Although it was started last year by history teacher Mr. Robbins, Ethics Bowl is still a new competitive team at Manitou Springs High School.  What is the meaning of “ethics”? “Ethics” by definition is the behavior of an individual’s actions and morals that contribute to the best choice that will affect society.  Ethics Bowl is a state and national competition that begins in February in which three to five teams of students from primarily private and charter schools. The idea is to have students analyze ethical dilemmas and cases. Each team has one hour to present their speech and findings to present other ethical options towards solving the case. After they have presented one case, they will then talk and analyze another case. From their opposing teams have the opportunity to ask questions and debate any ethical concerns that they have from listening. 

If our ethical Mustangs do well in these competitions they have the opportunity to compete at Nationals in April according to Mr. Robbins. Due to Covid-19, the competitions were held online in a Zoom meeting this year.   Seniors Dana Gutierrez, Caden Salladay, Caden Harris, and James Hayes completed for the second time this year.  According to James Hayes, Manitou did not win and will not be going to the championship rounds. He attributes this to “Manitou being a newcomer among older students in Ethics Bowl.”   This year we had one team competing, but Mr. Robbins is hopeful that after this pandemic comes to a long awaited close Manitou will have more teams competing in the future.

 “It was fun discussing cases with other folk and learning about their perspectives on cases,” James Hayes said.  “I wish there were four rounds, so I could have asked the opposing team questions.” Ethics Bowl seems to be an interesting competition that I think more Mustangs here should consider joining. Many of those who have competed have said very good things about it and have even said it helps build character and builds your ability to analyze things going into classes such as English. 

Looking forward to the future, many students should consider possibly joining Ethics Bowl as many have said it is a blast after this Covid pandemic ends in the near future.