways. Firstly, I believe that, with this issue largely being brought to attention by students and faculty, these groups should have been more involved in the decision to change the names. As a university that constantly states its dedication to its students, I believe that their choice to not listen to or include students in this decision-making was an incorrect judgment on the part of the university. By not including students in this decision-making, many have been left feeling angry and disgruntled with the university, and I think it was a mistake to not include these groups in making decisions for the university that impact the living and learning quarters of these students.

With these problems in the decision-making process, I disagree with the decision of the university to keep the names of Freeman and Ryland on the buildings. The University of Richmond continuously claims that it is working to create a more inclusive campus community; however, with the long, racist history of the university, how is keeping the names of individuals who enslaved people, argued for eugenics, and overall perpetuated highly racist beliefs working to create an inclusive community? We can still see the racial issues on campus, with several blatantly racist incidents on campus last year, and continued acknowledgments of the racial segregation on our campus, perpetuated by institutions such as Greek life. Buildings are named after individuals to honor them; thus, by keeping the names of Freeman and Ryland on the buildings, the university continues to work directly against its message of inclusivity and perpetuates the honoring of racist individuals. By renaming these buildings, such as the remaining Mitchell-Freeman hall simply Mitchell Hall, and renaming Ryland hall, we can continue to remember the history of our university without glorifying individuals who maintained racist and highly damaging actions against African Americans.

The recent changes in the building names are an issue that has made a lot of noise in Virginia over the last several years. I know last year, Virginia Tech and James Madison University had the same issue where buildings were named after former slave owners, confederate generals, or segregationists. The students on those campuses also spoke out and asked for the names to be changed. Additionally, in Northern Virginia, several schools in the county have had their names changed including Jeb Stuart High School which was changed to Justice High School.

When comparing the situation between UR and the other state universities there is one alarming difference between them. The buildings that were problematic at JMU and VT were dorms or administrative buildings, not academic buildings. Ryland Hall is an academic building and by leaving the name to represent a former slave owner you are intrinsically accepting that the principles that Ryland lived under are something that should be tolerated by the following generations. Additionally, the board of visitors for both universities voted unanimously for the removal of the previous names. The fact that there is so much administrative support from the Board of Trustees is alarming and concerning. It not only hurts the reputation of the school but decreases the pride of the students that attend the university.

Overall, this decision could be just a consideration of monetary gain. The Board wants to support its donors and alumni more than students and future students. This entire discussion brings into question if the Board really has any pride. It seems as if money is everything to them.

https://wset.com/news/local/jmu-to-change-3-buildings-named-after-confederate-soldiers

https://vtnews.vt.edu/articles/2020/08/bov-buildings-resolutions.html

I think that building names are a reminder to a history that we no longer stand for, and that changing the names of buildings is the bare minimum in my opinion of ways that a University can make the community more inclusive for black students and faculty, as well as other members of the community who are making efforts to educate and counteract past injustices. It goes against everything that the University claims to stand for.

I think the school has an obligation to the students and faculty to change the name of the buildings, and while argument that the donors will pull funding is valid, perhaps other donors would support the change in a way that counteracts the loss. If other schools across the country are making the effort to rename buildings, then UR should be willing to make the same effort. Their unwillingness to potentially lose donors shows that they are more focused on the past than the future.

Dr. Hidalgo mentions a thought experiment where a doctor can either (secretly) kill a healthy person and use their organs to save the lives of five unwell people, or do nothing and assume that the five will die and the one will live (Hidalgo 13). This dilemma reminded me of the train track question from class. It seems like a slightly different question, but upon review, I think that they are the same question, just framed differently. In both cases, the death of either one or five people is inevitable. A set of circumstances exists that will lead to the death of the five, assuming no action is taken. In order to prevent the most possible people from dying, an actor must pull someone out of safety and into harm’s way. In each case, one must choose between the consequentialist and deontic rationale. The former would have you kill the one person, while the latter would have you take no action.

In class, I found myself gravitating toward pulling the lever and killing one person for the sake of the other five. I found the doctor example, although fundamentally the same scenario, more troubling. Perhaps the transparency of the train scenario makes it an easier decision. Everyone present can see what is going to happen and why. On the other hand, the though of deciding to deceive a patient who believes that they are in good hands adds a layer of ethical “bad”. I might lean more toward the deontic argument for the doctor example, because the action itself feels much worse, regardless of the positive consequences. These examples illustrate how small contextual changes can influence our reasoning and how we go about evaluating moral arguments.

