University High School’s Ethics Bowl team returned to the National High School Ethics Bowl Championship earlier this month and placed second in the nation. The seven member team, including Grace Jin, Allison Yue, Grace Wang, Sohrob Habibi, Mohan Xu, Caitlyn Liao, and Chiara Rignot, were accompanied by Uni social science teacher and team advisor, Ann Campbell to the national competition, held in person at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.
Each year, the National High School Ethics Bowl events begin in February at the local and regional levels with almost 500 teams competing nationwide. The competitions at all levels give students the opportunity to discuss real-life ethical issues. In each round of competition, teams take turns analyzing cases about complex ethical dilemmas and responding to questions and comments from the other team and from a panel of judges. An ethics bowl differs from a debate competition in that students are not assigned opposing views; rather, they defend whichever position they think is correct, provide each other with constructive criticism, and win by demonstrating that they have thought rigorously and systematically about the cases and engaged respectfully and in a supportive manner with all participants.
During the championship competition, University High performed exceptionally, as they presented their ethical arguments on controversial issues. Topics included building a nuclear waste facility in Nevada, using CRISPR-Cas9 gene-editing technology to treat disease, along with a host of contemporary social issues.