It's late afternoon.
She switches on the oscillating fan in her dorm, warm breeze gently wafting the stale, muggy summer air around in aimless circles. Back and forth. It's too hot to be September, honestly, and today drags on, sticky and slow just like yesterday, and the day before. Thankfully, the clouds look like they're rolling in on the horizon, and after a week of sun-drenched heat, Ochako Uraraka would be fine with a little rain.
She sits down at her desk, plate of biscuits and iced tea ready by her side, more procrastination than self-care. Time to buckle down and get started. Nothing more in her way. Nothing left to do now but sit down, get ready and start. She can still hear feet thumping around above her; Yaoyorozu's parents must still be there, trying to figure out their daughter's ridiculous bedroom layout.
She smiles, letting her thoughts drift away from homework to this afternoon when her mom and dad came by to visit. They praised their daughter's cleanliness, asked how things were going and gave her more proud hugs than she could count. Only a few weeks living at school and she'd missed them so badly already. Missed dancing with mom to the radio and home-cooked meals and falling asleep on the sofa with dad watching baseball. Missed his big, thumping heartbeat that always made her feel like a little girl no matter how big she was getting.
Her mother brought her a huge bag of home-cooked treats, more than she could ever eat before they went bad and Ochako made a promise to donate some of it to the common room fridge. Maybe not her favourite matcha cookies, but the other stuff. Definitely.
She sighs, chewing the end of her pencil, forcing her brain back around to the present. So unfair to be stuck with homework this weekend. Aizawa would say something stupid along the lines of ' always be prepared for homework, because a hero's workload is constantly shifting ' or some kind of dumb platitude to justify his ridiculous lessons. Really, he just wanted to pile them with a bunch more work.
She looks down at the sheet. Ethics.
Well, he did say this one was going to be easy. Or rather, she recalls, he said there was no right answer . So… that meant she could write whatever she wanted, right? Just make something up and anything would be good?
Uraraka takes a sip of her tea, comfortably weaves her fingers into her bangs, and begins.
Question 1: If you can save the lives of innocent people without reducing the sum total of human happiness, and without putting your own life at risk, you are morally obliged to do so.
Yes / No
Well, she wouldn't be in the UA hero course if she believed otherwise. She circles her 'yes' answer quick and firm.
Question 2: Torture, as a matter of principle, is always morally wrong.
Yes / No
Ok, how exactly was this a "there are no wrong answers" assignment? Of course torture is wrong! What kind of sociopath would say no?
Question 3: The morality of an action is determined by whether, compared to the other available options, it maximises the sum total of happiness of all the people affected by it.
Yes / No
Well, ok. Logically, you want your actions to hurt the least amount of people and cause the least amount of suffering. That's ethical, right? It's better to do something that involves sacrifice for the greater good than to sit by and do nothing at all.
Question 4: It is always, and everywhere, wrong to cause another person's death - assuming they wish to stay alive - if this outcome is avoidable.
Yes / No
True - In theory. Being a hero, you have to learn to deal with death, either by accident or sometimes by cause. In the back of her mind, Uraraka knows that one day, she won't be able to save everyone. It's a dark truth all heroes must reconcile with. Something she doesn't really let her mind dwell on, the failure. It's a distraction, one that only keeps her from rising to the top.
But. She could kill someone one day. A villain. A criminal. Someone vile and heinous who definitely deserves to die! Would that… still be so wrong?
No wrong answer. There's no right or wrong answer here, just fill it out. But, the main purpose is to keep everyone safe and alive. That's the most ethical choice.
Uraraka nibbles another cookie, circling and erasing her answers one more time before flipping the page to the very last question.
There is a runaway trolley barreling down the railway tracks. Ahead, on the tracks, there are five people tied up and unable to move. The trolley is headed straight for them. You are standing some distance off in the train yard, next to a lever. If you pull this lever, the trolley will switch to a different set of tracks. However, you notice that there is one person tied up on the side track. You have two options:
Do nothing, and the trolley kills the five people on the main track. Pull the lever, diverting the trolley onto the side track where it will kill one person.Explain your answer in the field below
"Is he Hitler? If so, definitely switch tracks."
Pull the switch? Then she'd be breaking #4. If she didn't, more people would die and she'd be lying about #3. No way to have them both be right. No wrong answer. But, it seems, no right one, either.
Uraraka sighs, flopping over onto her book. Warm air from the fan gentle teases her bangs as she taps her pencil against the desk, drumming out the familiar beat to an old pop song stuck in her head. What would she do? She was a good person, wasn't she?
Weren't they all?