DETROIT (12/8/2016) -- The Titans are used to representing the school name in athletic competition, but last week, members of the University of Detroit Mercy men's lacrosse team competed in the 11th Annual Upper Midwest Regional Ethics Bowl at Harper College in Illinois.
The team of juniors
Marcus Butters,
Pat Masterson,
Bryan Matney,
Adam Susalla and redshirt freshmen
Nick Boynton and
Connor Bennardo – dubbed the "Philosophizers & Friends" – were part of the Detroit Mercy team.
"We were in the competition a couple of years ago, and we lost in the finals, but we were involved more for extra credit then," said Masterson. "We really enjoyed the experience, and we were motivated to win it this time around after last year was unfortunately canceled."
"This group was smart, competitive and they worked hard to get to this point," said Martin G. Leever, Detroit Mercy professor and Director of the campus Ethics Bowl. "They impressed so many people at the regional event and I know they arrived with the determination to win."
The Titans got to Chicago by winning the Detroit Mercy Ethics Bowl in November as the squad competed against seven other teams in a bracket style format for the right to move onto the regionals.
The Detroit Mercy Ethics Bowl 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 teams at the competition are taken from that set. A panel of judges rates answers in terms of intelligibility, focus, depth, and judgment.
"Detroit Mercy offers so many opportunities for all students," said Masterson. "We have the opportunity to push ourselves and go beyond the normal classroom work, and that is a benefit to all of us."
The victory moved the team to the Midwest Regionals, where 26 Universities were in action with the top five advancing to the national competition in February.
"It is the same cases we had at our school event so we were extremely prepared for any of the 15 cases," said Masterson. "It is a pretty wide base of cases and most are policy oriented in real world applications. The case we won was if there should be a beef tax and is that ethical. Another case was on the FBI–Apple encryption debate so it is all real world issues."
Detroit Mercy went 1-3 on the day, but they arguably faced one of the toughest schedules in the competition. The victory was over Northwestern, while the losses came to Macalester University, Millikin University and Illinois Wesleyan University, three teams that finished in the top five in the event.
"It is just the luck of the draw, but we faced the most difficult schedule among all the teams," said Leever. "I know our goal was to make it back to nationals like we did a few years ago. This team was probably stronger than that team that advanced and might arguably be one of the best teams we ever had here at the University."
For Masterson, this was his final year to participate as he is a senior academically and the event is only for undergraduates.
"As a senior, this was my last year to compete, and I have had a great time and learned so much in this process. The teachers are behind us, helping and guiding us and we can't speak enough about the positive leadership from our professors here during this event."
