Course Syllabus

Welcome to Environmental Ethics!

 

Class meets Tuesdays and Thursdays from 11:30am in Olin 192.

 

I’m Professor Patrick Frierson (you can call me Patrick or Professor Frierson, whichever you prefer)

 

My office hours this semester are Tuesdays and Thursday from 8:30-9:45am in my office in Olin East (193) and Wednesdays from 8:30-9:45 PM by zoom (at https://whitman.zoom.us/j/92189368747). (If you are going to come to my zoom office hours, please let me know ahead of time if possible.)  I'm also available by appointment, so if those times don't work for you, please reach out.  You don’t have to have pressing business in order to meet with me, especially during regular office hours.  You can come to talk about anything class or Whitman related.  (I’m an academic advisor and was pre-law advisor for many years, so I also like just talking about future plans and students’ lives.)  On weeks that you are preparing for a debate, you should plan to meet with me (as a group) on Wednesday, ideally at 9am but otherwise by appointment.

 

Most of what you need to know in terms of day-to-day work is on the timeline below and the linked assignments.  Those will provide the readings for each day and the required writing for each day.  Note that for a 4 credit class, you should expect to do about 3 hours of homework for each hour you spend in class.  That adds up to eight or nine hours a week spent reading the materials for this class and writing up the responses.  I strongly recommend scheduling time to spend doing these readings.  They are tough and there are a lot of them, and I expect you to read them carefully and think about them on your own.  Avoid surfing the internet, even to look up stuff that seems relevant, while you are doing work for this class.

 

Here I just want to add a brief note about the flow and format of the class, and a few general policies that will apply to this class.

 

Flow and Format

For most of the semester, the class will have a distinctive “flow.”  Weekends will be spent reading and thinking through several texts (usually articles) on a particular topic in environmental ethics.  There will typically be a lot of reading, so you should budget time accordingly.  In reading through the material, you should seek to figure out what the central issues are – that is, what people disagree about and what positions they are trying to defend – as well as what the most important arguments for each author’s position are.  For each article, try to identify a central thesis (the position defended) and to articulate in your own words the central argument for that thesis.  I’ve also given questions to think about, which will help you pick out some key aspects of these readings.  Save your work on these questions, since they highlight material that might be on the final exam. 

TUESDAY classes will typically be a combination of lecture and discussion and will usually start with a quiz on the readings.  The goal of these classes will be to equip all students with a good grasp of the readings and to begin our discussion of the key issues in them.  THURSDAY classes will consist in debates about a particular topic related to the readings.  For those classes, there will generally not be any reading beyond the argument briefs (see below) you will receive from debaters.  It is essential that you read these briefs before class.  The debate format is described below.

In addition to this regular flow week-to-week, twice during the semester each student will be part of a team responsible for debating an issue in environmental ethics.  During weeks that you are a debater, you will need to meet with your debating partners over the latter part of the week and/or the weekend to put together a draft of your arguments, and then again with them after class on Tuesday to revise that draft in the light of class discussion, and then again on Wednesday when you will meet with me during office hours, and then again after your debate to revise your brief for final submission.  Those will be intense weeks, so plan accordingly.

Debate days:  On debate days, two or three students (the Proponents) will lay out the argument in favor of the statement and two or three (the Opposition) will lay out the case against it, and we will end each class with a vote (by “secret” ballot).  Before each debate day, the Proponent and Opposition students will send out brief explanations of their key arguments, which must be read by the entire class before class.  On debate days, class will begin with opening statements for each side in the debate.  I will randomly decide which position will go first.  After opening statements, which will be strictly limited to 5 minutes for each side, there will be brief rebuttals, limited to 2 minutes for each side.  (Whoever gave the first opening statement will give the second rebuttal.)  Then we will discuss the arguments as a class for a little less than an hour, during which time the Proponents and Opposition may not speak.  At the end of our discussion, there will be an opportunity for concluding remarks by the Proponents and Opposition.  Each side will have no more than 5 minutes to lay out their closing case and no more than two minutes for short rebuttals.  The order of presentation at the end of class will be the opposite of what it was at the beginning.  After closing arguments, the rest of the class will write out their ballots, voting either for or against the proposition.  At the top of your paper, you should write either “Yay” if you agree with the proposition, or “Nay” if you do not.  You must then, very briefly, lay out what you found to be the most compelling argument for your position.  Your vote and your justification should reflect your own considered judgment about the issue, not your opinion about which side presented their case better.  You can include arguments not mentioned by any of the debaters (though I would hope that you would have mentioned such arguments in our discussions!)

PLEASE SIGN UP FOR TWO DEBATE DAYS HERE.

THE FINAL EXAM for this class will take place on April 24^th, during our regular class period.  You can find a list of possible final exam questions here.  (I reserve the right to update this list, but I don't plan to make significant changes.  I strongly recommend jotting down answers to these questions as you do the readings over the course of the semester.)

AFTER THE FINAL, our class time will be more relaxed.  We may have guest speakers, or discuss environmental poetry, or documentaries, or other materials.  During this time, you will be working on a final paper, which will be due on the last day of classes.  The assignment for that paper can be found here.

