Rules and Regulations

 

How Ethics Bowl is Played

In Ethics Bowl, a moderator asks two teams of three to five undergraduate students questions that pose ethical problems on topics ranging widely over areas such as the classroom (e.g. cheating or plagiarism), personal relationships (e.g. dating or friendship), professional ethics (e.g. engineering, architecture, business, the military, law, medicine, etc.) or social and political ethics (e.g. free speech, gun control, health care, etc.)

Two competing teams are asked different questions. Each team answers its question according to the following format. After the moderator poses a question to a team the team gets one minute to confer, after which it must state its answer. (The team does not respond completely cold, however, because prior to the Ethics Bowl each competing team receives a set of cases that present ethical issues upon which the questions a team must answer at the Ethics Bowl are based.)

After the team states its answer to the question posed by the moderator, the judges then have an opportunity to ask the team brief follow-up questions to elicit a teams' viewpoint on ethically important aspects of the question, or to seek clarification of a team's response. After the judges have asked their questions, the opposing team then has one minute to present a response to the first team's answer. The first team then has an opportunity to respond to the opposing team's comments.

 

Evaluation of Responses by the Judges

The judges, who are instructed prior to the Ethics Bowl concerning the criteria apply the following in evaluating the teams' answers:

Intelligibility: Is the team's position stated and defended in a way that is logically consistent? Is it expressed with enough clarity and precision that the judge can say she or he reasonably understands it?

Depth: Is any consideration which a judge considers ethically important omitted by a team in its statement and defense of its position?

Focus: Does the team base its position on any considerations which a judge regards as off the point?

Judgment: In the judge's opinion has the team evaluated the considerations it identifies as ethically relevant in a careful and reasonable way?

The preceding format is then repeated with a different question for the opposing team.