Brand new University of Findlay ethics team places sixth in Intercollegiate Ethics Bowl

The University of Findlay's brand new ethics team is celebrating a sixth-place placement at the regional Intercollegiate Ethics Bowl, a competition that gives teams the opportunity to research and debate hot-button issues that are commonly debated in real life.

According to an article on The University of Findlay’s website, Christopher Caldwell served as the team’s coach, in addition to his role as the senior director of international, intercultural, and service engagement at the university. He was quoted as saying of the students who make up the ethics team and their experience at the competition, “These students are wildly dissimilar. Each of them possesses their own special strengths. Individually, none of them were up to the task of taking on an ethics bowl case by themselves, but as a team, they were able to run coherent and compelling arguments from start to finish in ways that were clear, clean, and consistent. The strongest quality of these students is their ability to work as a team.”

In order to prepare for the competition, teams received 18 case studies and were given time to review and analyze them. Then, as a team, they formed their arguments and practiced together several times a week leading up to the competition. Among the topics the students were given to study were using AI in insurance claim reviews, book banning, ethics of art collecting, environmental, sustainability, and governance policies, and space exploration.

Caldwell said of their practice, “We reviewed the stakeholders and their possible values. The key was not to ‘be right’ and find the ‘correct’ side but to really understand the needs of as many perspectives as possible in order to fully consider what a satisfying pathway forward could look like.”

While ultimately the team just barely missed the mark to move on in the competition, Caldwell said the team did well. He plans to use the spring semester to help the students train more and participate in other debate competitions to help prepare them for the next Intercollegiate Ethics Bowl.

Caldwell expressed his determination for the team to advance in the next competition, saying, “The next Ethics Bowl regionals will be in November of 2024. We will be there. We will earn a bid to Nationals. I have no doubt about this.”

For more information about The University of Findlay, visit the school’s website.