Moral crossroads

It’s been a busy morning. You have a half hour break between meetings so you hurry to the microwave to warm up some soup. You stop short in front of the pantry door when you hear a struggle on the other side. You recognise the voices of two of your colleagues. The conversation sounds hostile. With your heart in your mouth you think back to last week when you saw one of them leaving the office in tears. But then, what do you know? It’s probably not what you think and it’s not your problem anyway. You retreat back to your desk to sip your cold soup and get on with your day.

At TU Delft, social safety is now a more widespread issue. However, where are the guidelines on how to act if you are a witness to misconduct instead of a victim? In the book Small Things Like These, author Claire Keegan explores how ‘minor’ mundane circumstances might allow evil. Set in Ireland in the 1980s, the story revolves around a coal miner called Bill Furlong as he deals with the aftermath of discovering an abused young woman locked in the shed of the local convent.

These institutions (termed Magdalene laundries) actually existed in Ireland from the 1760s all the way up to 1996. They were operated by the Roman Catholic Church to house ‘fallen women’ (women who did not conform to the social norms of the time). Foreshadowing his encounter with the girl, Furlong’s wife said “If you want to get on in life, there’s things you have to ignore, so you can keep on.”

The recommended course of action is vague and the outcomes uncertain

 What is the moral price of keeping on? Philosopher Hannah Arendt coined the phrase ‘The banality of evil’ to describe this kind of evil that endures in the absence of thought. In Keegan’s perspective, the routine goings-on of the Irish villagers permitted the mistreatment of thousands of women. Does this mean that the whole community was complicit in these acts?

And does this mean that the TU Delft community is, in some way, to blame for social safety concerns? Within a large system comprised of multiple hierarchies and actors with competing interests, accountability is unsurprisingly diffused. What is a witness to do? As a member of this community, if you observe objectionable behaviour, you have some options. For instance, you could report it to a Confidential Advisor or take it further by filing a complaint with the undesirable behaviour complaints committee. However, the recommended course of action is vague and the outcomes uncertain.

There is also the chance that you, as the witness, misinterpreted the behaviour. So, for the sake of self-interest, keeping silent is often easier and less risky. However, in such an environment, the same could happen to you. A lasting change in our TU Delft culture cannot only rely on the victims to speak out. It requires more of the community to actively condemn wrongdoing. Keegan, while acknowledging the human capacity for evil, reminds us that we are also capable of doing the right thing. What small steps can you take towards building collective social responsibility?