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Act Utilitarianism

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Cellphone Jammers and Internet Filter at School Smartphones and digital devices have become an essential part of everyone. These devices can be used for communication, information searching and entertainment anywhere, anytime. In spite of their favourable capabilities, recent MIT’s report concluded that usage of these devices in class negatively affect student’s academic performance (Carter). Hence, RUX University decided to install cellphone jammer and restrict Wi-Fi access on campus. Kantianism, Act Utilitarianism, Rule Utilitarianism and Social Contract theories will help evaluate the justification of this action. Kantianism proposes the categorical imperative as the central philosophy to evaluate one’s action. The second formulation of …show more content…

Nowadays, social networks such as Facebook, Twitter and Snapchat are a huge distraction and can greatly reduce student’s productivity. Students are very active and fast to reply on messaging platform, meanwhile, are usually late on assignment submission (Mingle). Hence, the decision of the university will prevent students from being caught on one of their biggest distraction. They will be more attentive to the professor in class. Assuming for each productive student, the student benefit will be the money they spent for the class. Therefore, if RUX University have approximately 30,000 students and the tuition is $7,000 per year, the university will benefit $210,000,000 per year. Because of the increase in student’s performance, RUX University will also become a more honoured institute. In terms of harms, the university will have to pay for the jammers and its maintaining fees. They also have to be up-to-date to prevent student’s workarounds and actively filtering the Internet to keep the campus’ Wi-Fi suitable for researching. A typical cellular jammer costs total $500 (including maintenance fee) (Jammer-Store). Assuming the institute have 1,000 classrooms, each jammer per classroom would cost $500,000. As it turns out, when assessing the utility by dollars, the …show more content…

Cellphone jammers and Internet filter on campus cannot equate to increase in student’s productivity. Hence, the action by RUX University is unethical. Works Cited Carter, Susan Payne, et al. “The Impact of Computer Usage on Academic Performance: Evidence from a Randomized Trial at the United States Military Academy.” School Effectiveness & Inequality initiative, MIT’s Department of Economics and the US National Bureau of Economic Research, May 2016, www.seii.mit.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/SEII-Discussion-Paper-2016.02-Payne-Carter-Greenberg-and-Walker-2.pdf. Jammer-Store. “Portable Cell Phone Jammers.” Cell Phone Jammers, Jammer-Store, 2017, www.jammer-store.com/gsm-blockers-jammers/. “Jamming Cell Phones and GPS Equipment is Against the Law.” Federal Communications Commission, Consumer and Governmental Affairs, 20 Nov. 2015, www.fcc.gov/general/jamming-cell-phones-and-gps-equipment-against-law. “Jamming Devices are Prohibited in Canada:That's The Law.” Government of Canada , Radiocommunications, July 2011,

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