Texas A&M Regional High School Ethics Bowl

About Ethics Bowl

The National High School Ethics Bowl’s (NHSEB) objective is to do more than teach students how to think through ethical issues: It is to teach students how to think through ethical issues together, as fellow citizens in a complex moral and political community.

Ethics Bowl matches feature two teams meeting head-to-head to discuss and evaluate case studies which contain tricky moral questions and 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 Speech and Debate competition in that students are not assigned opposing views; rather, they defend the position they actually hold or think is reasonable, provide each other with constructive criticism, and win by demonstrating that they have thought rigorously and systematically about the cases and engaged respectfully and supportively with all participants.

Interested in starting an Ethics Bowl team at your high school? Learn how at the link below!

Start a Team -- National High School Ethics Bowl

Registration and Fees

Registration for each season opens in September. All teams participating in the program must first register with NHSEB each season and pay a yearly registration fee. The national registration fee is $175 if schools register before November 1. After November 1, fees will increase to $250.

1. Go to https://nhseb.org to register your school for the current season.
2. AFTER you have registered with the national office, you must click the yellow button on THIS page to register your team(s) for the Texas A&M Regional High School Ethics Bowl. There is a $75 entry fee per team at the regional.

We will only accept registrations for 1 team per school until November 1, and a waiting list will be kept for schools wanting to enter more than 1 team. After November 1, teams from the waiting list will be added to the tournament roster in the order they registered their first team until the waiting list is empty or the tournament is full. The deadline for all teams to register for the event is December 15.

Payments

Payment information for the regional entry fee of $75 per team will be provided on an invoice sent from our office in December after we have finalized our tournament roster. We accept checks or online credit card payments. Documentation (invoice, registration confirmation, etc.) MUST accompany payment if mailed to our office. Payments submitted without documentation will be returned to sender. PO’s are not accepted.

Rules and Resources

Also available on the National High School Ethics Bowl website, visit the links below to view competition rules, sample case studies, and more tips and resources.

Advancing and Awards

The Texas A&M Regional High School Ethics Bowl champion will advance to the Divisional Playoffs in February to compete for a spot at the National High School Ethics Bowl in April, hosted by the University of North Carolina’s Parr Center for Ethics in Chapel Hill, NC. The national championship event is several days of activities and competition.

Trophies and medals are awarded to the top 4 teams at the Texas A&M Regional High School Ethics Bowl, and a Spirit Award is also given to 1 deserving team.

Judging and Volunteering

Judges for an ethics bowl do not need to be philosophers and are selected on a volunteer basis. Judges will include Texas A&M personnel and various other community members with diverse backgrounds and stakes in the event. Teams will be scored based on the quality of their reasoning, along with how well they:

1. Engage in respectful discourse, communicating well internally as well as with other teams and judges.
2. Follow official High School Ethics Bowl rules and procedures
3. Convey an understanding of relevant ethical issues and address the nuances of each case
4. Embody the spirit of the philosophical pursuit of truth, as opposed to a combative disposition bent on winning

Each match will have three judges and one moderator in attendance.

• As a JUDGE, you will listen to teams present their arguments and score them based on their clarity, engagement with the central ethical dimensions of the case, deliberative thoughtfulness, and respectfulness. Again, no background in ethics or philosophy is required to be a judge. We will provide you with a Zoom training session prior to the competition where we will review the scoring criteria and judging rubric and answer any questions you may have.
• As a MODERATOR, you will present the cases, read the questions to be answered, keep time, and control the room during matches. All materials will be provided for you on the day of the event, including a script to follow. We will also host a Zoom training session where we will go over the script in advance and answer any questions that you might have.
• As a GENERAL EVENT VOLUNTEER, you will assist on the day of the event with one or more of the following responsibilities:
  • Setup, registration, lunch, awards ceremony, and/or other logistics
  • Room Monitor – Pass out scratch paper during matches, make sure the audience has their phones off, run scores to the headquarters after matches.
  • Hall Monitors – Make sure the halls remain empty and quiet during matches and help students and guests find the competitions rooms.

Given the variety of tasks, we can place people in roles that allow more flexible scheduling if you were to have other commitments that day.