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Playing the "Fairness" Card and Rawls

By Jeffrey Harrison

Recently, in a comment, I was accused of not being fair. It made me realize how specialized a sense of unfairness can be. I have no idea who wrote the comment and the identity is not important because I am sure a narrowly focused sense of fairness is something we all possess. I am not talking here about accusations of unfairness that are actually generated by some other disagreement. After all, it?s always nice, at least strategically, to start any criticism by saying the other person is ?unfair.? It?s a first cousin of ?you are uncollegial.? Both often mean, ?I don?t like what you did but do not want to confront the merits.?

One of the most interesting narrow senses of fairness I witnessed was several years ago when faculty had family members in class and, as I recall, family members tended to do very well in those classes. It was a big deal and after months of faculty grumbling and people trying to get other people to raise the issue, there was a meeting and the faculty voted unanimously, or close to it, to ban family members in class. Then the question was what do to about family members already in class. Someone said they should be graded pass/fail. Someone else argued that was unfair because those students registered for those classes more or less expecting to make A?s. That view carried the day. I could not see what was unfair since it seemed like common sense to me that children. should not be in mom or dad?s class..

Mainly, though, fairness seems to be granted first to those we know and people we do not know get short shrift. Like the commentator to my post of mine about a faculty candidate, there was perceived unfairnes to that candidate, but evidently no unfairness to dozens of unknown people waiting patiently for phone calls and excluded by the process and the biases of those running it. Similarly, I could count on two toes (that would be twice) the number of times I have heard someone object to a faculty program, research grant, or tenure because it would be unfair to the taxpayers and tuition payers. In fact, I have heard programs defended not because they are fair to those paying for them, but because not that much money is involved.

Sometimes I do hear the argument that something would be unfair to the students but it?s usually as an added justification for doing what a faculty wants to do. For example, I have not heard, at least publicly, that it is unfair to the students to make up several classes during the last week, not teach needed courses, to schedule courses so they conflict in order to appease faculty or any of the other faculty-favoring practices that make life tougher on students. My hunch is that this would change if discussed at faculty meetings with students in attendance. Unfortunately fair or not fair seems to be a function of the visibility or invisibility of those affected.

I wonder if there is any way to make law school governance decisions behind the veil of ignorance.

Full post as published by Class Bias in Higher Education on November 28, 2007 (boomark / email).