On Feb. 3, Poly’s Ethics Bowl team secured second place at this year’s regional competition at Chapman University.

Ethics Bowl is a forum for discussing hypothetical moral dilemmas — similar to debate, but more discussion-based and focused on allowing multiple teams to agree on a position.

The team consisted of three captains — seniors Milla Chavez and Janie Drum and sophomore Maddie Delbridge — in addition to four other regionals team members: seniors Melody Huang and Audrey Tomlin and sophomores Filiz Fish and Ginny Cheung. Freshman Kara Kang and sophomores Allison Zhang and Kelly Zhang contributed as researchers.

They discussed and formulated stances on sixteen cases, each posing ethical quandaries on topics from generative AI to child labor.

“Because you spend so much time preparing for one day, I think it genuinely is a lot about the process and finding joy in just discussing the principles themselves,” said Tomlin.

Led by faculty advisor and Upper School math teacher Dominic Rosato, the group made it to the finals before losing to Harvard-Westlake. This was a significant improvement from last year, when Poly lost in the semifinals.

“They’re a great team, [with] great coordination between each other,” said Rosato. “They did a great job at handling questions on the fly.”

With so many seniors departing, Chavez hopes new members will join next year as the team strives toward continued success.