College of Business Administration

Social and Ethical Issues in Business

School Internet Access

GROUP MEMBERS:

Silvia Alcantar
Kurt Jegel
Remelie Manucal
Aaron Pearce
David Stewart
Matt Vandersall
Shaka Williams
Bill Zang

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY:

For our project, we decided to help an elementary school obtain the equipment and resources necessary to log their children onto the internet. Our project targeted forty elementary schools from the area of town South of I-8, East of I-5, West of Imperial Ave, and North of Fwy 54. We eliminated schools that were not interested in our project, already had internet access, or lacked any type of resources. Due to time constraints the group decided to work with a school that had at least some resources available. Schools that were not selected were contacted and given information about another program that might be able to assist them in becoming connected to the internet. As a result of the elimination process we targeted two schools: Horton Elementary and Birney Elementary.

We conducted an analysis of the schools' resources and determined what it would take to get them both connected. We then solicited private businesses and corporations in the community to donate money or equipment to the selected schools. Some of the businesses included; Bank of America, SDG&E, State Farm Insurance, Wells Fargo Bank, Mervyns of California, Longs Drug Stores, Pacific Bell, American Nuclear-Engineers Association, the Rusty Pelican, Cox Cable, and others.

As a result of our efforts, Mervyns of California, Longs Drug Stores, and the American Nuclear-Engineers Association, committed funds to help us complete our project. We anticipate the schools will be connected to the internet in late July. Members of the group will be working with each school throughout the summer to ensure full completion of the project.

The main reasons for doing this project can be best explained through three ethical and moral frameworks, deontology, distributive justice, and the ethic of care. We believe that society has a duty to educate its youth and those youth have the right to access new educational technologies. The internet is tomorrow's virtual library and elementary school children should have access to the information out there to help prepare them for the future. Although there is a vast amount of information to be explored, many schools do not have the resources available to take advantage of the internet. Therefore we felt because many private businesses and corporations have access to those scarce resources, they should allocate those resources to those that otherwise would not have access to those resources.

Beyond duties, rights, and justice, we did this project because we care about our children and the future of society. It is easy to go through college and learn about social change and business responsibility without doing something about it. This semester we decided to take action and do something that would have a lasting impact on future generations. We want to thank those businesses that contributed to the project, and we hope this project will be inspiration for others like it in the future.

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