Who is Responsible?

By Kimi Weng ’24

​If you have been on this planet for a decent amount of time, you may have noticed that human beings are social animals, and we interact with each other almost all the time: at home, at school, in the office, and even on the street. The high level of social interactions between humans makes us feel a sense of belonging, and we often start referring to ourselves as a group, just like how the word “we” is used in this paragraph.

Although it is important to maintain our personal characters and beliefs, being a part of a bigger group, like the school that we are all currently in, is inevitable in one’s life. Yet, humans’ ability to collaborate is unarguably one of the most important reasons why we are thriving on this planet now. Uncle Ben once said, “with great power comes great responsibility,” and when we cooperate for a uniform goal, we produce great power, but it also requires group responsibility, commonly known as collective responsibility.
 
Collective responsibility is often employed among a community-based institution, one of which is a boarding school. Boarding schools have a unique environment in which almost all of their members, students and faculty, share the same space for educational purposes. Since boarding schools have their own rules and regulations, they are often considered to be somewhat “secluded” from the rest of the world. The sense of community and belonging becomes essential since these institutions are relatively small in size, and their members spend the majority of their time with each other. Thus, collective responsibility becomes an important method to create a welcoming and inclusive environment, while also guiding students’ behaviors. Individuals will tend to be more disciplined and more empathetic about the people around them when everyone is responsible for each other in the community. These virtues of caring and responsibility will help them succeed as they step into the larger society.
 
However, there are drawbacks to the application of collective responsibility. In addition to the punishment an individual might face when violating regulations, there will likely be other consequences that apply to a larger group of individuals, or even the entire community. In some cases, when the individual who violates the regulation is not identified, consequences could be evenly distributed among all of the members of the community. This leads to a controversial topic: is it fair for innocent people to bear the consequences of the guilty ones?
 
Institutions that adopt the idea of collective responsibility could be interpreted as miniature independent countries because they usually have their own systems and regulations. Even under the national law, individuals violate them. So it can be inferred that the same applies to these institutions, and that there will be individuals who violate the rules. In the larger world, innocent people around the convicted ones seldom experience the consequences. Thus, should a group be punished for what an individual has done? Or is there a way for an institution to build a warm community without the implementation of collective responsibility? When and to what extent do we need to apply collective responsibility? These are the questions to be answered as people continue to develop institutions that emphasize community.