The Berkeley High Ethics Bowl is a club that debates ethical dilemmas every week. The National High School Ethics Bowl (NHSEB) is set to take place January 12, 2026, and the club has spent the first semester of the school year preparing for the competition.
During the meetings, members debate cases from the NHSEB case library. “I’m able to expand on my public speaking skills and critical thinking skills, and I’m also able to talk with other people about central subjects that are really important in the political state of this country,” said Alex Verity, a BIHS senior who joined the club this school year. Rue Bhandari, another BIHS senior, co-founded the club last year with senior Saya Jameson after Jameson had participated in the ethics bowl at her old school. “I’ve always had a super deep interest in philosophy, and I did debate freshman year, but it was very argumentative. There wasn’t a lot of cooperation. With the ethics bowl, it felt a lot more like coming to a consensus with the other team…I really liked that format more,” Bhandari said.
The first year of the ethics bowl, the club ran auditions. They had people look over sample cases and discuss with each other, to see how they cooperated with other people and interacted with the questions presented in the cases. They formed a competing team of seven members who competed in the NHSEB last year, which was their first competition. For the national bowl, they are given a case packet of 15 cases, each which are presented with a moral dilemma. Judgement is based on a rubric that focuses on the strength of competitors’ ethical frameworks. “That connection from the dilemma to your answer to an actual philosophical framework is very important,” Bhandari said. They made it to the quarter finals, and lost in a tie. They did multiple online competitions, and competed in an in-person competition, The Society for California Archaeology (SCA), which they won. “It’s based on how strong your argument is, or how willing you are to accept or refute certain points from the other team,” Bhandar said.
This year, the team was hoping to win the regional NHSEB so they can go to North Carolina for the national competition. Since the team won the SCA bowl last year, they were eligible to compete in the national competition in San Francisco this year. The first team, which are the members who are in their second year of competing, consist of Bhandari, Jameson, seniors Sophia Nishioka, Sofia Bloom, Talia Nishioka, and Liv Johnson, and junior Rigzin Gyaltsen.
On January 10th, the Ethics Bowl competed in the regionals and made it to the quarter-finals, placing top eight. The competition team spent the first semester working through a packet of 15 cases in preparation for the competition. They created a sheet with all of the arguments and counter-arguments for each case, and memorized it for the competition. “You pick a stance to keep, but you prepare counter-arguments so you can say the counter-argument and then counter that counter-argument,” said Mirella Piccolboni, a junior in BIHS who joined the ethics bowl this year and competed in the tournament. “[When the other team takes the same side] it’s really hard, because then you agree, and the only way you can win is whichever team is better supported, and has a better ethical framework that better fortifies your argument,” explained Piccolboni. However, only the top two teams were eligible to compete in the national competition. “It was a really great experience, and super cool to see- going to competitions and seeing that 350 other high schoolers are wanting to think critically about big world ethical dilemmas,” said Piccolboni.
The club hosts lunchtime meetings on Mondays for anyone who wants to explore the Ethics Bowl. They do ethics based games and debate ethical dilemmas. “It’s a great space for everyone to talk about philosophy,” Bhandari said.