During the Spring 2022 semester, both the Ethics Bowl and the Mock Trial teams competed in team competitions; the Ethics bowl team participated in the Northern California Regionals while the Mock Trial team competed in the Marin County tournament. Although neither team advanced to further levels of competition, they did win awards and get to compete against other schools in our area.
This was the third year the Ethics Bowl team has participated in the Northern California Regionals with team captains seniors Maeve O’Brien, Ted Chor, and junior Mahalia Morgan leading the pack. The two teams for Ethics Bowl include team one: senior Jack Manville, senior Leo Perez, junior Annie Donnelly, senior Maeve O’Brien, junior Mahalia Morgan, and senior Sydney Martinez. Team two consists of senior Antonia Doyle, senior Ted Chor, junior Jesse Chi, senior Maggie Dawson, and junior Sadie Fonarev. The coach for this year’s team was returning coach English teacher and Journalism Advisor Scott MacLeod.
The goal of Ethics Bowl is to have students foster critical thinking in a discussion based environment giving them the space to change their minds or the minds of others in the group when debating situational ethics.
“I was really proud of the way the students competed despite challenges relating to the zoom environment,” MacLeod said. “But more importantly, they showed how they can take a position on a controversial topic in a respectful and collaborative way, using reason to examine multiple perspectives. We can all learn from them.”
During the competition the team debated cases such as the ethics of ghosting and the ethics of social media companies conducting research on readers without consent. In addition to the interesting cases, Morgan loves the growth and skills that the extra-curricular brings.
“My favorite part about Ethics Bowl is watching myself and everyone else grow in our abilities to promote ethicality, speak in public, and create new ideas,” Morgan said.
Similarly to the Ethics Bowl team, the Mock Trial team participated in the Marin County competition over two weekends on Jan. 29 and Feb. 5. The team did not advance to finals like they have in years prior, the seniors are still proud of their accomplishments.
“Our team definitely put their best foot forward,” senior and Trial Attorney Dina Johnson said. “I can’t wait to see what they accomplish next year since the potential on the team is unlimited.”
While competing in the County Competition, six team members were awarded blue ribbon awards. The blue ribbon is nominated by attorney scorers to students over 11 categories. The students that won are: Dina Johnson for Prosecution Attorney, Anna Kilgariff for Defense Attorney, Skye Tweedie for Defendant, Katie Criesco for Defense Witness, Stefania Bitton for Journalist, and Beth Hayes for Artist. Additionally two students won Most Valuable Player (MVP) Awards. Johnson was awarded MVP of the Prosecution team in the trials against Tamalpais and Marin Catholic for her performance as an Attorney, and Defense Team Captain Anna Kilgariff was awarded MVP of Defense in the trial against Terra Linda and Redwood for her performance as Attorney.
“I’m so proud of the team this year, we had a lot of new people and each one of them committed time and effort, and it really showed during our trials,” Prosecution Captain senior Rose Hayes said.
In trial against Terra Linda High School, Courtroom Artist Beth
Hayes drew the judge and a defense witness. Hayes will be moving on to the State level competition
