Editor:
If the Aspen school board wishes to stand for truth and integrity, then it must ask the Aspen Education Foundation to return the funds raised by a “celebrity pickleball” event to the generous donors.
By featuring the infamous and unrepentant cyclist, Lance Armstrong, as a “celebrity” player in the fundraising event, the foundation made a morally flawed decision. Even good people with charitable intentions can make bad judgments.
According to an email from my friend Michael McClain, a retired religion and philosophy professor at Rhodes College and midvalley resident, “… fundamental to education is teaching the value of truth and promoting the pursuit of it. Armstrong’s immoral behavior is incompatible with this fundamental goal of education.”
Accepting morally tainted funds sends the message, “It’s OK to use money generated by someone who lied, cheated and ran the best doping operation in sports history, yet insists that he did nothing wrong, as long as it is for a good cause.”
A business school ethics case study on Armstrong also concluded that he made an immoral choice about doping and cheating to win the Tour de France seven times. He focused only on his goal to win for material gains, “… ethical considerations were omitted from his frame of reference.” https://ethicsunwrapped.utexas.edu/video/armstrongs-doping-downfall
The Aspen Education Foundation has made this same, flawed, framing mistake, which the school board should not repeat. If the board desires to model ethical behavior to its students, then it cannot accept the tainted funds.
Bernard Grauer
Basalt