Topic: Ethics, Integrity and Aptitude
Instruction:
Cases must be looked at and solved only from an ethical point of view even if there is a practical way out of the situation.
Case 2:
Latika is a student of law at University X. Belonging to a lower middle class family; she is in dire need of a scholarship to pursue further studies. For this, she needs to prove her merit by submitting a research paper on “Contemporary Legal Dilemmas and the Way Forward”.
She does not have access to legal resources (journals etc.) on the computer at home (she doesn’t have one), and therefore she relies on the university’s internet lab. But, long lines during the whole day and because of her part-time job after the college hours (to finance her studies and support her family financially), she can’t effectively access the internet lab. Therefore, she uses computers at a nearby private college’s library several times a week to access those journals.
She obtains a valid user ID and password by sneaking a look over someone’s shoulder. However, an ID can be logged in only once in a day and therefore the persons’ ID she uses can’t access the library’s journals for that whole day. Using the resources in the library, she completes her paper thereby proving her merit and gets the much-needed scholarship.
Question:
It is said that “Honest is always the best policy”. In your view, did Latika do anything wrong here? Did she have an unfair advantage over her classmates? Would any of your answers change if it turns out she did not win a scholarship at all? (250 words) – 20 marks
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Ethics, Integrity and Aptitude
