Spring 2012 North Carolina High School Ethics Bowl

EAST CHAPEL HILL REPEATS AS ETHICS BOWL CHAMP

Area homeschool team finishes 2nd of 14 teams in the competition at UNC

CHAPEL HILL, N.C. – East Chapel Hill High School won the 2nd North Carolina High School Ethics Bowl (then called the Triangle High School Ethics Bowl) on the UNC-Chapel Hill campus Saturday.  Fourteen local teams competed in the event. Triangle Area Homeschool finished second, Raleigh Charter High School was third, and Chapel Hill High School finished fourth.

The scores in the finals and semifinals were extremely close:  ECHHS won the championship over Triangle Area Homeschool 150 to 148.  In the semifinals, Triangle Area Homeschool beat Chapel Hill High School 122 to 117, and ECHHS beat Raleigh Charter 144 to 141.

In an Ethics Bowl competition, teams of up to five students face off on a series of challenging and complex moral issues. Presented with cases drawn from real events, participants defend positions they believe to be most reasonable, and are judged on the strength, perceptiveness, and logical force of the arguments offered.

More than 100 students are expected to attend the competition. The teams were judged by panels of three, including more than 30 professors, graduate students, members of the UNC Ethics Bowl team, and prominent members of the community.

Last year, East Chapel Hill High School won the first Triangle High School Ethics Bowl, which featured seven teams from six schools. The popularity of the event is spreading as school administrators, teachers, and parents recognize the value of having students engaged in rigorous ethical thinking and conversation. The Parr Center for Ethics plans to expand the model to the state and regional levels in the coming years with an eye towards a future national competition.

Schools that competed in the 2012 Triangle High School Ethics Bowl included Carolina Friends School, Cary Academy, Chapel Hill High School, East Chapel Hill High School, Hillside High School, North Carolina School of Science and Mathematics, Raleigh Charter High School, Southern Alamance High School, Woods Charter School and two teams comprised of local Home School students.