UA Center for Ethics and Social Responsibility Launches Moral Debate Competition March 14

TUSCALOOSA, Ala. — The University of Alabama Center for Ethics and Social Responsibility will be hosting the first Moral Forum Tournament on Tuesday, March 14 at 7:30 p.m. on campus in the Ferguson Center Forum.

The Moral Forum initiative is organized around the analysis of one particular controversial “moral” resolution. In teams of two, students conduct research, attend a six-part lecture series, and construct position statements that address the current resolution in preparation for a Moral Forum debate tournament.

Two exemplary pairs of students from this semester’s “Undergraduate Honors 101: Moral Forum” course will compete for $5,000 in scholarships. A $500 award will also be given to the competition’s most distinguished individual debater. The event will be judged by a team of campus leaders.

This year’s debate will focus on the topic “Physician-Assisted Suicide: The Role of a Moral and Just Society,” and will discuss the issue of whether the United States should permit doctors to supply the means of death to a competent, informed patient who is terminally ill and who has voluntarily requested a doctor’s assistance in dying.

Moral Forum was designed to help students at the University develop the skills to evaluate and respond to moral claims and engage in moral discourse.

Striving to foster both open-mindedness and conviction, Moral Forum seeks to help students distinguish between reasoned judgments about the moral legitimacy of views on the one hand and being intolerant or disrespectful toward individuals or cultural groups on the other, organizers explain.

Moral Forum will take place again this fall with students from the course competing for scholarships totaling some $20,000. It is anticipated that Moral Forum will become a required component of the Honors College curriculum at UA beginning in spring 2007, with the number of student participants competing for scholarships exceeding 500 per year, according to organizers.

The event is one of the founding initiatives of the UA Center for Ethics and Social Responsibility, which began in fall 2005 as a result of a gift from Mignon C. Smith to establish a university-based ethics program that would support the study of ethics and develop projects to nurture social responsibility and reflective, thoughtful citizenship.

Believing that the University has a critical role to play in preparing students to serve as effective, engaged and ethical citizens, the Center for Ethics and Social Responsibility seeks to assist students in developing a distinctive definition of moral and civic maturity, making the values and skills of citizenship a hallmark of a UA education.

This event is free and open to the public.

For more information on Moral Forum and the work of the UA Center for Ethics and Social Responsibility, call 206/348-6490 or e-mail cesr@ua.edu.