Applying Ethical Frameworks: Students, Sensors, Data, and Privacy

This essay examines the ethical implications of the University of Arizona's Cat Card program, which collects student data for research purposes. The analysis applies utilitarianism, deontology, virtue ethics, and contract theory to evaluate the ethical dilemmas arising from this practice. The essay highlights concerns regarding student privacy, transparency, and the potential for misuse of personal information. It argues that the university's approach lacks transparency and violates ethical principles by not providing students with the option to opt out of data collection. The conclusion emphasizes the need for universities to develop ethical guidelines that prioritize student privacy and ensure transparency in data collection practices, suggesting security measures like encryption and firewalls to mitigate potential risks.

Students and Sensors: Data, education,
privacy, and research

STUDENTS AND SENSORS: DATA, EDUCATION, PRIVACY, AND RESEARCH
1
Introduction
The role of ethical principle has increased very fast in the last few years and it
also increases various kinds of security threats and risks. In this essay, the incident of
the cat cards in the University of Arizona will be discussed and the main purpose of this
paper is to understand the fundamental concept of ethical implications (Adebamowo, et
al., 2014). The management team of Arizona University has provided Cat Cards to their
students which are used to enter into university and exit from campus. In which data of
any student is collected by the university in order to calculate the reason for the
retention of 20% of students that did not complete their educations (Annas, 2015). The
information involves personal routine, hangout, communication systems, and another
process. University transfer all these data for research and they ensure that the data or
information is anonymous and the private details transfer to academic advisers to
monitor and control student activities. This university is also developed around 8000
Wi-Fi routers to enhance the accuracy and efficiency of data collection systems which
can provide better services. The management system of the university collects data
from the first day and it continues for 3 years graduations period. A number of students
do not know about this process and campus did not provide any information about their
personal information’s (Chakrabarty, & Bass, 2015). This essay will describe the
concept to ethics in terms of cat cards process and also evaluate various kinds of
security or privacy concerns. In which there are different types of theories are used, for
example, utilitarianism, deontology, and virtue and contract ethical model to calculate
the ethical dilemma rose in this case.
Utilitarianism theory
The Utilitarianism theory is a type of normative model that provides a platform
to understand the morality of any condition based consequences. The main key feature
of this model is that it focuses on the large good of a greater number of users.
Utilitarianism theory is used to determine whether the action of any incident is ethical
or not (Drolet, & Hudon, 2015). The key partners in this situation think about
incorporating the college and understudies. The target of the college to gather the
information of the understudy is to discover the explanation behind the steady loss
rates of the understudies. Around 20% of the understudies did not join the second year

STUDENTS AND SENSORS: DATA, EDUCATION, PRIVACY, AND RESEARCH
2
in the college and the college needed to discover the purpose behind the same by
gathering the information of understudies. Be that as it may, the outcomes of this
examination can be tragic since the protection and security of understudies can be
broken by outsiders. Moreover, data or information of any student is anonymous which
is controlled by the management system of the university (Fok, Payne, & Corey, 2016).
They violate the private details of students without their permission and most of them
are not aware of this problem. The primary target is the advantage of the college by
holding more understudies which repudiate with the components of utilitarianism
approach since more note worthy's benefit of a more prominent number of individuals
isn't considered by the college. The outcomes could be calamitous if the touchy
information of understudies spilled; thusly, this choice is unethical according to this
hypothesis. By which students can lose their personal information and advisers can
control their peripheral devices.
Deontology theory
This is another ethical theory which is used to describe whether a given situation
is ethical or unethical. According to this standpoint, the morality of condition is defined
as wrong or right based on a series of regulation. The components of this hypothesis
give that a saying ought to be characterized which characterizes whether the activities
of a people are great or awful (Greene, 2015). According to this hypothesis, the
exploration led by the University of Arizona is unscrupulous. According to EDUCAUSE
Review, a moral structure is important to be kept up by the gatherings since they are in
charge of utilizing the information of understudies in advanced education. A key
guideline gives that the straightforwardness ought to be kept up by the gatherings while
gathering the information of people. The college has broken this component since it
neglected to keep up clear portrayals in regards to the nature and degree of the data
which is gathered by the foundation alongside outsider associations. Besides, it
neglected to explain the manner by which the data is being accessed. In conclusion, the
college neglected to survey the data through a plainly explained administration process.
The understudies who did not have any desire to be a piece of this examination ought to
have the choice to quit. In light of these elements, activities of the college are unethical
(Harriss, & Atkinson, 2015).

