Not long ago, a few members of Duke University’s Honor Council spoke with students at McDougle 
Middle School about the roles of morals and ethics in making good decisions. Honor Council members set up a scenario for the moral dilemma all of us have faced more than once in our lives — You see someone break the rules; do you tell the authorities?
Honor Council members asked the kids to vote with their feet — stand on one side of the room if you believe yes; the other side if you say no; in the middle if you’re not sure. They got some vigorous debate going.
Those who exhibited higher moral development were rewarded with stickers reading: “Integrity over image.” That’s another way of stating North Carolina’s motto of “To be, rather than to seem.”
I wish the Honor Council would hold a similar program for Town Council members. Every meeting, it seems, we are presented with a scenario where we have to decide between the difficult, often slow path of making real, lasting change or take the fast track to nowhere by settling for the image of accomplishment.
Our decisions are shaped by our habits and by the environment that makes room for and supports one view over another. We, on council, need to create an environment that makes room for decisions that result in substantive changes, rather than give in to the big-eyed puppies of buzzwords like “affordable housing,” “childhood hunger” and “homelessness.”
Especially in this budget season as we stare down a tax hike, we need to be intentional about how we spend our money. What will make lasting change for those in our community, in particular for those whose voices aren’t always heard?
Coming up in the next month, I understand we will hear about proposals to scrap a housing development that would enable low-wealth people to live in a blended neighborhood they feel proud to come home to and instead build a complex where they would be segregated in low-income housing; a request for money to pay for an unnecessary administrative layer between food and the children who need it; and the dismantling of a rehousing program that has helped dozens of formerly homeless men in favor of sweeping the homeless into a closet where they can’t be seen by the rest of us.
It will take courage for council members to make decisions for real change instead of worrying about how our votes could be misconstrued in a tweet.
Wish us luck.
— Nancy Oates
