CU Ethics Bowl Team

If it’s fall, then we are excited to begin another season of preparation with the Clemson University Intercollegiate Ethics Bowl team! I will once again coach the team, which is co-sponsored by the Rutland Institute for Ethics and the Department of Philosophy and Religion. With the regional competition occurring in November, in Richmond, Virginia, we don’t have time to lose.

For those of you who may not be familiar, the Ethics Bowl is modeled after the College Bowl competition and involves more than 100 teams from around the country. Each team receives 15 case studies prior to the competition. Each case study involves an ethical dilemma on which the team must develop a position. In preparing the case, they apply relevant ethical theories and perform research that allows them to incorporate a host of relevant information such as legal principles, scientific studies and sociological research that pertain to the case.



The top-placing teams in the various regional competitions are invited to participate in the National Intercollegiate Ethics Bowl in the spring. Clemson has the most consistently strong team in the nation, with the distinction of being the only team to have made the quarterfinal rounds of the national competition every year for the past five years. Additionally, the Clemson team was the 2008 national champion, and placed second in the 2009 national competition.

Students debate current public policy issues such as organ donation, computer privacy, the advertising of prescription drugs, client confidentiality, corporate sponsorships of college sports and the marketing of junk foods to children.

I am sure that you can see from the process that our student team members must be hard working, critically thinking, well spoken, persuasive and competitive to continually place in the national competition rounds. Linda Gallicchio remarked that they are the type of job candidates the corporations she has worked in would seek out as a cut above the others. With its proud history, the ethics bowl team attracts students in majors such as biochemistry, philosophy, history, economics, engineering and psychology, ranging in grade level from sophomore to senior. So, if you are seeking high quality future employees, watch to learn more about this year’s team members in the next issue, when we update you on the team’s progress.

~Dr. Charles Starkey

cstarke@clemson.edu