The following proposal is a movie night that aims to spark conversation within the engineering student body about ethical issues in the field of engineering. It is also intended to make these students aware of the ethical issues surrounding their fields. Ideally, the movie night, in addition to the previously stated goals, ought to make student engineers want to act ethically, however it is that they define what it is to be ethical, as they embark on their careers, research, etc. The invited audience, as has been alluded to above, will be engineering students. The reason the audience ought to be engineering students is because it is these students who make the future. These students are the people that will be building the next advances in technology for the next many decades. Many of these students will also move into managerial roles within technical companies. Here, especially, there is a need to act ethically. This is because the decisions they make potentially affect the lives of millions/billions of people across the globe. The reason we want these engineering students to start to talk about and be aware about ethical issue is because we believe that these things are key in accomplishing the third goal of making engineering students act ethically in their workplace/lab. We believe that as the ethics conversation becomes a more common topic of discussion, the stigma against whistle-blowing declines. As more people discuss ethics, more people will be in support of making the ethical decision. Thus, the pressure to just do as one is told, whether or not one agrees with what he/she is being told to do ethically, will diminish. We find this to be the case because, more likely than not, if one engineer has an ethical issue with decisions being made by management, other employees will have the same issues. If these employees, along with the engineers in managerial roles, had been used to discussing ethical point of views, we feel that the practicing engineers would be able to more clearly and affectively present their ethical points of view in ways that would make management reconsider their decisions. We believe that, with a constant discussion of ethics flowing in a workplace, the engineer’s career is much safer when he challenges a managerial decision as well.

The details of the movie night follow; they will be described via a real example of a movie night that we would put on (this example serves as the “kickstart”). First, invitations would be sent out to the invitees. The first 15 who accept will be able to attend. The reason we are keeping this group so small is because we want every single person to share their input in the post-movie discussion (which will be explained later), something that would be infeasible with a larger screening. We would have everyone meet in front of Soda Hall, in between Etcheverry and Soda Hall. The event would take place on a Friday night from 7-10pm so that people would be free and so that they can relax after a long week by watching a movie an engaging in a stimulating conversation afterwards. We will tell the students to get into groups of three (for logistics). Each of the five groups will be sent to individual rooms inside Soda. Here, there will be three tablets, each with a movie clip ready to go. The students will be instructed to rotate through the tablets and watch the video clips. At the end of each clip, there will be 1-2 questions to consider about the clip. The clips/questions serve to stimulate thoughts about particular ethical issues that we think are relevant and important and will be highlighted in the featured movie. These small clips will ensure that students will not miss main ethical issues within the feature film if they stop paying attention for a small period of time. For example, if the feature film was “Moon”, the three clips shown would be from “AI”, “The Island”, and “Gattaca”. Some questions that could be asked, based on specific clips from each movie, follow. For “The Island”, we would ask “What is the cost of the human being?” based on the clip: The Island. For “Gattaca”, we would ask “What makes one human being better than another?” and “Do human genes define the human being?” based on the clip: Gattaca. The feature film and the clips would be chosen such that the ethical issues highlighted by them parallel engineering ethical issues that are currently highlighted in the news.

Next, the students would be taken to HP Auditorium to watch the film. During the film, they will be asked to think about and write down ethical issues in engineering they would like to talk about in the discussion that will follow the movie. After the movie, we will have one of the group members, say, Ronak, go up to the front of HP auditorium to summarize what we thought were the main ethical issues that were brought about in the movie clips and the featured film. Then, we would introduce our guest speaker. In this case, we may get a professor who is highly involved in robotics/ genetic modification. We would say that he/she is here to moderate and stimulate discussion, as well as to put in his own input. The professor will also serve as an attraction for students to come if they wish to do research with this professor, talk to this professor one on one about careers, etc. The professor will serve as a sort of celebrity guest (especially if we attract notable faculty).

The discussion would start off by us having a raffle, just to get everyone a little bit more excited. Whoever won the raffle would get a prize, say, an Amazon gift card. But, there would be a catch. In order to claim the prize, the winner would have to be the first to express his opinion about the ethical issues in engineering he thought were brought up in the movies. He would have to discuss whether or not he/she thinks there was an ethical issue in the first place; if there was, he/she would be forced to tell the other students in attendance why he/she feels the way he/she does. In addition to that, he/she would need to identify real world situations where the issues he/she brought up were currently happening. Lastly, he/she would need to propose at least one solution to one of the ethical problems he identified. Indeed this would be a tall task, but a 200 dollar Amazon card would be a tall incentive. After he/she has received her prize, he/she will receive a ball to pass to anyone of his/her choosing. The person that receives the ball would then be forced to elaborate, agree, or disagree with the raffle winner. The ball and conversation would continue to flow in this manner, with the expert interjecting when he/she feels that what he/she has to say is important, relevant, or able to enhance the discussion being currently had.

This event would occur bi-monthly for a semester with the same set of students so that the conversation about ethics continues and becomes part of their lives instead of just a one night event. As time progresses, students would be encouraged to voice ethical concerns that they already have if they feel as though the ethical concerns we have brought up via the movie night are unimportant/trivial. The incentive to keep returning would be the raffle prizes, the ability to relax and watch a free movie after a long, stressful week at school, and the prominent guests we continue to rake in. We believe that this movie night will accomplish our goals because we feel that through discussion and through relating ethical issues to real world events in the post-movie discussion students will continue to want to discuss ethics even after the end of the movie nights. In addition, we hope that, by keeping up with ethical issues for a full semester, engineering students will form a habit of keeping up with ethical issues throughout their careers. By staying aware of ethical issues and keeping the discussion alive, we believe that engineering students will be able to affectively promote ethical decisions in the workplace.