On a Saturday morning a week before her fall quarter finals, Stanford senior Ursula Neuner found herself talking about bison.
The question the moderator posed to Neuner and her team was this: “Given Mr. Waters’ good intentions, but also the harmful outcome of his intervening on behalf of the bison, was the decision by the Yellowstone park officials to fine him $1,000 the ethically correct choice?”
Neuner and her teammates conferred for two minutes before delivering a 10-minute oral presentation to judges and the opposing team from UC Santa Barbara.
“We believe that the $1,000 fine was justified, but this is given some important context,” Neuner stated in her opening remarks. Walters broke a law intended to protect park wildlife and could have been fined up to $5,000 and sentenced to six months in jail, she said. Given he was not charged the full penalty, she believed the fine was an effective example of judicial discretion.
Neuner’s teammates chimed in, explaining their reasoning and raising counterarguments, and the UC Santa Barbara team raised objections of their own – for example, what happens when judicial bias emerges? Judges also asked their own questions.
Their discussion was the first of many topics Neuner and the SPEC team engaged with throughout the day, including whether non-disclosure agreements should be enforced following instances of sexual assault and harassment and the ethics of using facial recognition technology at airports versus in other public spaces.
The Stanford team won their round against UC Santa Barbara and, ultimately, became regional champions, qualifying them for the national competition in February. Last year, the Stanford team advanced to the national quarter-finals.
Ethics Bowls are an alternative to debates, offering a different approach to analytical thinking and decision-making. Unlike debates, teams aren’t assigned a “pro” or “con” position. Instead, each team must argue for a particular position, raise objections, and engage in dialogue with the other team who may ultimately agree with them.
The format – which features two teams of six and a panel of three judges in dialogue for nearly an hour on a specific topic – makes it feel more like a conversation and, sometimes, even a collaborative problem-solving task.
“Both teams are almost working together to try to figure out what the true answer to the question is,” Neuner explained.
Teams encourage one another as they delve deeper into topics.
“Sometimes, we raise objections in the form of questions that allow the opposing team to bolster their viewpoint,” Neuner said. “We might say we agree with their position, but ask them to talk more about the specifics of their implementation of a particular policy or their specific use of an ethical theory.”
For example, after Neuner and her teammates delivered their presentation about the Walters case, the UC Santa Barbara team responded with “questions and concerns” and wanted the team to clarify their argument further in certain areas.
“It starts from a place of collegiality and collaboration,” said Collin Anthony Chen, the director of graduate and undergraduate programs at the McCoy Family Center for Ethics in Society and the team’s primary coach. “There is an acknowledgment that these are hard questions and that we’re all in this together, trying to figure them out.”
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Collin Anthony Chen | Christine Baker
Neuner and her SPEC teammates prepared for the Regional Ethics Bowl by poring over 15 cases selected by the Regional Case Writing Committee at the Association for Practical and Professional Ethics.
While students know the cases ahead of time, they don’t know which one they will discuss nor what questions will be posed.
Students come from a range of majors, including computer science, economics, linguistics, and philosophy.
“One of the things I love about our team is how diverse academic backgrounds contribute to this work,” said philosophy major Ally Yun, ’26. “Everyone brings unique perspectives and strengths to building arguments, and our case-writing is truly collaborative.”
“Whenever we make a choice, we weigh factors like outcomes, priorities, and personal goals,” she added. “Ethics simply asks us to add one more consideration to the mix: morality. Does this harm others? Is this fair? Does this set a standard we’d want others to follow?”
Several times a week, the team meets to discuss the cases in depth.
Coaching the team this year is JD Pruett, ’24, who is currently pursuing a coterminal master’s degree in symbolic systems and has been involved with SPEC since his freshman year. He was instantly drawn to the analytical rigor and richness the Ethics Bowl format provides.
“Things become more complicated in a wonderful way – it challenges your intuitive moral stance,” Pruett said.
While the SPEC team get along with one another – both Pruett and Neuner said they count each other and their teammates as some of their closest friends – that doesn’t mean they necessarily hold the same position on an issue.
“We get these complicated questions that are often hard for us to agree on,” Neuner said.
At Ethics Bowls, students must embrace disagreement; To perform successfully requires rigorous engagement with why, when, and how divergence emerges around a topic.
Students cultivate a unique skill set they will take with them to other areas of their personal and professional lives.
“No matter their industry, students will encounter significant areas of disagreement – whether it be internal to their industry or through policies that will affect society,” Chen said. “It’s essential to be able to initiate productive conversations with others about these issues and their potential impacts and then collaborate on their solution.”
Pruett found that the analytical approach SPEC nurtures has influenced how he engages in discussions elsewhere, where, at times, he has felt pressure to appear consistent in his views.
“It’s very hard to openly change your mind,” Pruett said. “The reality is new information should change your mind.”
For Pruett and others on the team, SPEC is more than an enriching intellectual experience – it’s been a socially transformative one as well. “It’s a treasure to have six people that you see all the time and stay up really late thinking about issues together and challenging each other,” Pruett said. “I’m so grateful to have them in my life.”
