Stanford Practical Ethics Team Wins Regional Ethics Bowl

Congratulations to our  Stanford Practical Ethics Club (SPEC) for an outstanding performance at the Intercollegiate Ethics Bowl’s regional California competition this year! Both of our teams placed, with one team placing 1st, and our other team placing 5th out of 25 teams. This victory qualifies SPEC’s team to compete at IEB’s national ethics bowl in March 2026.

SPEC, founded in 2017, provides students with the opportunity to engage in ethical discussions and ethical theory that branches across disciplines. Students from various majors and backgrounds come together to discuss questions ranging from space weaponry to the moral value of art.

On Dec. 6, SPEC sealed its victory against Occidental College in the final after four previous rounds. Starting in October, SPEC’s two teams began preparing arguments, deliveries, and answers to potential questions for each of the 12 cases presented.

“Part of the challenge is also figuring out what types of questions they're trying to ask here,” SPEC member Ally Yun B.A. ’25 said. “There's an element of anticipation and improvisation that requires you to not only have a memorized case, but have an ability to really deeply understand the issues and reason authentically in a competition.”

In the finale, SPEC’s team debated the topic of inclusion and representation of disabilities in the media and the question of whether roles that portray disabilities should be given to actors with similar conditions. SPEC took the position of arguing the need for these roles to be given to people with disabilities to broaden opportunities.

“[We] said we should always cast people who are disabled in disability roles,” Jorge Ramos B.A. ’28 said, who took the lead on this case during preparation and the competition. “To not do so would undermine economic opportunities for actors that already have very limited opportunities.’

With two teams of six members each, SPEC brings together students from a variety of perspectives, majors, and backgrounds to foster thought-provoking discussions.

“At the end of the day, there are always disagreements. But when you go to the competition, you're a united front, you're a team,” Ramos said, a comparative studies in race and ethnicity major. “Often those issues get resolved, and you learn a lot in the process about how you think and how other people think.”

Former ethics bowl members Ursula Neuner B.A. ’25 and Georgios Mikos B.S. M.S. ’26 help coach and prepare students with a range of experience in ethics competitions.

“It's actually taught me to be a lot more steadfast and to be able to engage in an argument where you get to the level where you're not just conciliating every time to make the other person feel better, but you're actually getting past that,” Yun said, a philosophy major whose first introduction to ethics events was beginning SPEC in her freshman year. “It helps me stand up for myself more, stand up for my ideas.”