Academic Integrity

What is ethics?  Ethics is the set of moral values that develop inside an individual throughout the individual’s life as a result of environmental and intrinsic factors.  Ethics are the values that you use to guide yourself.  An individual’s ethics determine how they behave, how they hold their self, and how they confront certain situations.  Personally, these definitions of ethics are very hard-to-relate to.  I have my own personal rule that I can use whenever I question whether a certain action or path is ethical.  I simply ask myself whether I would be proud to tell my grandchildren or grandparents what I did.  In order to be content with the choices and decisions I make, I cannot have any regrets and by asking myself this question, I can better assess whether I should take that action or go down that path.  For me, ethics and behaving morally means there are three simple rules I need to follow to the best of my ability. (1) Never cheat.  (2) Never lie.  (3) Never steal.  These actions are not beneficial to anyone.  They are not things that I would be proud to say I have done.  So, my academic integrity pledge is very straightforward: Don’t cheat.  Don’t lie.  Don’t steal.

Plagiarism is something that violates all three components of my academic integrity pledge.  Plagiarism involves cheating, lying, and stealing.  Plagiarism is a form of cheating.  It involves breaking the rules to gain an unfair advantage.  By plagiarizing, I am not doing the work for myself.  I am using someone else’s ideas and words.  This gives me an unjust edge over other students who are limited to just their own thoughts and opinions.  Plagiarism is a form of lying.  By plagiarizing, I am knowingly turning in someone else’s work and claiming that it is my own.  Plagiarism is a form of stealing.  If you plagiarize, you are stealing another individual’s ideas.  You are taking what is theirs and saying it is yours.  Because plagiarism is a clear violation of both academic rules and my own personal system of morals, I will not plagiarize.

Ad

This advertisement is from a recent Gatorade campaign.  There are many interesting aspects to this ad and how it attempts to convince consumers to buy Gatorade products.  The message in this ad is very straightforward and simple.  Anyone can understand the text in the ad.  Additionally, there is nothing to distract the viewer.  It is white text on a black background.  This eliminates any possible distractions that could be present if the background was a picture instead.  The white text makes the ad very easy to read.  The message that is being conveyed is that the game has evolved, or improved, and in order to continue to compete or stay ahead of the competition, you must drink Gatorade.  By not identifying a specific game, this ad can apply to all athletes.  Athletes are the intended audience and this ad is implying that athletes don’t want to fall behind or lose out on an opportunity to gain an edge because they do not drink Gatorade.  One interesting aspect of the ad is that there is nothing in the actual ad or text that identifies it as a Gatorade advertisement.  There is no logo.  Gatorade simply assumes, based on its reputation, that potential customers will recognize the font from previous ads.  There is no direct attempt on Gatorade’s part to persuade the consumer to buy or use any particular product or to inform the consumer of Gatorade’s potential benefits.  This is another assumption the company makes.  They assume that the consumer has been previously exposed to enough information to know what Gatorade is and what it actually does.  The logic of this ad does not make sense.  Gatorade assumes that consumers will make their own assumption that because the game has evolved, they must drink Gatorade or that the “game” refers to the method of hydration and that the evolution is the change from drinking primarily water to drinking Gatorade to excel at sports.  In reality, there is very little connection between these ideas and the message that the company wants the consumer to take from the ad.  This connection that the viewer makes is very clever on the company’s part.  They put forth a very simple message, one that everyone can understand, but that really does not mean anything significant, and then rely on the viewer to make their own assumptions about what this must mean and essentially allow the consumer to convince themselves to purchase and use Gatorade products.

About Me

Hi! My name is Wesley Bland. I am from Richmond, Virginia. I am currently in my second semester at Clemson, although I am technically considered a first-semester sophomore. Right now, I am in Pre-Business, but I am pretty sure that I want to major in Corporate Finance and minor in Accounting. I was born in Richmond on July 15, 1992. My parents are both University of Richmond graduates and my dad went on to get a law degree at the University of Virginia. I have a younger sister, Anne Carter, who was born when I was three and we currently have two cats. One thing you should know about me is that I love sports. I play soccer, baseball, football, and basketball, and I also love playing tennis, bowling, golf, swimming, pingpong and especially dodgeball. I attended high school at Maggie Walker Governor's School (full name: Maggie Lena Walker Governor's School for Government and International Studies National Historic High School) which has been recognized as one of the top 21 public high schools since 2006. Governor's really pushed me to work hard and strive to do everything extra that I can academically, even if I am not one of the smartest students. At Clemson, I have played intramural flag football and was recently inducted into Clemson's chapter of Alpha Lambda Delta national freshmen honor society. I am trying to graduate early, and hope to graduate with honors.