UPDATE (Oct. 28): The 2019 Ethics Bowl has been canceled. The cancellation is due to a variety of circumstances, not the least of which is an inadequate number of student teams. Below is the original story.
The nineteenth annual Detroit Mercy Ethics Bowl is one of the very few truly campus-wide events at the University, involving students, staff, alumni, faculty and administrators alike. This year’s competition will be held on Friday, Nov. 1 at 12:30 p.m. in the Student Union Fountain Lounge on the McNichols Campus.
Inspired by TV’s College Bowl, the Ethics Bowl modifies the rules and adapts the game to the subject of ethics. A moderator poses questions to teams of three to five students. Questions may address ethical problems on classroom topics (e.g,. cheating or plagiarism), personal relationships (e.g., dating or friendship), professional ethics (e.g., engineering, law, medicine) or social and political ethics (e.g., free speech, gun control, etc.). Each team receives a set of ethical issues in advance of the competition, and questions posed to teams at the competition are taken from that set. A panel of judges rates answers in terms of intelligibility, focus, depth and judgment.
No specialized knowledge in ethical theory is required to compete in or judge an Ethics Bowl.
How to compete in this year’s Ethics Bowl:
- Form a team of three to five members.
- Download the Detroit Mercy Ethics Bowl Rules.
- Fill out the Ethics Bowl Registration Form and slide it under the door of Briggs Room 310.
- Download this year’s Ethics Bowl cases.
- Attend an informational meeting as a team. (Informational meetings are scheduled by email.)
The first-place team will represent Detroit Mercy at a Regional Ethics Bowl, and if they do well there they will move on to the Intercollegiate Ethics Bowl that takes place in February 2020 at the annual meeting of the Association for Practical and Professional Ethics.
Faculty, staff and administrators: If you are interested in committing part of this afternoon to this event as a judge or moderator, simply reply to ethicsbowl@udmercy.edu, and we will be in touch.