Williams College Ethics Bowl Wins Northeast Regional
WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. - Williams College has won the Northeast Regional Ethics Bowl competition and will advance to the National Ethics Bowl Championship tournament to be held in Cincinnati in March. The Ethics Bowl is an intercollegiate competition in which teams comprising 3-5 students analyze morally complex cases in a debate-like format.Williams entered two teams in a field of 18 teams. One of the two teams came out on top, winning in the finals by one point over Marist College. Members of Williams winning team were: Chris Carrier '09, a religion and philosophy major from New York City; Jeffrey Kaplan '09, a philosophy major from Paramus, N.J.; Patricia Klein '11 from Lake Forest, Ill.; Michaela Morton '12 from Winston-Salem, N.C.; and Mac Stone '09, a senior philosophy and economics major from Cross River, N.Y. Members of the second team were Steve Arenas '11 from Elmhurst, N.Y.; Raffana Donelson '09, a philosophy major from McKeesport, Pa.; David Gold '12 from Teaneck, N.J., Jimi Morales '10, a political science major from Houston, Texas, and Lindsay Moore '09, a psychology major from Williamstown, Mass. The Williams Ethics Bowl is advised by Julie Pedroni, visiting assistant professor of philosophy.
In competition, teams compete in pairs, addressing two cases in each match-up. The lead team has up to 10 minutes to respond to the moderator's question, and the opposing team has up to five minutes to comment. The lead team then has another five minutes of rebuttal before fielding questions from a panel of three judges. Following this, the teams switch roles and repeat the process with a new case and question.
The judges evaluate arguments for clarity and cogency, coverage of relevant issues, avoidance of irrelevant issues, and sensitivity to alternative viewpoints and counterarguments.
This year, cases included medicine, law, imprisonment, education, and military service, among others. The case descriptions are provided in advance but not the questions that will be asked about them.
According to Professor Pedroni, this year's cases included whether imprisoned mothers should be joined by their young children (from infancy to six years old), whether active duty military personnel should be protected from losing custody of their children during their deployment, and two concerned citizenship in regards to the Cherokee Nation's rescinding the citizenship of descendents of Freedmen (former African slaves of Cherokee tribe members and other African descendents living on tribal lands at the Civil War's completion), and whether state-funded universities and colleges may refuse enrollment to children of illegal immigrants.
