This past weekend the St. Mary's Ethics Bowl team made it to the quarterfinals of the National Ethics Bowl, held March 7 & 8 at the Hyatt in downtown St. Louis.
(from left to right, team members Ian Baughman, Bechorah Aguoru, Philip Eisenstein, Lainey Shankle, Mason Lipczenko, Argyrios Tasikas, and Coach Michael Taber)
The funnel of 172 schools that began in the fall's various regional Ethics Bowl competitions was whittled down to 36 teams for the Nationals. This means that St. Mary's finished ahead of 164 schools, and that only 4 schools finished in front of St. Mary's.
At the Nationals, the St. Mary's team defeated DePauw University (Indiana), University of Central Florida (70,000 undergraduates), and UMBC (11,000 undergraduates. We were outstripped by the University of Florida (58,000 undergraduates) in the quarterfinals.
This means that St. Mary's finished more highly ranked than such schools as Northwestern, Spelman, UPenn, Louisiana State, Yale, and the U.S. Military Academy of West Point.
The team worded hard to meet as a regular class to research and prepare the 15 cases for the fall Regionals and the 17 cases for the Nationals. These 17 included such issues "Should business ethics be considered a game with a special set of ethics that allow, for example, for deceit in the way that bluffing is allowed in poker?" to "Does having special housing on campus have the side-effect of promoting segregation?" to "If it were possible to excise people's memories, would it be justified as a treatment for some mental conditions?" (Thanks to Professor Ayse Ikizler for her expert consulting on this case.)
As if this weren't good news enough, one judge told us after a round that our team was the nicest team he had seen in all his years as an Ethics Bowl judge.
Now THAT'S the St. Mary's way.....