The Center for Practical Ethics hosted the Great Debate March 25 at 5:30 p.m. in Bryant Hall, where ethics bowl teams from the University of Mississippi and Youngstown State University discussed the question: “Morally speaking, should parents face criminal charges if their children commit mass shootings?”
The question was based on real-world events, including the case of Ethan Crumbley, who, at 15 years old, killed four students and injured others on Nov. 30, 2021 at Oxford High School in Oxford Township, Mich., using a gun purchased by his parents, Jennifer and James Crumbley. The parents were sentenced to 10 years in prison in April 2024 after being found guilty of manslaughter due to their negligence.
Project Administrator for The Center for Practical Ethics Nathan Oakes said they chose the topic from the Intercollegiate Ethics Bowl (IEB).
“We often draw inspiration for the topic from the IEB case set,” Oakes said. “They release a set of cases each year, which are based on real-world events, so this is a real story. Honestly, we thought it was the most interesting, ethical topic in real life right now that they had written a case about.”
The Youngstown State ethics bowl team argued that parents should face criminal charges if they do not provide their children with the conditions that they are rightfully entitled to.
“Yes, (they should face charges) if they were derelict in their duties to those children,” Brandon Tabak, a Youngstown State junior political science and philosophy double major, said. “Our framework today is based on children’s rights, so we think that children have certain rights that they are entitled to and that parents are obliged to provide to them. We think these are minimal standards that parents have to provide for their children.”
Sofie Myers, a junior political science and communications double major at Youngstown State, described the environmental, emotional and social factors that parents are obligated to provide for their children.
“If we look at the environment that a child is going home to, very base-level, it needs to be a safe environment,” Myers said. “Children should expect to go home and have a safe space to go. They should expect to have shelter, food, water, clothing, all their basic minimal needs, provided to them.”
Myers argued that Crumbley’s parents failed in their responsibility by giving their son access to the firearm.
“Not only were regular gun safety procedures not followed at home, the gun wasn’t locked up, ammunition wasn’t separated, they were both readily available,” Myers said. “Not only this, but this gun was actually provided to the child by the parents. The gun was bought for the child and then left with him with no other safety procedures followed.”
Myers also described signs of neglect, such as the parents’ dismissal of school warnings and Ethan’s history of torturing animals, as a sign of possible violence.
“If we look back again at the case specifically, we know that the child was not well-off and we know it for two reasons,” Myers said. “The first reason being that the school called the parents and said ‘Your child is drawing concerning things, saying concerning things in school. This might be a cause for concern.’ And the parents ignored that and chose to be negligent and didn’t do anything about it. The second reason is that he was also torturing and killing small animals.
The UM ethics bowl team argued that it is morally permissible for parents to be criminally charged, however, the decision is based on the individual details of each circumstance.
“It is morally permissible, but from a theological approach, parents have certain duties and whether or not they should or should not be held criminally charged is depending on if these duties are met,” Ashlyn Minga, a sophomore biomedical engineering major at UM, said.
Minga said the evidence of motive and the evidence of opportunity makes the parents criminally responsible for the shooting.
“There are many signs that Ethan needed mental help, and they were ignored but parents; they were joked about,” Minga said. “He obviously didn’t get the proper help that he needed. This, along with the fact that his father supplied him with a gun four days before the shooting occurred, is evidence of motive and evidence of opportunity that make them criminally responsible.”
Diego Abele, a junior political science and philosophy major, described the evidence of motive using Ethan Crumbley’s drawings and behavior.
“For evidence of motive, Ethan Crumbley had very disturbing drawings. He had disturbing behavior,” Abele said. “As both teams have outlined, he had clear signs he would pose a danger to others and the parents had this evidence.”
Abele described the weapon and ammunition available to Ethan Crumbley as evidence of opportunity that ties into the evidence of motive.
“In the Crumbley case, the parents not only had a weapon available at their house, a weapon that had ammunition available, but this weapon was gifted to Ethan, who is a dependent minor of the parents,” Abele said. “We believe that this opportunity gave Ethan the means necessary to commit this mass shooting.”
After the arguments, judges asked questions to each team. The floor was then opened for the audience filled with students, faculty and community members to write down questions to be asked by the moderator.
Abele shared why he thought the debate topic was chosen.
“I think the topic was chosen because there is a trending issue in school shootings, and a lot of people are trying to crack down why these shootings happen and who bears responsibility for it,” Abele said. “I think this was a perfect example of a general question that the country is facing.”
Minga talked about the topic of mass shootings and how to prevent them.
“I think it is a really important issue right now in our country,” Minga said. “We’ve seen countless numbers of mass shootings, especially in schools, and I think it’s really important to tackle why that might be happening in America and some of the things we can do to prevent that.”
Sofie Myers stressed the importance of civil discussions and respecting each other’s opinions.
“You don’t really see civil discussions happening anymore,” Myers said. “So I think it’s really important that we can all come together and do something like this and respect each other’s opinions, give answers, give our opinions in a civil way, take criticisms in a civil way, and make sure that overall we’re leading toward a more productive discussion at the end of the day.”
Oakes said that practicing the discussion of difficult topics with clear goals in a controlled manner is one way to address the problem our society has with discussing topics of disagreement in a respectful way.
“There probably is not one single solution (to engaging in these discussions), but one thing you can at least try is to practice,” Oakes said. “Practice discussing something that is difficult and doing it in a controlled atmosphere with clear goals and hoping that the experience, both for those doing it and the people observing it, carries out beyond the university.”
