Mercer ethics classes partner with Macon homeless shelter
Ellie Cape did not know when she got her cosmetology license in high school that her skills would connect her to women struggling in her community. She also did not know that in her senior year at Mercer University she would come to know and love the people of Daybreak.
“They’ve been very, very grateful to have something as simple as having their nails painted,” Cape said. “It’s just been so cool to see how simple of an act it is and how you can connect with women over that and get into deeper conversation than that and how it brightens their day in a really small way.”
Daybreak is a daytime homeless shelter for those struggling with housing insecurity. Mercer University’s Charlotte Thomas got the idea to create a service-learning ethics class while teaching her students about utilitarianism. Thomas worried the students were too far removed from more abstract ethical dilemmas to analyze them properly.
In an effort to apply theses ethical models to the real world, Thomas decided to bring her students’ ethical teachings outside the classroom and into the Macon community. About 50 students and five preceptors worked on over a dozen projects at Daybreak.
“Ethics is an incredible important thing for students to study, but it’s difficult to teach that class in a way that doesn’t feel abstract and kind of removed from real decisions that people make and that ethical education, ethical judgement, might really be useful for,” Thomas said.
Students created project proposals that incorporated their talents and interests along with the needs of Daybreak. Thomas said that allowing students to create their own projects was essential in evaluating ethics.
“In order for people to, I think, really be able to think about the ethical value of some activity, of something they’re doing, there has to be an element of choice involved,” Thomas said. “Aristotle is really clear about this, that the things that we do involuntarily, it’s not that they are not relevant, but they don’t go to character in the same way as the things we do deliberately.”
The preceptors for the ethics classes provided assistance to the students and coordinated with Daybreak as well. Preceptor Kayli Martin said that the project had several goals, one of which was helping the greater Macon community.
“While the project is about teaching ethics, it is also about helping those who are vulnerable in the community,” Martin said.
One of the students Martin oversaw was Cape who said that her work at Daybreak and in the classroom has taught her the value of ethics and the challenges of the community.
“I don’t subscribe to any certain ethical theory, but I think the ideal of ethics and the act of questioning, I think it’s worthwhile to think about and to question,” Cape said. “So, Dr. Thomas has really encouraged us to do that in each of our projects. Examine it and why we feel it’s necessary and, in the long run, why does it matter what we’re doing.”
The project also made the students more aware of the issue of housing insecurity and how it impacts Macon.
“Often people are one bad thing happening away from being a partner at Daybreak and I think the students found that moving,” Thomas said.
