UCCS sent two teams to the Ethics Bowl this year, and both have something to celebrate: a second-place ranking and the Ethics Bowl Spirit Award.
At the 2025 Rocky Mountain Regional Ethics Bowl, held at University of Northern Colorado on November 15, UCCS Team One, comprised of both veteran and new team members, came in fifth place and won the Spirit Award. UCCS Team Two, comprised of all new members, tied for second place with CU Boulder Team Two and had only one loss of the day to Colorado School of Mines, who won the competition and will be representing the region at the national competition in February 2026.
The Ethics Bowl is a competition where teams from various colleges and universities discuss and debate complex, real-world ethical challenges in an attempt to determine what we—as a pluralist society—ought to do about them. An example of one of these ethical challenges whether individual states, or the federal government, ought to allow incarcerated persons to donate organs or bone marrow in return for sentence reductions, a bill under consideration in Massachusetts at this time.
“It is extraordinarily telling of our students’ strength of character, commitment and general awesomeness that they practiced ethical discussion and debate for over four hours a week and gave up a Saturday in mid-November to compete—and got themselves to Greeley, CO to do so, no less,” said Jen Kling, Ph.D., Associate Professor of philosophy and Director for the Center for Legal Studies.
Each team is made up of five students. Team 1 includes Taiya Werling, Ethan Steiner, Alexis Noffsinger, Tristynn Brown and Valerie Geary (unable to compete). Team Two includes Miranda Garcia, Victoria Couchman, Marcos Oseguera, Logan McVay and Shawnee Alexandra Hewitt.
Teams are judged on how well they take account of all the ethical issues at stake in the relevant case, how well they respond to the opposing team’s points and the judges’ questions, and how well their manner and discussion are conducive to constructive, rather than destructive, ethical debate.
“Ethics Bowl truly teaches the heart of civil discourse: instead of avoiding hard topics, teams tackle them head-on, in a way that acknowledges different views and works to collaborate with others to determine practical, ethical solutions to real-world problems,” Kling said. “UCCS Team Two successfully listened to each other, responded well to the opposing teams and judges’ questions, and did well enough that a guest judge didn’t believe me when I said it was their first time doing ethics bowl.”
The Ethics Bowl Spirit Award, the only award given at the regional competition voted on by the ethics bowlers themselves, is given to the team that “best embodied the qualities of civility and courtesy while also showing an appreciation for the ideas involved in the cases under discussion and striving to ensure a high quality of discussion of those ideas.”
“In other words, every team competing at the regional decided that UCCS Team One embodied the spirit of the ethics bowl,” Kling noted. “Almost every judge complimented me on Team One’s graciousness and thoughtfulness under pressure—rare compliments indeed!”
The Ethics Bowl team was generously funded this year by the UCCS Ethics Initiative at the UCCS College of Business.