Every day, students are faced with ethical issues whether it’s plagiarism, drug use, sexuality or even setting life goals.

Often, these decisions seem so complex that students have no idea where to begin when making an ethical choice.

To help resolve these issues, the University of Denver has established the Center for Ethical Deliberation.

The CED is a Web site (http://ced.du.edu) which provides access to basic information about ethics, a “Guided Deliberation Process” that can be applied to any situation a student might face, and concrete examples of how that process can be used to resolve a variety of “tough choices” and current “hot topics.”

The site also contains public discussion boards so students can explore various issues with other members of the DU community.

The Guided Deliberation is the center piece of the site.

The aim of the guided deliberation is to help students discover an ethical course of action.

The first action is to pick a framework – consequences, duty or virtue.

Next, the user is given a series of questions to help associate the perception of the situation, clarify judgment about what to do and cultivate motivation to actually do the right thing.

Additional information is available through links off the Web site.

Students create a username and password and all work done on the site will be saved on their account and will remain anonymous.

Ethical deliberation is an on-going process, so the site allows users to start a deliberation and return to it later to add more insight.

Student ethics coaches are also on call to assist students and provide guidance on general questions not answered by the site.

The ethics coaches are not oracles who can tell you what the ethical action is going to be.

Rather the coaches can help point out weaknesses in your reasoning and show you how overcoming that weakness can provide more insight into the ethical dilemma at hand.

The coaches can also bring up factors that you may not have originally thought of.

The site also has discussion boards where students can discuss contemporary ethical dilemmas.

Currently, there is a discussion about ethical issues in the life sciences, as well as one about why we should care about being ethical in the first place.

Throughout this quarter, one board will center around topics related to Bridges to the Future events.

Participating in that forum can provide background before attending the lectures, or provide a place to discuss the things you’ve learned.

Most of the site is available to anyone, but the interactive features like discussion boards, guided deliberation process, and access to ethics coaches are only available to members of the DU community.

Student ID numbers are required to register but are not stored in the system.

The privacy policy gives details on how the site operates in order to safeguard privacy.