CUNY Ethics and Morality
Essay Contest
Funded by the Chynn
Family Foundation
Best Essay
Sean McCormick (City College of New York)
To Be Or Not To Be The Change You Wish To See
First Runner-up
Ingrid Delgado (NYC College of Technology)
The Road Less Traveled
Second Runner-up
Ina Lei (College of Staten Island)
Morality Today in America: Mutatis Mutandis?
-
Honorable Mention (Last Name Order)
Etinosa Agbonlahor (Hunter College)
Leilani Blira-Koessler (Queensborough Community College)
Dominique Carson (Brooklyn College)
Catherine Chan (Brooklyn College)
Isabela Fairooz (Queens College)
Kayla Kirschenbaum (Queens College)
Keiko Matsuura (Hunter College)
Carissas Veliz (CUNY Graduate Center)
Li-Jin Zheng (Baruch College)
Yang Zhong (Baruch College)
-
New Extended Submission Deadline
Friday, October 14, 2011
Funded by the Chynn
Family Foundation, the
goal of the CUNY Essay
on Ethics and Morality,
is to stimulate young
people to ponder the
topic of morality, and
to broadcast the best
essays, in an attempt to
promote the teaching of
morality in American
education.
Morality should play a
central role in a
person's life. People
may have an advanced
education, successful
career, and acquire
enormous wealth, but if
they lead an immoral
life, none of this is
meaningful, and the end
result may be
catastrophic. A recent
case in point is the one
of Bernie Madoff, whose
legendary status as a
financial advisor to the
rich and famous, and
billion-dollar
enterprise, came
crashing down, exposing
not only his financial
fraud, but the fact that
only the total absence
of morals could allow
this to transpire in the
first place. As
penance, he will be in
jail for the rest of his
life, and one of his
sons, sadly, took his
own life, rather than
bear this shame. Yet,
how much better would it
have been for his
family, friends, and the
world at large, if he
had committed himself to
moral principles, to
avoid this wrongful path
altogether?
The United States spends
billions of dollars
annually on education,
but without any
concerted effort to
impart a moral
foundation to our
children's lives. What
is the use of filling up
a vessel with
information, when the
vessel itself may be
broken or cracked? Some
would say that it is the
role of parents, rather
than that of our public
schools, to instill
moral values in our
children. But as the
example of the "balloon
boy" who was used by his
parents to
(successfully) get on a
reality show, what
happens to children like
him when his parents
obviously are imparting
the wrong values?
Half of all American
marriages end in
divorce, and so half of
our youths grow up in
broken homes, with much
of the remainder
suffering from either
under- or
over-parenting. Because
we cannot count on a
stable nuclear
family, we must
therefore rely on our
universal primary
educational system
to provide some moral
training. By adding a
moral component to
education, it will fill
a current void, and help
students to
develop character, so
that the knowledge they
acquire can be used to
bring about positive
change in our world.
The Asian American /
Asian Research Institute
will award the top three
essays, as
selected by the
Selection Committee, the
following prizes:
-
Best Essay ($1,000)
-
First Runner-up
($300)
-
Second Runner-up
($200)