 

Grading

I will be using Canvas’s point system to give you an ongoing sense for your grade in the class.  Each daily quiz and debate response will be worth 1 point (though I might give 2 points for exceptionally good ones, or 0.5 points for barely passable ones).  There will be 25 of these quizzes.  In addition, there are several higher stakes assignments:

1. Your debate briefs will be worth up to 60 points total, 30 points each (3 points for submitting the first draft on time, 2 points for submitting the public draft on time, and up to 25 points for the final draft of the brief).
2. Your oral arguments will be worth up to 40 points total (20 points each).
3. Your midterm/final exam will be worth up to 50 points.
4. Your final paper will be worth up to 25 points.

That makes a total of 200 points, and your grade will be based on a percentage, so 186 points or above is an A, 180-185 points is an A-, etc.  I am trying to use Canvas to give you an accurate ongoing record of your grade.  I find Canvas difficult to manage and have found that many students in many classes end up treating their Canvas percentage as their grade, so I have sought to design the system this semester so that the Canvas grade is accurate.  Note that Canvas is a complex software interface and I and others have notoriously had trouble getting it to work properly, so I reserve the right to correct mistakes if I (or the system) make mistakes. 

Note, too, that sufficiently poor attendance can override your Canvas grade, and I may also adjust your final grade based on class participation.  Excellent participation could bump you up a bit (from a B+ to an A-, for example), and a lack of participation or participation that is disrespectful or disrupts others’ learning can significantly lower your final grade.

 

Attendance

For this class, you are expected to contribute to a learning community through coming to class prepared and participating in a substantive, meaningful, inclusive, and respectful way.  As noted above, the quality of your participation may affect your final grade since I can adjust the grade shown in Canvas based on your participation.  I will not be granting excuses for absences, but I understand that circumstances can sometimes require that students miss class, even for reasons not included in the College’s official authorized absences (sports, etc.).  However, students who miss more than 20% of the class (6 total class periods) will not pass the class, regardless of their grade in Canvas.  [Note: these six absences do not include absences for which a student has a religious or disability exception, but I must approve those exceptions in writing (email) before the end of the second week of classes, and students will need to make up missed work.] 

 

Plagiarism, Academic Honesty, AI, etc.

I believe that one of the central missions of a liberal arts college is to help students think for themselves.  That includes reading difficult material for yourself, writing arguments yourself, formulating positions for yourself.  We live in a world in which various media constantly tell us what to think, usually in short snippets or manipulative programming.  The material we are reading in this class makes complex arguments that are hard to understand and that encourage you to think about topics in new ways.  I want you to think for yourself rather than to become a cog in a propaganda machine.

 

At the same time, thinking and learning are social processes, facilitated by conversation and dialogue and also by tools that can help us think for ourselves.  I encourage you to use our class discussions and your classmates and friends as conversation partners who can help you think about the subjects we are discussing.  I encourage you to visit the CoWS for help with writing.  When necessary, I encourage you to look things up in dictionaries, Wikipedia, various web sites, but as you engage with online resources, be wary of how you can be distracted and manipulated.

 

For all of the work that you turn in for this class, I want you to turn in work that reflects your own thinking and writing.  If you consult with any other sources (including the CoWS, AI, websites, books, friends, chalk on a sidewalk), you should disclose those sources.  If you directly use language from another source, you should use quotation marks and cite that source.  I will assume that you use the built-in grammar and spelling checkers in Word or googledoc, but if you use Grammerly or ChatGPT or other AI to polish your writing, tell me what you used.  If you use AI to do work for you (beyond correctly spelling and grammar), tell me what prompts/questions/instructions you gave the AI and, if you significantly edited the AI-generated results, provide the original that you revised.

 

Accommodations

In accordance with the College’s Religious Accommodations Policy, I will provide reasonable accommodations for students who have conflicts with scheduled exams, assignments, or required attendance in class because of religious observances.  If you find it at all awkward to ask for a religious accommodation, please feel free to call on Whitman’s Interfaith Chaplain, Adam Kirtley, who can advocate on your behalf.

If you are a student with a disability who will need accommodations in this course, please contact Disability Support Services at DSS@whitman.edu, or visit Olin Hall 334, for assistance in developing a plan to address your academic needs. All information about disabilities is considered private; if I receive notification from Disability Support Services that you are eligible to receive an accommodation due to a verified disability, I will provide it in as discreet a manner as possible.

For either religious or disability-related accommodations, you must notify me before the end of the second week of classes regarding your needs so that we can work out a reasonable plan for accommodating those needs.  You cannot receive accommodations after-the-fact for classes or work that you have already missed.  If at any point you find that I am not adequately respecting your need for accommodations and do not choose to speak with me about that concern, you may contact the Chair of the Humanities, Lydia McDermott.  I also encourage you to reach out to your academic advisor, who can discretely reach out to me.  If you believe I am guilty of biased conduct towards you, you may file a bias incident report at https://www.whitman.edu/about/inclusive-excellence/bias-reporting-and-response.

If you are a student without a legally-protected disability but who has specific learning needs that I should be aware of, please let me know as soon as possible.  My goal is for this class to be available and supportive of the learning of all of my students.

Finally, if you find the assignments, lectures, or other aspects of the course either confusing, or if you find yourself spending more than 10 hours in a given week on ordinary work for this class, please come talk to me.  Whether or not you have a diagnosed disability, most students benefit from reflecting on their own particular learning strategies and working with their professors to develop ways to improve how they go about doing the work for the course.