Oregon Independent College Foundation

OICF Ethics Bowl Match Procedures

Five rounds at 1 hour 10 minutes each

1. Two teams are paired in each match. Panels of three judges evaluate team arguments and a moderator monitors the match pace. At the beginning of each new round, the moderator flips a coin to see which team goes first. The team that wins the coin toss may respond or react to the first case. The first responding team is Team A; the reacting team is Team B.

2. The moderator will read a case and then pose a question to Team A. Team A will have up to two (2) minutes to confer and prepare a response. Spokespersons from Team A have up to five (5) minutes to present the first response.

3. Team B will then have a chance to react to Team A’s presentation. They will have two (2) minutes to confer and up to four (4) minutes to present their reaction. Team B should state whether they: 1) concur with, 2) disagree with, or 3) choose to adapt the response of Team A and WHY based on the question that was asked about the case.

4. Based on the case question and presentation, judges may ask follow-up questions to Team A. Team members may take up to one (1) minute to confer after each question and one (1) minute to respond.

5. The judges may then ask questions to Team B about their presentation. Team B may take up to one (1) minute to confer after each question and one (1) minute to respond.

6. The judges will confer and then mark scores for Team A and Team B. In this phase of the match, Team A may be scored between 4-20 points by each judge for their initial response; Team B can be also awarded between 4-20 points for the quality of their follow-up presentation.

7. Team A and Team B reverse roles for a second case, following steps 4-8. For the second case, Team B will provide the initial response to the case question and Team A will present their reaction to Team B’s presentation. Judges will again have the opportunity to ask questions of each team and then score the teams.

8. After the judges have finished asking questions, they will pass their completed scoring sheets to the moderator who will record them on a master-scoring sheet. After computing the score totals for the round, the moderator announces the results for each team.

9. Presentations and scoring for two cases should be complete in approximately one hour, thus allowing an additional 10 minutes for judges and students to interact and provide feedback about the match and team presentations.