For most students, dealing with ethical problems is far from the ideal extracurricular activity. But for the four members of the Dartmouth Ethics Bowl team, answering questions about medical, social and business ethics is not a dilemma.
This willingness to make decisions on some of life's messiest questions has earned Alisa Davis '01, Dave Dookeeram '99, Brandon Garcia '99 and Ritika Nandkeolyar '01 the chance to compete in the National Ethics Bowl, in Dallas, Texas this year.
On February 26, the Dartmouth team will vie for the national title with 19 other college teams.
"As a team, we want to win," Dookeeram said. "We have all the resources, it's just a matter of putting [them] to use."
The students on the College's Ethics Bowl team were selected on the basis of their statement of interest, letter of recommendation and willingness to make the three-day commitment which the national competition requires.
The competition requires the teams to respond to fictional situations "based on real-life problems that have happened this year," according to Barbara Hillinger, assistant to the director of Dartmouth's Ethics Institute, which sponsors the team.
Questions from last year's competition involved such topics as euthanasia, plagiarism and a company investigating employees for drug use.
Judges will score their answers to four questions on a five-point scale, taking into consideration intelligibility, relevance and clarity.
The goal of the event "is to present your point of view and defend it adequately," Dookeeram said, "and that's where you get the points."
In preparation for the national competition, the team will conduct research and confer with each other and faculty on possible questions.
In a practice competition on January 15, in which the foursome separated into freshman and junior teams, the freshman women "tromped the guys," said Hillinger.
However, both male and female members of the team were quick to stress the contributions of all team members, noting their diversity as a valued strength.
Since the questions are subjective by nature, judges can interpret answers differently. Hillinger attributes this factor to last year's team's lackluster performance at the 1996 competition, when it tied with four other teams for third place.
David Rosman '98 competed on last year's team. He said the team received a list of 25 questions a month before the competition, from which the actual competition questions were culled.
The judges are often ethics or philosophy professors or politicians, he said. This year, the judges will have scoring guidelines, Rosman said, so that scoring is consistent.
However, the team has high expectations for what will be their second year of participation in the event.
The National Ethics Bowl, in its fourth year as an intercollegiate competition, has been rapidly growing since its inception as a intramural event at the Illinois Institute of Technology in 1993.
