Letters & Submissions
Criticism of unethical speakers at Elon
I think there is a lot to be learned from the mistakes of
others, especially in the business world. Case studies have
become a way of learning and adapting to the academic
environment.
I appreciated the most recent presentation by Walter Pavlo
on his experiences with ethics in the Koury Business Center,
but there was something that bothered me during the speech.
This ex-executive who defrauded his company for $6 million
dollars is standing in front of a room full of well-educated
professors and future business leaders talking about ethics.
His last slide to promote his new book, release date of April
2007, sealed the deal for my opinion of him.
It’s not that I don’t think I can learn
something from Mr. Pavlo’s poor ethical decisions,
it’s that I think I can learn it just as well from
reading about it in my textbook. This man, and many others,
is making a living off of telling his story.
True, as he stated at the beginning of his speech, he cannot
get a job at any respectable company as a result of his
actions, so he started his own business and now works with
the FBI and speaks to students and business leaders all over
the country. In my opinion, however, he is not qualified to
speak to me about ethics and it scares me to think that the
FBI and my own university find it acceptable to sit in a room
with him to discuss business.
He may have been a great manager and made some bad
decisions, but the fact is the second he chose to lie and
steal, his credentials went out the door.
This is also not the first time I have felt this way about a
chosen speaker at Elon. Last fall the Pan-Hellenic Council
required all Greek women to attend a presentation on alcohol;
the presenter was also a convicted felon (who even walked out
in the orange suit he wore while incarcerated) who served
many years in prison for killing his best friends in a drunk
driving accident.
His story was sad and important to hear, but he also makes
his living from touring universities to speak about his
experience and essentially lives off the fact that he killed
his best friends.
To me, it seems like there are a lot of important choices to
be made in life and it is important to see what can happen
when you don’t make the correct choices, but does that
mean we surround ourselves with convicted felons to tell us
their side? People have to “pay the price” for
their actions and it doesn’t stop with jail time. If
you can’t find a job because of a box on an application
that reads, “Have you ever been convicted of a
crime?” then you are applying for the wrong job.
Of course someone isn’t going to hire you to be a CFO
or Business Manager if you laundered $6 million dollars, but
I bet you can get a decent line job at McDonald’s over
on Church Street and make your way back into the working
class. That would do a lot more good than standing in front
of me and speaking about ethics.
-Lindsay Wright, ‘07
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