Most DePauw students will go their entire lives without being asked the question, "Should AIDS victims be criminalized?"
However, most DePauw students don't participate in Ethics Bowl, where this very question and others like it were asked in Saturday's regional competition.
Two DePauw teams, with five students on each and only two returning from last year, attended the Ethics Bowl Regional competition in Marion, Ind.
One of these teams came in third among 20, qualifying them for the National competition in Jacksonville, Fla. Those on the qualifying team included senior Ethan Brauer, senior Luke Miller, sophomore Alex Moss, senior Kristina Mulry and sophomore Ben Gorman.
Ethics Bowl, which is counted as a half-credit course by the university and led by Professors Chris Newton and Marcia McKelligan, is conducted along the lines of a morality debate.
Each team begins with 15 "cases" to examine about two months before competition.
"They're just a page of text that describes something, a social policy, an event a concern, and when you get to competition, your team is going to be asked a moral question about that case. But you don't know what that question will be," McKelligan said.
These cases are broken up amongst the five team members, with each member taking three cases to "specialize" in.
For example, Miller said he read countless articles on Indian pharmaceutical laws to prepare for the questions that could be asked concerning one of his cases.
"And last year, I had an Indian family law case, so now I'm poised to move to India and go to law school," he said, in reference to the amount of research that goes into preparing for these arguments.
During practices, the students present their arguments for each of their cases, which must allow for all possible questions that could be asked by the judge. Their fellow teammates then spend time critiquing the arguments.
"You come up with a really good argument, and you're thinking, 'I'm really happy with this,' and then you walk away having realized that it was completely idiotic, and your premises were clearly unjustified," Miller said.
Moss agreed that the critiquing process could be hard to take at times.
"I think I drove around after practices for like an hour. Just scheduled an hour drive so I could debrief. It gets very harsh," he said.
However, the sometimes "harsh" criticism from teammates had its perks.
"By the time we get to competition, we've spent so much time talking about the cases that we can poke a hole into pretty much any argument, really," Miller said.
After a seven minute response to the question posed by the judges during competition, the opposing team has a five minute time span for rebuttal. The question then returns to the original team for another five minutes.
The judges then score answers, and a winner is announced.
Though the reward has been sweet, it has not been an easy journey to achieving it.
"At the beginning, we probably meet about seven or eight hours a week. After that, it just keeps ramping up. I think we met probably 15 or twenty hours altogether last week," McKelligan said.
Moss elaborated on the time commitment involved in preparing for this competition.
"The last week before competition was the worst week of my life," he said. "I had like nine hours of sleep from Monday to Wednesday. I was going to bed at 5 a.m. and getting up at 8 a.m. so I could continue to work on Ethics Bowl."
However, there seems to be a consensus that the hours of work, combined with a few self-esteem hits during practice sessions, were well worth it.
"After the competition and we had qualified, it was really, really cool," Moss said.
"It gives you a new perspective on a lot of different things," Mulry added. "When you read the case at first your might think one thing, but by the end of a couple months you think something totally different."
For the national competition on Feb. 27, DePauw will be putting together what Miller called a "superteam," made up of different team members from DePauw teams.
"Despite all the work, everyone would like to go [to nationals]," McKelligan said. "I'm very excited."