At Ethics Fest, Students Look Beyond the Bottom Line

11/19/2024
By Ed Brennen

Earlier this year, a 35-year-old junior banker at Bank of America died from a blood clot after putting in several 100-hour workweeks. A subsequent Wall Street Journal investigation found that bank managers instructed employees to underreport their hours to avoid scrutiny from human resources, prompting new rules to crack down on the practice.

Work-life balance and self-care were among the topics that nearly 300 students pondered at UMass Lowell’s Ethics Fest, hosted recently by the Donahue Center for Business Ethics & Social Responsibility.

“Sometimes self-care is put on the back burner,” said Master of Public Health student Shakira Fedna ’23, who represented the Office of Student Life & Well-being at a table on the ethics of self-care. 

Fedna wants to become a physician, another profession with demanding hours, so she asked students a question that she often thinks about: “What are the ethics of when you are supposed to advocate for your own self-care and well-being?”

Designed to get students thinking about how ethics and social responsibility intersect with their everyday lives, this year’s Ethics Fest featured 18 “engagement stations” run by a variety of campus centers, faculty researchers, staff and students. Topics ranged from job searching and sustainability to higher education marketing and real estate.

“I thought it was really cool,” senior business major Chris Osgood said after collecting enough stickers in his Ethics Fest passport to receive a free T-shirt. “It’s good to understand how certain situations can have a long-lasting impact on other people.”

Sophomores Kaylee Kalagher (criminal justice) and Jordan Kelley (business) heard about the event from their business law professor, Michelle Veilleux. They enjoyed learning about universal design from Disability Services staff members, who showed students pictures of building entrances and asked them to identify accessibility issues.  

“It made you think,” Kalagher said.

Senior business major Esther Rosario, who is president of the student chapter of the Association of Latino Professionals for America, ran a station on identifying microaggressions, particularly those aimed at members of the Latino community. 

“What do you do if someone in the workplace says, ‘You’re so professional. I didn’t expect you to be so articulate’?” Rosario said. “A lot of Latin Americans I know will let it slide, but others will try to make it a point to educate people. That’s a practice we should try to encourage.”

José Godinez Gonzalez, an associate professor of management in the Manning School of Business, spoke to students about his research on companies that follow ethical standards even in areas where it’s not required by law. 

“The purpose of business is to make money, but if you have goodwill and people recognize you for having a good brand, it’s a differentiation,” he said, citing Patagonia and Ben & Jerry’s as examples. 

At the “Wheel of Ethics” station, students learned how children are introduced to gambling at an early age when they are encouraged to pay for upgrades that help them to win in video games.

“These microtransactions target children, and we’re trying to spread awareness about the issue,” said Iniya Poovannan, a sophomore business major from Westford, Massachusetts.

Poovannan and a group of fellow students came up with the topic in their Professional Communications class with Deborah Casey, an associate teaching professor of marketing, entrepreneurship and innovation. 

Another team from Casey’s class ran a station on work-life balance, where students had to walk across a beam while carrying bean bags (representing various responsibilities) hanging from hockey sticks over their shoulders.

“You might have to give up certain things in your personal life for things that are expected of your job, which can create an ethical dilemma,” said sophomore business major Deeyana Touserkani. 

More than 60 students from both sections of Casey’s Professional Communications course helped run Ethics Fest once again this year as a way to get hands-on experience with event management.

“Being able to run this and talk to people helps build up our confidence,” said Mathew Bevillard, a first-year business major and Marine Corps veteran from Lowell.

Donahue Center Co-Directors Elissa Magnant and Erica Steckler were happy to see students involved on so many levels with the event.

“I love seeing the students come in and get excited about ethics topics,” Steckler said. “They may not even necessarily be aware of how ethics relate to an industry or field, and they come out of here with a much broader perspective.”

The event was supported by the Demoulas supermarket chain, whose ties with the Donahue Center go back to its launch in 2017.

“We’re so grateful for their support,” Magnant said.