From the podcast, Dr. Bezio discussed assumptions and some of the causes and effects. Assumptions are certainly something that is unavoidable regardless of who you are. I believe most people make assumptions to rationalized the actions of the people around them with. This is more specific to individual assumptions, but socially it’s more apparent. Cultures are a lot more concrete than people, meaning the qualities that make up a society are easier to point out than individual people. We make assumptions based upon our own experience in our own culture and compare it to the actions of another. For Americans, a majority of our cultural practices are directly tied to Western European nations which strongly derives from Judeo-Christian values. Our opinions are completely derived from subjectivity which I believe correlates back to the reading we did on ethics.

In the first reading we did, we went over the concepts of cognitivists and noncognitivists. Cognitivitsts believe there are moral arguments and noncognitivists believe that there are no moral arguments. The noncognitivist line of thinking I believe correspondence directly to the idea of assumptions. We make assumptions based upon our culture. Culture can derive many different levels from a national identity to a small social group. Nevertheless, we can’t necessarily say that one culture’s practices are right or wrong. We may disagree with them, but we cannot morally argue that they or right or wrong because it’s based on subjectivity. Therefore, assumptions are subjective in nature and cannot have any moral truth.

The podcast really made me stop and think about a lot of common practices in the United States. I always thought it was dumb that girls could not wear tank tops in school. I remember growing up, my parents always taught me that I should take pride in and love my body — I was very lucky to grow up in an extremely accepting household. The only caveat was that there were rules to when I could do this. It was not appropriate to wear my summer shorts and tank tops to school or to my grandfather’s house because it was “inappropriate”, even when it was 90 degrees out. I never quite got this because I did not understand why it was okay to wear some clothes to some places but not others, especially as a little girl. Then I grew up and started to hear stories about male teachers and students getting “distracted” by females’ clothing choices. While I guess I can kind of understand the hormone-fueled, puberty mayhem of middle school making it harder for boys to concentrate in general, I still don’t get why some teachers, the people you trust your kids to spend hours a day with, are being protected because they are distracted by a young woman’s shoulders. I think it is frankly disgusting and not something we should accept as a society.
Further, the assumptions we make about other people and their bodies/choices are archaic. I understand that there is a gap in knowledge between every person as we are always dealing with instances of asymmetric information — people will only know what they know if they never try to educate themselves or accept education from others. This being said, we cannot accept people who refuse to try and be better. Just because people grew up with a different understanding of normal does not mean we should allow them to use it to hurt others. We have so much information now and yet, not that much has changed. I know that we are slow to learn and evolve, but I feel like we could speed up the process if we stopped protecting the people who are actively hurting others. I have always had a sharp tongue when it came to people in my life that perpetrated assumptions of racism, misogyny, etc. While that has gotten me into some trouble and some awkward family dinners, I don’t regret what I say to those that are being terrible people. Yes, it probably should have been done with a little more class, but I am sick of excusing people because “that’s just what they know”. I am grateful to know more and grow up in a more accepting time but that also means that things will change yet again and that I will never be able to stop learning or bettering myself. These baseless assumptions once had meaning, right or wrong, but if we know they are wrong, why do we still accept them? We all have work to do to educate and understand our biases but the weight should be on the people who are perpetuating this, from microaggressions to straight-up bigotry, because if we accept the idea that “I personally wouldn’t do that but they grew up in a different time”, we will never get anywhere.

In Flanigan’s article, she discusses how the idea of informed consent does not agree with the current pharmaceutical regulations because if a patient can refuse care based on their decision about their own well being, they also should be able to make their own decision about the drugs they use for their own well being. Her argument is that if the medical community widely accepts that patients know what’s best for themselves and can refuse certain treatments, it should also be widely accepted that patients know what’s best for themselves and don’t need the gatekeepers of pharmacists to keep them from the medicine they want or need. Personal cost benefit analyses are just happening on the black market for drugs anyway, such as Adderall, so why shouldn’t that happen legally? She also brings up the point about cosmetic surgery, where patients choose to take some medical risk for their desired outcome, and she questions if that risk is so different from prescription drugs. 

