Brown and White Vol. 134 no. 14

              The Brown and White Vol. 134 No. 14
Friday, March 30, 2018 ‘All the Lehigh News First’
Q&A: CARLY FIORINA TALKS ETHICS, GENDER
By JESSICA HICKS
News Editor
On March 27, Carly Fiorina, the
former CEO of Hewlett-Packard and
a candidate in the 2016 presidential
election, delivered the inaugural Peter
S. Hagerman, ’61, lecture in ethics.
Fiorina sat down with The Brown
and White to discuss her experiences
as a business leader and presidential
candidate and her viewpoint on soci-ety’s
treatment of women.
Q: You were the first woman to
lead a Fortune 20 company when
you served as the CEO of HP.
What was the experience like in
a largely male-dominated field?
Carly Fiorina: Well, women are
not granted the presumption of com-petence.
We have to earn it. So when
a man goes into a job, people assume
he deserves it. When a woman goes
into a job, they say, ‘Prove it.’ Of
course, that applied to me in spades.
I stopped thinking about myself as a
woman in business so long ago, but
what I found is that other people
hadn’t… I think I didn’t understand
in the moment how symbolic it was
for some people, and I was so focused
on getting the job done. I remember
being interviewed by Business Week
— they have since gone out of busi-ness,
but at the time, they were the
premier business magazine — and
the first question the editor asked me
was what designer I was wearing.
My point is, there were some things
that happened that would never,
ever have happened to a man. Those
things were some version of infuriat-ing,
frustrating, enlightening.
Q: In your rise to the top, did
you ever have to ignore or pre-tend
that sexist or inappropri-ate
comments or behavior didn’t
bother you, or didn’t phase you
as you were trying to do your
job?
CF: Sometimes I ignored them,
and sometimes I confronted them,
and I would make those decisions at
the time. I remember a boss when
I became a boss for the first time,
and I had three subordinates and
that was a big deal for me. He intro-duced
me to my new subordinates as,
‘This is Carly, our token bimbo.’ In
the moment, I didn’t make a scene
about it because I wanted to meet
my employees…Then, later, I went
into his office and I shut the door
and I was very calm, but I said,
‘You will never, ever do that to me
again…’ Everything you can think of
has happened to me. I have not been
See FIORINA Page 2
Sara Boyd/B&W Staff
Carly Fiorina speaks on “Why Ethics and Respect Matter” on March 27 in Baker Hall. The event was sponsored by the newly formed Center
for Ethics, and was the inaugural Peter S. Hagerman, ’61, lecture in ethics.
Students lobby for medical amnesty reform
By CATE PETERSON
Managing Editor
Timothy J. Piazza.
McCrae Williams.
Two student deaths at
Pennsylvania schools related to alco-
Photo courtesy of Creative Commons
Lehigh’s medical amnesty policy went into effect on March 14, 2007. Although Lehigh’s policy protects both the caller and the person in
need of help from the Code of Conduct violations, the person in need of help may still face legal consequences.
hol. Two student deaths where peers
failed to call for help until it was too
late.
Lehigh’s medical amnesty policy
protects both the student who calls
for help and the student in need
of help from the university conduct
system. Christopher Mulvihill, the
associate dean of students, said
Lehigh’s policy first went into effect
on March 14, 2007, after two mem-bers
of Student Senate brought the
idea of a medical amnesty policy to
his attention.
However, the policy does not pro-tect
the student in need of help from
legal repercussions. Because it can’t.
Pennsylvania law states a person
shall be immune from prosecution
for consumption or possession solely
if law enforcement became aware
of the violation because “the person
placed a 911 call or a call to campus
safety, police or emergency services,
in good faith, based on a reason-able
belief and reported that another
person was in need of immediate
medical attention to prevent death
or serious injury.” The person must
also be the first one to place such a
call for help for that incident, must
provide their own name to the emer-gency
officer and must remain with
the person needing medical attention
until emergency services arrive.
The state law, however, does not
protect the student requiring assis-tance.
Now, members of the Lehigh
student community are seeking to
change that.
“The only other state besides
Pennsylvania in the surrounding
area that doesn’t have a full med-
See AMNESTY Page 3