IU Ethics Bowl squad looking for participants to debate issues

The IU Ethics Bowl is looking for students to apply to compete with the team in their annual intercollegiate tournament. Thirty-two teams from different colleges around the country take part in the event to tackle hypothetical ethical situations in a head-to-head debate.\nAll students are encouraged to apply to participate in the bowl, regardless of experience or academic background, former participant Khalil AbuGharbieh said in an e-mail. \n"Science majors don't cast this note aside; we need your insights too, as the cases we receive deal with ethical tensions from all fields of life," AbuGharbieh said.\nThe IU team works with a coach and an advisor starting in September when mock cases are released.\n"The cases are about a page long and usually deal with issues that are relevant to the current times," former ethics bowl participant Neil Shah said. "Last year we had two cases dealing with New Orleans. They give us cases that mimic what's going on in the real world but don't use real names." \nMark Wilson, coach for this year's team and a research assistant at the Poynter Center, said other topics that have been debated in the past include racial profiling in the aftermath of Sept. 11, reproductive technology, the Patriot Act and the International Criminal Court. \nGenerally speaking, the cases usually cover a broad swath of current issues in applied ethics," he said. "The environment, medicine, biotechnology, foreign and domestic policy, Supreme Court decisions -- these are among the most common sources."\nIn the months leading up to the competition, team members meet about twice a week to research and create a 10-minute argument for each of the cases, Shah said. At the Ethics Bowl a panel of judges will ask specific questions to the teams relating to the ethical and policy cases they studied. \nIn the three-part format, the primary team presents its position on the ethical issue on question. Then, the other team gets five minutes for a rebuttal, and the primary team closes with a five-minute response to the rebuttal. Roles are then reversed for the next round.\nThis year the Ethics Bowl will be different than it has been in the past in that it will be broken up into two rounds instead of just one. Teams will first compete in eight regional competitions and, if successful, will go to the final round where the 32 top teams will compete for the national title. The final round will be held in Cincinnati, Ohio, in February.\nThe IU team, sponsored by the Poynter Center for the Study of Ethics, finished 10th in last year's tournament and received first and second places in the 2004 and 2003 tournaments, respectively. \n"Not only is the activity a rewarding intellectual exercise, but at IU we have also have built a tradition of being a nationally competitive squad," AbuGharbie said. \nWhile some of those who participate in the bowl have past experience in debate or speech, it is not a requirement to be a member of the team. Shah, who heard about the team through his fellow Wells Scholar recipient friends, joined the team to get more exposure to ethical issues and debate.\n"Personally I thought it was really beneficial because I am a finance and economics major, and it's the whole different side of what I study, and it keeps me well-rounded," he said. "I did speech in high school, and doing ethics bowl was a really good way to continue with it"