I thought this had a really interesting connection to the podcast about the racist history of drug enforcement in the US and other failed programs like “Just Say No” and D.A.R.E. that aimed to teach and enforce limits on people’s drug use. Restrictive policies can be useful tools for public safety, and I don’t entirely agree with Flanigan’s argument that we shouldn’t have any gatekeeper for prescription medications. However, I think it’s fair to say that systemic racism has been a part of the drug enforcement process since it’s beginning, and it’s important to look closer for the purposeful or unintended consequences of that legacy in policies we make today.

This podcast is really important in understanding that we need to open our eyes and our minds to other perspectives and try to push back against the things we think we know. Because, honestly, I’ve learned over the past few years that a lot of the things I was taught or believed to be true based on my past experiences really just are not true. This is especially true in terms of drug use and its users. Growing up, from health classes in school or just from remarks made by adults, I believed drugs to be created by the devil himself. We would watch videos of people who overdosed on drugs and/or lost their friends and families because of it, and they would be painted in the darkest light. I am not implying I’ve learned that drugs aren’t bad – I know they are when you abuse them, but we were only shown the most extreme cases of drug use, and I assumed everyone who used drugs, including weed, was a bad person. And then I grew up and realized that was obviously not the case. Some of the most successful people I know and some of my favorite people do drugs, and that’s not a great thing, but the way drugs are used and who they are used by is very different from what I thought the case would be.

The problem is not who uses the drugs, it is how we perceive the different types of people who use drugs. The unfortunate and common belief and bias is that drugs are “classy if you’re rich and trashy if you’re poor”, and this just perpetuates the discrimination and divide we see and experience in this country. The narratives we are told about drugs create certain assumptions that are dangerous and detrimental to those we label as “bad” in terms of their drug us. In the podcast Dr. Bezio talks about how if you were raised in an affluent community, you probably were taught, and therefore assume, that drugs belong in the inner cities. That was the case for me, and then I got to high school and obviously learned pretty quickly that was not the case. Even though I know what I learned to be an incorrect representation, I would put money on the fact that I still have a bias about drugs being bad if they are used by certain people over others, and that is something I need to change.

This was a really interesting podcast, and it made me look at things from different angles. When talking about drug use, we are biased to believe that it only happens in the inner city and low-income neighborhoods. However, it’s often the filthy rich who use drugs just as much. So why do we not consider the rich housewife who smokes weed or does other drugs a problem? What if that rich family makes millions a year from selling or distributing drugs, millions that they don’t even need? We do we only judge people from a lower socio-economic status that might be making their living off drugs and bringing food to the table from the money they get from selling drugs?

This podcast also helped me look at the current breakdown of the opioid crisis in a different way. I never realized that disabled people with chronic conditions and lifelong pain are now being denied access to the drugs they need to be able to function and keep living, and for their pain to go away. I also didn’t know that the government was reducing access to disability checks, so they are not getting any government support to get access to the help and medications they need to continue working and living their normal lives. While I do think we need to do something to get a handle on the current opioid crisis, there needs to be a difference between taking drugs away from children and communities and taking away medically necessary drugs from disabled people. Maybe there needs to be stricter regulations on access to those drugs, but those who need them to survive shouldn’t have to struggle without them and be labeled in the same group with drug addicts.

My main takeaway from podcast #3 is that we often are confused about what we know and what we assume to be true. In reality, these are two separate entities that have two separate meanings. A lot of what we think we know is because of what we assume to be true. This ties into our conversation about the culture in which we live. Many people are so caught up in their own perception of reality that they use this against other cultures when they quote on quote “don’t fit the norm.” This is extremely harmful and detrimental to other races and cultures. Our skin color, beliefs, creed, sexual orientation, and even religion do not give people the right to judge others without an understanding of how another person’s culture differs from our own.

I think this concept ties directly into Hidalgo’s piece about immigration law. Hildalgo provides us with six concrete laws that give people the power to limit immigration. However, these six laws, as Hildalgo states, are what he calls “interaction restrictions that, “are morally problematic in part because they infringe on the liberties of citizens” (Hidalgo Pg.6) A culture and perception about immigration exists, especially in the United States. These assumptions fall underneath the same umbrella of getting what we know and assume to be true confused. We fail to understand the why and immigrant’s point of view.