What were the obligations of the local, state and federal governments in responding to Hurricane Katrina?
Is it wrong for collegiate athletic teams to have ethnic mascots and logos?
Should the government regulate junk food advertising directed toward children?
These were among the questions that members of the Union College Ethics Bowl Team successfully grappled with recently when young ethicists from colleges and universities across the United States challenged each other in the 2006 Intercollegiate Ethics Bowl.
The event was held March 2 in Jacksonville, Fla., and when the last question was posed, the Union team emerged as runner-up.
The team, sponsored by the Philosophy Department, included Ankur Aggarwal '06, Nathaniel Brown '06, Noah Eber-Schmid '06, Samantha Miller '07, Kalen Sargent '06 and Heidy Sanchez '07.
“They're an impressive group. Each student has three cases, with six weeks to do research, prepare a position and memorize it,” said Michael Mathias, visiting assistant professor of philosophy and the team's advisor. “The event is itself is an intellectual marathon. Our first match began at 8:40 in the morning, and our last match finished at about 10:40 p.m.”
Questions run the gamut from ethical problems related to classroom topics, personal relationships, work and the political arena. Judges evaluate answers based on soundness of intelligibility, focus on ethically relevant considerations, the avoidance of ethical irrelevance and deliberative thoughtfulness.
“It's a great event,” said Aggarwal, who participated for his second year and was active in debating at Marquette University High School in Wisconsin.
“We get to apply what we learn in a real setting among bioethicists, lawyers, professors, politicians and businessmen and women, people who deal with ethics on a daily basis.
“Most rewarding is doing all the research and getting to formulate our own ideas among ourselves, then presenting it to people we've never met before and getting critiques. Most of the time, our positions contradicted others. There are a lot of ways to approach a question and a lot of ways to justify an approach.”
In addition to debating issues of government responsibility, mascots' nomenclature and advertising for children, this year's questions focused on the seizure of private property by local governments for economic development and the use of marijuana for medicinal purposes.
The tournament was held in conjunction with the annual meeting of the Association for Practical and Professional Ethics. After competing, team members attended conference sessions addressing various issues in applied ethics.
Union was one of seven teams that won all of its qualifying matches, defeating Texas A&M, Weber State and St. Mary's College, Texas. In its quarterfinal match, Union edged out Depauw University; in its semifinal, the College prevailed over Millikin University. The team lost a very close final round match to the United States Military Academy at West Pont.
Union's team also was the runner-up in the Northeast Region Ethics Bowl, held Feb. 15 at Marist College in Poughkeepsie, N.Y. Union lost the final round match by one point to Williams College. The College beat teams from Manhattan, Marist and Dartmouth colleges.
“We had a lot of good support,” noted Mathias, “from Tom McFadden (College librarian), Byron Nichols (professor of political science) and Lisa Warenski (assistant profess of philosophy). “This program is valuable because it requires students to think of ways to reach consensus about issues in applied ethics. These are highy controversial cases, where nothing's black and white.”