LACE Community Assessment Guidelines
This course meets the LACE general education Central Core requirement for Community. In this paper you will demonstrate your mastery of the Community learning outcome: “Students will critically analyze and apply disciplinary perspectives and contexts to the studies of communities, in order to build a sense of responsibility and skills necessary to serve.”
Audience: Your audience for this paper consists of your fellow students at Mount St. Mary’s University. They are intelligent people who have not necessarily studied philosophy. Thus, you will want to explain any uncommon terms (for example, the philosophical concepts, ideas, arguments, etc.) that you use in your paper.
Project summary:
Read Ursula Le Guin’s story “The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas” (available on Canvas). You should know before you begin reading that this is a fable—that Omelas is not a real place.
Make sure you answer all of the following in your paper. You may simply list each item and then answer the question. Or you may write a more conventional paper, adding your own transitions between topics. Do whatever is easiest for you.
1. Describe the most important features of the community of Omelas. (3-5 paragraphs)
2. You will use principlism to analyze the moral issue presented in the story—i.e., whether to stay in Omelas or be among the ones who walk away from Omelas. Explain the theory of principlism to someone who has never heard of it in sufficient detail that they would understand how to use it. Make sure to explain the 4 principles and the concepts of specifying and balancing the principles, including the checklist to justify your choice when balancing the principles. [NOTE: We have studied 2 versions of principlism in this course—traditional principlism and expanded principlism. You may use whichever one seems most appropriate to you. If you use traditional principlism, note that you must consider more than the patient’s autonomy, harm, and benefit, since the ethical problem of Omelas is not bioethical, and thus there is no patient that is the focus of your care. (I.e., you should consider the autonomy, harm, and benefit to everyone in Omelas.) (2-4 paragraphs)
3. Specify how the four principles apply to the case of Omelas. That is, explain how each principle applies to Omelas, and which action (staying or walking away) the principle seems to support. (Remember a principle can partially support both actions; it can give some reason to stay, and some reason to walk away.) Identify the conflicts among the principles. (1-3 paragraphs)
4. Explain how someone might balance the principles to justify staying in Omelas. Make sure to use the checklist in your explanation. (1-3 paragraphs).
5. Explain how someone might balance the principles to justify walking away from Omelas. Make sure to use the checklist in your explanation. (1-3 paragraphs)
6. If you were a citizen of Omelas, do you think you would better serve your community by staying or walking away? Explain your answer by reference to your principlist analysis of the story. (1-2 paragraphs)
Format:
Quotations: Use the convention of (page/line number) to source any quotations from Le Guin’s story. (For example, (3/14-16) after a quotation means you are quoting from page 3, lines 14-16.) If you are quoting from any of the course readings (or any other text), cite by author and page in parentheses. (E.g., (Smith, 237).) If you are quoting any of Dr. Green’s handouts from class, cite by the name of the handout. If you are quoting from your notes of a Zoom class meeting, cite the date of the Zoom class meeting.
Help write my assignment – Bibliography : Since this paper does not require outside research, you will probably not have a bibliography. If you do, you may use any bibliography style that you prefer.
Grading criteria: Your paper will be graded according how clearly, thoroughly, and correctly you answer each of the questions. (Note that in question #6, “correctness” refers to how well you ground your answer in the theory, not to whether you argue for staying or leaving Omelas.)
Due date: Your paper is due in the Canvas dropbox by 4 p.m. Tuesday, Nov. 17. Paper may be revised to raise your grade. Late papers will be accepted, but they will be graded last, and might not be returned in time for you to revise.
