UA Center for Ethics & Social Responsibility Hosts Moral Forum Competition – Awards $10,000 in Scholarships

TUSCALOOSA, Ala. — The University of Alabama Center for Ethics & Social Responsibility will host the final round of the fifth annual Moral Forum Tournament on Monday, Oct. 26, at 7 p.m. in Morgan Auditorium.

Each year $10,000 in scholarships are awarded on the final night of Moral Forum.

Two exemplary pairs of students from this semester’s Moral Forum course will debate the resolution “In order to foster a more moral society, the federal government should lower the legal drinking age from 21 to 18,” addressing issues such binge drinking, drunk driving and government responsibility.

Moral Forum was designed to help UA students 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 making reasoned judgments about the moral legitimacy of views as opposed to being intolerant or disrespectful toward individuals or cultural groups.

The Moral Forum initiative is organized around the analysis of one particular controversial “moral” resolution. This semester, that resolution centers on the effect of the current minimum legal drinking age of 21 and issues of public safety and fairness in American society. In teams of two, students conduct research, attend a six-part lecture series and construct position statements that address both sides of the current resolution in preparation for two required preliminary debate rounds. Each team must be prepared to argue both affirmative and negative sides of the same resolution.

Moral Forum is one of the founding initiatives of the Center for Ethics & Social Responsibility, which began in 2005 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.

This event is free and open to the public. For more information on Moral Forum and the work of the Center for Ethics & Social Responsibility, contact cesr@ua.edu, call 205/348-6490, or go to their Web site http://cesr.ua.edu/