COLLEGE HOSTS REGIONAL ETHICS BOWL

High School students from across the region gathered to answer some pointed ethical questions as part of the eighth annual Ethics Bowl hosted recently by Manhattanville College in Purchase. 

Sponsored by the college”™s philosophy program in cooperation with the Marshall Institute for Ethical Thought and Action the competition pitted high school students from top-tier regional high schools against each other.

Students participating in the Ethics Bowl.

Arlington High School in LaGrangeville, New York, placed first for the region followed by runner-up Fairfield Preparatory in Connecticut.

Arlington will compete with two other schools in a play-off round on Feb. 21 to determine which will compete at the National Level at UNC ”“ Chapel Hill.

Professor Siobhan Nash-Marshall, Ph.D., Manhattanville”™s Mary T. Clark chair of Christian philosophy, said that the teams from across the country were presented with 20 ethical scenarios to study in September to discuss as part of the competition. During the competition teams are asked to come up with a solution and, more importantly, defend their position in an intelligent and logical fashion.

Nash-Marshall said that students were judged by whether they had captured the salient ethical issues and how clearly they stated their cases. The bowl is about the process. Although it is a competition, opposing teams work together to arrive at the truth, she said.

“I am grateful to the participants for their efforts and for their appreciation of the importance of clear thinking and ethical dialogue, two of the hallmarks of philosophy at Manhattanville,” said Nash-Marshall.

Manhattanville College is a small, private liberal arts institution dedicated to academic excellence, purposeful education, and social justice. For two years in a row, the “U.S. News and World Report” has ranked Manhattanville, founded in 1841, the number-one private, nonprofit institution in New York among Top Performers of Social Mobility in Regional Universities North. Located 30 miles from New York City on a 100-acre suburban campus in the heart of Westchester County the college serves more than 1,500 undergraduate students and nearly 1,000 graduate students from more than 44 countries and 33 states.