"Ethical Fading" from the Chronicle of Higher Ed and FYI it is National Plagiarism Education Week! (not that it matters at CSU)

In case you missed the rehashing of U of I's great admissions scandal of several years ago the Chronicle of Higher Ed published another article about it on April 17th  by Peter Schmidt
http://chronicle.com/article/An-Admissions-Scandal-Shows/229477/.  Scrutiny and analysis of U of I surely takes the heat off of CSU, doesn't it?  The most recent article about the "admissions scandal" adds an explanation of the "Illinois way" of politics and its application in a university setting: the concept of ETHICAL FADING. What an apt description for how institutions, our institution, for example, ignore all that "ethical training" we are mandated by the state of ILL  to take every November. This is "ethical fading:"

A senior administrator," Mr. Harris says, "does not wake up in the morning and say, Today I am going to do something that lands me on the front page of the Chicago Tribune for the wrong reasons." Instead, he says, what comes into play is a phenomenon known as "ethical fading," in which the culture or structure of an organization causes those within it to lose sight of ethical considerations.

...Often, he says, misconduct "originates, evolves, and sustains itself" as a result of a confluence of factors: common psychological tendencies, such as self-deception; environmental pressures, such as financial concerns; and structures within organizations, such as the enrollment-management systems that many colleges have put in place to coordinate their admissions decisions.

Dr Halpin's previous two posts detailing CSU Administrators' circumvention of IBHE are part of a greater pattern at CSU where accountability to state taxpayers and ethical considerations have been consistently "faded" by the Watson regime, the CSU Board of Trustees, former Governor Quinn and a host of affiliated politicians.

See if the paragraphs below from the article describing U of I could not apply to CSU as well. I was particularly struck by the phrases:  "Administrators and trustees 'sanitized their involvement'" and "Trustees rarely discussed the process among themselves, adopting "a hear no evil, see no evil" perspective."

...Administrators and trustees "sanitized their involvement" by employing positive, euphemistic language. Using such language "enhanced self-perceptions of morality," the paper says.

Senior administrators even said the special admissions process helped protect undergraduate admissions decisions from outside interference by providing a place for university officials and administrators to route inquiries about applicants rather than dealing with those inquiries themselves. In reality, the routing of such inquiries through the chancellor’s office aided such outside interference by keeping the people who had passed the inquiries along from having a full understanding of how the process worked and knowing the full ramifications of their actions. Trustees rarely discussed the process among themselves, adopting "a hear no evil, see no evil" perspective, the paper says.

And speaking of "ethical fading," before I forget, Happy Plagiarism Education Week 2015 (April 20-24) sponsored by Turnitin and the Chronicle of Higher Ed. I'm sure the Academic Affairs division is sponsoring many plagiarism awareness events for this.