STUDENTS AND SENSORS: DATA, EDUCATION, PRIVACY, AND RESEARCH
3
Virtue theory
This kind of ethical model focuses on the moral character of any party as
compared to the utilitarianism theory. Virtue theory is defined as a character-based
model that provides a platform to acquire virtues with the help of life experiences.
According to Aristotle approach, the parties are needed to practice better virtues for the
development of moral characters that involve fairness, honesty, integrity, and bravery.
For this situation, the college has not acted with great ideals in light of which the choice
to lead an exploration of private information of understudies is unscrupulous. Right off
the bat, the college has neglected to keep up trustworthiness while gathering the
information and keeping up straightforwardness in the general procedure. Besides, it
has broken the uprightness by not giving a choice to understudies to quit the
exploration. Because of these terrible temperance’s, the activities of the college are
considered as unscrupulous or unethical (Jayawickreme, Meindl, Helzer, Furr, &
Fleeson, 2014).
Contract theory
The Contract Arianism or the agreement hypothesis furnishes that gatherings
ought to conform to the arrangement of guidelines of administers their conduct in the
general public. People have created perfect social contracts which oversee their conduct
to guarantee that they demonstration judiciously and morally. In view of the standards
of this hypothesis, the choice taken by the college to investigate on its understudies is
deceptive (Kornhaber, McLean, & Baber, 2015). According to the social contracts, it is
essential that the college keeps up straightforwardness and exposure to its
understudies that it is gathering their private information. It ought to have likewise
given them the alternative to quitting the examination in the event that they would not
like to share their private data. Since the college neglected to agree to these
components, the examination taken by it is untrustworthy which brought about
breaking different social contracts (Preshaw, Brazil, McLaughlin, & Frolic, 2016).
What you think
The main objective of the management team of the university is to determine
why a number of students did not complete their graduation. Moreover, they use
various kinds of software’s and process to collect data from any students which is not a

STUDENTS AND SENSORS: DATA, EDUCATION, PRIVACY, AND RESEARCH
4
legal step of any university (Vitell, & Hunt, 2015). From this case study, it is observed
that advisers monitor and control data of any student which can increase various ethical
problems. Firstly, student advisers detect personal information of their students with
the help of Cat Card due to this process many security threats and risks are increased.
The process of collecting data is not a part of their study and students can lose their
private details. Many of them are not aware of this system and management team store
student complete routine and time with the help of Cat Cards. In addition, the college
did not give the choice to its understudies to keep their information from getting to by
the college. In the event that this information is gathered by the digital crooks, at that
point it can bring about disregarding the security of understudies (Winkler, & Duminy,
2016). Accordingly, the choice of this examination is unscrupulous and the college
should change its strategies to keep up straightforwardness and giving the alternative
to understudies to prevent their private information from getting to by the college.
Conclusion
In this essay, the case study of Arizona University is analyzed and also
understood the fundamental concept of various ethical theories. There are mainly four
types of ethical models are used, for example, Contract, Virtue, Deontology, and
Utilitarianism which are discussed in this paper. In this study, the main ethical issue is
the lack of transparency that controlled by the management team. However, the campus
did not provide any choice to their students that they can take any action to stop this
type of research process into university. Students can lose their private information and
if it is detected by hackers than students can face financial problems. Therefore, the
University of Arizona should develop an ethical outline where they define the process to
collects data of any students with their objectives. Students can use various kinds of
security programmes like firewall encryption technique and backup plans to reduce
potential threats and risk.

STUDENTS AND SENSORS: DATA, EDUCATION, PRIVACY, AND RESEARCH
5
References
Adebamowo, C., Bah-Sow, O., Binka, F., Bruzzone, R., Caplan, A., Delfraissy, J. F., & Olliaro,
P. (2014). Randomised controlled trials for Ebola: practical and ethical
issues. The Lancet, 384(9952), 1423-1424.
Annas, J. (2015). Applying virtue to ethics. Journal of Applied Philosophy, 32(1), 1-14.
Chakrabarty, S., & Bass, A. E. (2015). Comparing virtue, consequentialist, and
deontological ethics-based corporate social responsibility: Mitigating
microfinance risk in institutional voids. Journal of Business Ethics, 126(3), 487-
512.
Drolet, M. J., & Hudon, A. (2015). Theoretical frameworks used to discuss ethical issues
in private physiotherapy practice and proposal of a new ethical tool. Medicine,
health care and philosophy, 18(1), 51-62.
Fok, L. Y., Payne, D. M., & Corey, C. M. (2016). Cultural values, utilitarian orientation, and
ethical decision making: A comparison of US and Puerto Rican
professionals. Journal of business ethics, 134(2), 263-279.
Greene, J. D. (2015). Beyond point-and-shoot morality: Why cognitive (neuro) science
matters for ethics. The Law & Ethics of Human Rights, 9(2), 141-172.
Harris, D. J., & Atkinson, G. (2015). Ethical standards in sport and exercise science
research: 2016 update. International journal of sports medicine, 36(14), 1121-
1124.
Jayawickreme, E., Meindl, P., Helzer, E. G., Furr, R. M., & Fleeson, W. (2014). Virtuous
states and virtuous traits: How the empirical evidence regarding the existence of
broad traits saves virtue ethics from the situationist critique. School Field, 12(3),
283-308.
Kornhaber, R. A., McLean, L. M., & Baber, R. J. (2015). Ongoing ethical issues concerning
authorship in biomedical journals: an integrative review. International journal of
nanomedicine, 10, 4837.

STUDENTS AND SENSORS: DATA, EDUCATION, PRIVACY, AND RESEARCH
6
Preshaw, D. H., Brazil, K., McLaughlin, D., & Frolic, A. (2016). Ethical issues experienced
by healthcare workers in nursing homes: a Literature review. Nursing
Ethics, 23(5), 490-506.
Vitell, S. J., & Hunt, S. D. (2015). The general theory of marketing ethics: the consumer
ethics and intentions issues. Handbook on ethics and marketing, 17(2), 15-37.
Winkler, T., & Duminy, J. (2016). Planning to change the world? Questioning the
normative ethics of planning theories. Planning Theory, 15(2), 111-129.