Smith School Freshman Going to National Ethics Bowl

Grace Lee, Luis Rodriguez, Dillon Hagius, and Ethics Bowl coach and philosophy professor Susan Dwyer

While Terp fans were getting excited to watch the University of Maryland’s football team compete in the Military Bowl at the end of December, one Robert H. Smith School of Business freshman was getting excited for a bowl competition of his own—the 17th Intercollegiate Ethics Bowl.

Finance major and honors student Dillon Hagius, along with teammates and fellow honors students Grace Lee and Luis Rodriguez, is headed to the national competition of the Ethics Bowl. Sponsored by the Association for Practical and Professional Ethics, the Ethics Bowl is a competition during which undergraduate teams examine cases involving practices and/or professional ethics.

Hagius and his team competed in the local bowl, winning first place. They joined forces with another University of Maryland team, competing in the regional bowl and winning third place. And now, they are off to nationals in March. Other teams competing in the local and regional bowls included teams from the Naval Academy, the University of Maryland – Baltimore County, the University of Baltimore, and the College of Notre Dame of Maryland.

“I did mock trial in high school, so when I heard about the Ethics Bowl through an Honors seminar with professor Susan Dwyer, I was interested in participating,” Hagius said. “I figured it would be different than my finance classes, and so far I’m really enjoying it.”

The team meets weekly to prepare for each round of the Ethics Bowl, studying the cases that are given to them before each round of the competition. For each case, teams have to explain both sides of the argument and make a conclusion about the ethical decisions. Then, the opposing team has a five-minute rebuttal.

“In one of the competitions, I had to argue the ethics on a Facebook case, which was interesting,” Hagius said. The question: Was Facebook morally justified in its decision to automatically change users’ default privacy settings to publishing users’ posts and photographs unless users specifically opted out?
Another case the team had to discuss regarded voting in the United States and whether the country should make voting compulsory for American citizens 18 years or older, like in Australia.

With two rounds complete and the next bowl looming, Hagius and his team continue to prepare for the National Ethics Bowl on Thursday, March 3, 2011, in Cincinnati, Ohio.

Jessica Bauer, writer and editor, Office of Marketing Communications