Everyman

One of the organizations I am involved in has borrowed a standard from the American legal system that is not necessarily the best. This is the "ordinary man" standard. Essentially, in order to close off loopholes and to keep people from only following the letter and not the spirit of the law, this standard was established to determine if something falls into a certain group. Essentially, if the ordinary man believes something falls into that group, then it is part of that group.

Now the merits of this type of subjective standard have been debated time and again and I do not wish to rehash the arguments. What I do wish to do is pose a question. What if the ordinary man is an idiot? Now the quick response is that being ordinary means of ordinary intelligence, however when you are applying this standard to college students, and especially college students that after very social, this question becomes very legitimate. So what do you do when the standard is ordinary but the ordinary person is stupid? Lets take this out of context to show what I mean. Lets say the rule read something like: "If the ordinary person believes X to have consumed too much alcohol, then......" Now an ordinary person would see somebody visibly intoxicated and say "they have consumed too much alcohol," however an "orginary" college student would see the situation and say "they have consumed a normal amount of alcohol." How do you rectify the situation? Would it be an ordinary person exercising good judgement? Now we have introduced another subjective term, good judgement. What determines good judgement? Is it an "ordinary person's definition of good judgement?"

It is a silly situation. The standard works in the law, it doesn't work in governing college organizations, and its fustrating.

I'll be gone this weekend at leadership conferences, I'll post again when I get back.