Not playing fair
Imagine a group of young boys playing with marbles together on a sunny Saturday morning. (Yes, I know children don't play with marbles these days; I said ‘imagine’.) One of the boys—Joe—pulls out a particularly beautiful marble. Fred spots it and has this conversation with Joe:
Fred: Hey Joe, I want to buy that big shiny green marble you have there. I need it so I can get on with the job of becoming king of the marble-playing world.
Joe: I'm not sure I want to sell it to you.
Fred: Why not?
Joe: Because I'm not sure you'll play fairly with it. And playing fairly is important to me. Tell you what: I'll sell it to you for $5, as long as you promise you'll always play fairly with it.
Now, Fred's not a bad kid, but he's never had a problem with a bit of harmless rule-bending when it comes to playing marbles. He thinks for a bit, then continues the conversation.
Fred: Come on Joe, what's the big deal? I'll pay you the $5, but I can't agree to your condition.
Joe: That's okay. You don't have to. You can buy another green marble from someone else. I don't mind if you don't want to buy mine.
Fred: What's so important about playing marbles fairly? Who really cares? I should be able to play however I want to.
Joe: I just believe that playing fairly is the right way to play marbles. You don't have to agree with me. But it's my marble and I can sell it on any condition I like.
Fred thinks for a minute longer, and decides the marble is too important to give up. Playing marbles honestly might not be such a bad thing after all. He agrees to Joe's price, and promises to play honestly whenever he is using it.
But then one of the other boys (Simon) pipes up: “Wait a second! You can't put conditions like that on the sale of your green marble. That's an ideological attack on the principles of freedom of marble-playing. Marble-playing should be as independent and rigorous as possible.” (Oh, all right, what he actually says is, “Hey! That's not fair!”)
Sam, a boy from another neighbourhood, pipes up in support of Simon: “Yeah. Restricting the way Fred plays marbles is not only an attack on marble-playing independence, it also establishes an unacceptable precedent” (i.e. “Yeah! You can't tell Fred what to do!”)
Fred and Joe look at each other in astonishment. They're not sure what the problem is, since they're both happy with their arrangement.
This is exactly what happened at the University of Sydney earlier this year (as reported in The Sydney Morning Herald). Except that, instead of a shiny green marble, it's a residential college, and the central issue isn't how you play marbles, it's what kind of stem cell research you do.
The university (Fred) has come to an agreement with one of its residential colleges, St Johns College (Joe). The university will buy some land from St Johns so it can build a medical research centre. St Johns—a Catholic college—has placed a condition on the sale of the land: the university must never use the land or the medical centre to carry out “human foetal stem cell research or any other procedures involving the termination or the artificial creation of human life”. The president of Sydney University's Student Representative Council, Angus McFarland (Simon), has objected to this condition, as has the Greens candidate, John Kaye (Sam). Their objections are as profound as “That's not fair!” and “You can't tell the university what to do”.
Firstly, the land belongs to St Johns College. They can sell it under whatever conditions they like. The university doesn't have to buy the land if they don't want to agree to the conditions of sale. What that has to do with Mr McFarland, Mr Kaye, or anyone else, is beyond me.
Secondly, as the article points out, The Royal Prince Alfred Hospital—only a short walk from St Johns College—does carry out foetal stem cell research. People who want to do that kind of research can go to the hospital and do it there.
Thirdly, notice how it's now unacceptable for people at St Johns College to hold to and act in accordance with their beliefs. Their belief in the value of human life has been labelled by Mr McFarland as “an ideological attack on the principles of freedom of academic research”. One man's religious freedom is obviously now another man's ideological attack. 12 months ago, Mr McFarland couldn't have dreamed of making such an argument, since foetal stem cell research was still illegal in Australia then.
Fourthly, what are these so-called “principles of freedom of academic research”? The very legislation that recently legalized foetal stem cell research in Australia places its own restrictions on the research. Medical researchers aren't free to do what they like, whenever and wherever they like, and nor should they be.
Fifthly, Mr Kaye's comment implies that he sees this as an attempt by St Johns College to “bias research to meet their prejudices”. But it's not; that's what would happen if St Johns did the foetal stem cell research themselves, and then deliberately skewed the results to cover up any medical benefits they had discovered. At the moment, they are simply practising what they preach.
St Johns College should have taken their marbles and gone home, pausing briefly to tell Mr McFarland and Mr Kaye to mind their own business.