Ethics Bowl 2026: Exploring Important Questions that Affect our Lives

On Saturday, February 7, 2026, the Department of Philosophy in the College of Arts at the University of Guelph hosted the Third Annual Guelph Regional High School Ethics Bowl, welcoming eight teams from seven schools across the Greater Toronto Area for a day of rigorous ethical reasoning and respectful debate.

Approximately 40 high school students and their coaches gathered in the MacKinnon Building, where teams worked through cases addressing some of the most pressing ethical questions facing society today. After three rounds of matches, Heart Lake Secondary School's "John Locke'd In!" claimed the championship and will advance to the Ontario Championships, to be held at the University of Toronto Mississauga.

Why the Ethics Bowl Matters

Unlike traditional debate, the Ethics Bowl rewards careful listening, intellectual humility and the willingness to refine one's position in response to opposing arguments. Students are evaluated not on rhetorical flair but on the quality of their moral reasoning, the clarity of their arguments, the strength of the evidence they marshal and their ability to engage constructively with perspectives that differ from their own.

"The Ethics Bowl asks students to do something that is genuinely difficult: to take a strong position on a controversial issue and then remain open to being persuaded otherwise," said Dr. Gus Skorburg, associate professor of Philosophy and academic co-director of the Centre for Advancing Responsible and Ethical Artificial Intelligence (CARE-AI) at the U of G. "This is exactly the kind of thinking we need more of in classrooms, in public life, in politics and in the professions these students will one day enter," Skorburg continued.

A Growing Community Effort

The event was made possible by the participation of 17 judges drawn from University of Guelph faculty and graduate students who volunteered their time to evaluate rounds and provide feedback to student teams.

"Events like this illustrate what a university can do when it takes its civic role seriously," said Dr. Don Dedrick, chair of the Department of Philosophy in the College of Arts.

From Competition to Conversation

For many participating students, the Ethics Bowl offers a first encounter with the kind of sustained, structured ethical inquiry that defines a philosophy education. Teams spend weeks preparing with their coaches, studying a shared set of cases that span topics in bioethics, technology, social justice and public policy.