Minnesota college students compete to answer life‘s ethical dilemmas

NINA MOINI: We've all heard of the Super Bowl. But what about the Ethics Bowl? This weekend, college students from across the country will meet in Norfolk, Virginia, to unpack 17 ethical dilemmas, from tipping in restaurants to putting weapons in space. The Association of Practical and Professional Ethics Intercollegiate Ethics Bowl begins Saturday. And among the teams competing are two from Minnesota colleges, Macalester College and the University of Minnesota Morris. Joining me now are two members of the Morris team, Muthu Meenakshisundaram and Will Marsan. Thank you both for being here.

MUTHU MEENAKSHISUNDARAM: Thank you. We're happy to be here.

NINA MOINI: Well, I'm glad you all are solving these ethical debates because these are questions a lot of us have. Will, how does competitive ethics work?

WILL MARSAN: Well, so we receive for the Nationals 17 cases a couple months in advance. And then we spend those couple of months meeting with the team and just talking through them, just giving different takes on the ethical considerations in those cases. So, yeah, like you said, there's a wide range of cases, anything from tipping to space weapons to animal rights. Yeah, and then come time for the competition, we all go meet, and we debate other teams on those cases.

NINA MOINI: So you have prep time for all these different topics, but you don't know which one they're going to go ahead and pick, right?

WILL MARSAN: Right. We do not know.

NINA MOINI: OK.

WILL MARSAN: Yeah, so we'll divide up cases between the team. And sometimes your case gets called, sometimes it doesn't. And you just have to sit there and look pretty for the entire competition after putting in months of work.

NINA MOINI: Sure. OK, so I'm told that you are both going to grace us with a practice round, a shorter demonstration round, which I love. So this is a case about smartphones in schools that you had this last year because we don't want to give anything away to the competition, right? So it's an issue that's been in the news, though, a lot. So, Muthu, can you walk me through the case, should schools ban smartphones for students?

MUTHU MEENAKSHISUNDARAM: That's right. It's a great question, Nina. And this is our favorite case from the last competition.

NINA MOINI: Oh.

MUTHU MEENAKSHISUNDARAM: Our team answered that, yes, schools should ban smartphones in class. And here's why. We started with the principle that short-term freedoms can be sacrificed for long-term autonomy. We said, look, in our free society, the job of schools is to help kids become autonomous adults. And sometimes in order to develop that long-term autonomy, you've got to sacrifice some freedoms in the short term.

Here's an example. A kid can only develop impulse control, which we all know is a skill essential for acting autonomously as an adult, if we restrict their short-term freedom to eat ice cream for breakfast. Parents around Minnesota are going to resonate with that example. Similarly, if a kid wants to develop an individual long-term autonomy, then we need to restrict their freedom in the short run to use phones in class because it's been demonstrated that using phones in class distracts from learning, which imparts the skills that are eventually going to be essential to acting autonomously as an adult.

NINA MOINI: OK. So your turn now, Will, to respond to that.

WILL MARSAN: Right. So I'm acting as the other team would in presenting some objections here. So, Muthu, to that, I would say smartphones have become ingrained in our lives. And you're right, this does come with some complications. It can, in some sense, limit our long-term autonomy if we become addicted to them. But the right response to this, I would argue, is not reverting back to some '80s-style classroom.

This may satisfy some nostalgia for a simpler time. But it won't prepare students for the real world that they're about to enter. And so instead, we should find ways to promote healthy engagement with technology that will be present in our lives and that will require us to have familiarity with in order to have that autonomy long term.

NINA MOINI: Well, I mean, good points to both of you, honestly. I mean, if it were an easy topic, I guess they would have solved it by now in the schools. But that was wonderful. Muthu, I'm curious if it's difficult for you ever to debate something you don't agree with, the side that you have to represent. Does that make sense?

MUTHU MEENAKSHISUNDARAM: Yeah, no, it's certainly difficult. I think what usually happens is, unlike debate competitions where you just get assigned a side, it doesn't quite often happen that way in Ethics Bowl. You're just given a question. But what will often happen is that the team's consensus will be different from my view or Will's view. So then in those cases, what we tend to do is we defer to the team after some rigorous discussion, and we will take the position of the members of the team who anticipate objections.

So during our main presentation, we'll obviously lay out the team's view. But then certain members of the team are going to have to say, well, someone who disagrees might say X, and we respond with Y. And often, the team member who disagrees with the team's take will take on that role of the objector because they can give it a much more authentic perspective.

NINA MOINI: Right. So, Will, what drew you to competitive ethics versus, say, debate or speech team? Because it sounds like it's relatively new. The team is relatively new. What drew you to it?

WILL MARSAN: I mean, really, we just don't have debate or a speech team at Morris. So this was the only option to practice your ethics in a competitive fashion. But I would say, in general, I was really just drawn to communication and developing that skill. I was really floundering for a major and a life plan at the end of my freshman year.

I was talking with our-- at that time, he wasn't a coach, but our future coach, Dan Demetriou, for Ethics Bowl, and I was telling him this stuff. And he suggested to me, hey, you should join Ethics Bowl next fall. It'll be a great place to develop those skills of communication, which can be applicable in any career that you decide on. And he couldn't have been more right. I couldn't be more grateful for the opportunity.

NINA MOINI: Oh. And, Muthu, how about you? What drew you to competitive ethics?

MUTHU MEENAKSHISUNDARAM: I'm very interested in the nature of self-government in our society. I think we have a republic that really depends upon each citizen thinking through the complex issues and confronting disagreements and reasoning through them and working through them. And Ethics Bowl is just one of those activities that helps us practice those skills that are essential to self-government.

NINA MOINI: Mm-hm. And, Muthu, I understand you all are with Morris, but Macalester College won this national competition, was it, back in 2022? How do you feel about your team or Minnesota team's chances about coming out on top?

MUTHU MEENAKSHISUNDARAM: Yeah, I think Minnesota teams have a pretty good shot. I think a large part of it is the character of our state. I think we're very friendly to disagreements. I think we're were very kind and empathetic to different views. I think that's just in our character. So I think that gives Minnesota teams a bit of an edge going into these national competitions because we treat opposing ideas with a kind of care and concern that's hard to find.

NINA MOINI: The Minnesota Nice edge that you all have. I love that. So I know one of you mentioned communication. And I just want to ask about the future, if you all are thinking about what you might do in your future careers and how you're hoping this experience ethics might help you? Will, I'll start with you.

WILL MARSAN: Yeah, the aspiration right now for me, as a computer science major-- I did finally figure out what my life was all about, and it's computer science. But within that, I'm really interested right now in AI safety. And so, yeah, the aspiration is to use these skills that I've been developing in my philosophy and in my ethics communication and to use those to make sure that robots don't take over the world.

NINA MOINI: Yeah. Ethically, I feel like that is the right thing to do. Muthu, same question to you. How are you hoping that this competitive ethics will help you in your future endeavors?

MUTHU MEENAKSHISUNDARAM: Yeah, my dream is to run for office right here in Minnesota. And competitive ethics translates very well into that. We're talking about issues that, like you mentioned, Nina, are very current within our society, issues that are very complex. And I think that the more we just practice thinking through them, the better we're going to get at collective deliberation with our fellow citizens.

NINA MOINI: Absolutely. That was like a campaign speech. I loved it. Great job.

[LAUGHTER]

Muthu and Will, thank you both. Best of luck to you. And have fun.

WILL MARSAN: Thank you.

NINA MOINI: All right, take care. Bye bye. Muthu Meenakshisundaram and Will Marsan are students on the University of Minnesota Morris Competitive Ethics Team.