East San Jose's National Hispanic University took on the best...and won!NHU's Ethics/Debate team defeated the University of Southern California’s Marshall School of Business to become California Regional Intercollegiate Ethics Bowl Champions.
The NHU Debate team went undefeated in the 8-team competition hosted by Chico State on December 2nd, beating the host, CSU San Bernardino, Cal Poly Pomona, UC Santa Cruz and the University of Southern California in route to the title.
This was truly a story of David versus Goliath as the team from the 25 year old, little known university serving 600+ nontraditional college-going undergraduates in the East Foothills defeated the team from a 126 year old, premier institution with 16,500 undergraduates for the title. The NHU Debate team was founded in 2003 by a group of 5 students that were interested in philosophy. The team has faced obstacles including inexperience, and a lack of confidence.
But the biggest challenge may have been the fact that more than half of the team had to debate in their second language- English.
""It was difficult at the beginning. I was the one with the heaviest accent and the least amount of confidence", said senior, team captain Xavier Flores.
""It was difficult at the beginning. I was the one with the heaviest accent and the least amount of confidence", said senior, team captain Xavier Flores.
The Ethics Bowl competition is inspired by TV’s College Bowl, but modified rules adapt the game to the subject of ethics. In Ethics Bowl a moderator poses questions to teams of three to five students. Questions may address ethical problems on classroom topics (e.g. cheating or plagiarism), personal relationships (e.g. dating or friendship), professional ethics (e.g. engineering, law, medicine), or social and political ethics (e.g. free speech, gun control, etc.). Each team receives a set of ethical issues in advance of the competition, and questions posed to the teams at competition are taken from that set. A panel of judges evaluates answers; rating criteria are clarity and intelligibility, focus on ethically relevant factors, avoidance of ethical irrelevance, and deliberative thoughtfulness.
NHU's first place finish qualifies them for the 32-team national competition which will be held in Cincinnati, Ohio this February. The team is now preparing to take on schools such as Indiana University, University of Washington, Clemson University, Depaul University, Tuskegee University and the U.S. Military and Naval Academies in the nationals. We wish them well!
WATCH THE VIDEO FROM CBS-5! http://cbs5.com/video/?id=20073@kpix.dayport.com
The National Hispanic University is a private, accredited, 4-year university authorized to grant degrees since 1981. For more information on NHU, please log onto:www.nhu.edu
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