CAMDEN – Your son, the star pitcher, gets caught smoking the night before a crucial game. He’s not permitted to smoke, and you’ve warned him before. What do you do?

“Do I turn him in to the coach?” asks Rushworth Kidder, president of the Institute for Global Ethics. “If he doesn’t pitch, we’re going to lose and a lot of the other kids that have been looking forward to this the whole season are going to be terribly disappointed. Is the right thing to do to pay attention to those other kids, and therefore, give this kid a stern talking too, but say you can play’ or does this kid need to be sent a lesson?”

Tricky issues like this arise quite often in athletics. When it comes to ethics, says Kidder, the difficulty isn’t determining right from wrong but right from right.

“These are the tensions,” said Kidder. “It’s right to be tough in that situation, but it’s right to consider the whole context, to be compassionate.

“These are the tough ones. There is a moral reasoning process you can move through, and that’s really what we’re trying to help people understand and coaches above all need this.”

Solving such a dilemma is what Kidder and the Institute for Global Ethics does. When the University of Maine Sport and Coaching Education initiative – Coaching Maine Youth to Success – releases its report in December, the Institute will have played a key role in shaping the findings into action that schools and communities can take.

The select panel met for the final time last week at Bowdoin College.

Kidder says his organization is also working with the National Association of State Boards of Education in Washington on a sports initiative.

“What I’m hoping is that whatever we learn here in Maine can begin to get replicated nationally,” he said. “If we do it right, we’re going to have a lot of coaches getting off planes in Portland and visiting schools asking, How’d you do it.'”

The Institute, based in Camden with offices in London and Toronto, has taught seminars and established codes of conduct for schools, prison systems, multinational corporations and military organizations. You can’t be a commissioned officer in the Coast Guard without going through an ethics program designed by the Institute.

A compact would establish proper practices for schools, teams and communities.

“This sort of voluntary group of schools comes together and says: This is how we do it. Here’s what our culture is all about, and we enjoy playing with schools that feel the same way,'” said Kidder. “If you can get something like that broadly established throughout the state, there’d be very little pressure to go the other direction. It would be understood that this is the way you do it here.”

This isn’t the first time Kidder and Duke Albanese, the project’s co-director, have teamed up. The two played key roles in developing “Taking Responsibility: standards for ethical and responsible behavior in Maine schools and communities.” That guide was produced by the Maine Department of Education in 2001.

When the Coaching Maine Youth to Success initiative was established, it provided a study on sportsmanship, ethics, responsibility, morality and today’s win-at-all-cost mentality.

“The question that we’re running up against is how do we make sure, in an area that is most prominently felt by kids – which is athletics in our high schools – that we’re doing something else?” said Kidder. “We’re basically saying, of course, that winning matters. We’re not saying it doesn’t. You’ve got to win, but what are you willing to sacrifice in order to win? The point is we intend to win but not at the cost of “X.” And what is “X”? What is that variable where you say, No, we’re not going to go there?'”

The way to determine those standards are establishing core principals that stem from values that everyone shares. Kidder says there aren’t a lot of different values to choose from.

“Your values are not determined by culture, your religion, your background, your race, your country of origin, how much money you have or your politics,” said Kidder. “Ask people about their values, and they’ll say honesty matters. They’ll say responsibility matters. They’ll say respect matters. They’ll say fairness matters, and they’ll say compassion matters. Any way you ask the question, you come back to these five values.”

He says there is almost complete agreement on these five values. If a code is centered on those values, it is unlikely to get challenged.

Subsequently, the Institute will take the results from the work of the select panel and shape a process. That process can help provide a path toward determining the highest right in certain conflicts.

“One of the things they’re focusing on is the principals of coaching,” said Kidder. “As they develop those, we want to be able to take those and say If these are your principles, how do you apply them? How do you give them legs? How do you make them experiential? We’ve had a lot of experience with that in the corporate world and in the military.”

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