Answer:
Assuming I was a member of the voting panel that presided over the academic misconduct hearing involving Zane Corbin, I would have found him guilty of misconduct.
Step-by-step explanation:
In order to see this impartially, we must take into consideration and contrast all the facts provided by both Ann Herrick and Zane Corbin.
Ann Herrick states:
- Corbin was never a member of the Beta Alpha Psi organization.
- Corbin had the need to increase his chances of winning the Upchurch Medal.
- The accounting profession has a code of ethics.
Zane Corbin states:
- He received over the last 2 years, e-mails from the organization and assumed being a member just for getting them.
- He attended different events during that time.
- He admitted never have read the list of requirements for becoming a member because he was busy doing homework during those meetings.
Corbin received over the last two years e-mails from the organization. That explains why he thought he had a membership in Beta Alpha Psi organization.
Herrick states if Corbin would have put attention to the PowerPoint presentation or read with detail the e-mails, he would have been aware of the requirements to be a member, which he didn’t meet.
Corbin attended different events during that time but Herrick explained that not all events or fairs were considered official events.
Also, we must consider in all of this, how the decision was taken in order to choose the winner of the Medal. During the reunion of the committee (integrated by 6 people including Goggans, former chairman of the Finance Department), they decided to reduce the number of finalists from ten to five. After this, each of them chose their favorite 3 and then voted, the result was a tie between Zane and Buchanan, so Goggans decided to excuse himself and asked the others to vote again in order to break the tie; given Goggans had voted for Buchanan, the final voting resulted in favor of Zane. Basically, Goggans had the final decision on his hands.
Nevertheless, we must ponder that all the members of the committee received a copy of the vitas, they should have gone through all of them carefully verifying all the information, if they had, they would have noticed that Corbin was not a member of Beta Alpha Psi organization.
Despite of the voting by the committee was a little affected by Goggans decision, we can conclude that Corbin was aware, although he never admitted it, he was not a member of the Beta Alpha Psi organization but decided to add it to his vita to improve the chances of getting the Medal, showing lack of ethics by doing it so.