CEE Student Essay Contest Winners – Fall 2009

During the Fall 2009 semester, CEE sponsored two essay contests. Cash prizes were awarded to the first place winners and honorable mentions in each contest. The essays were judged on their accuracy and depth of interpretation and their independence of thought.

The first contest was held in Professor Stephen Hicks’s Introduction to Philosophy course. Students were asked to write about the truth or falsity of the following Shakespeare line from Act II of Hamlet: “This above all: to thine own self be true / And it must follow, as the night the day, thou canst not then be false to any man.” Students related this line to one or more of their course books — Plato’s Apology and Crito, Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead, and René Descartes’ Meditations. Congratulations to our five winners!

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The second contest was held in Professor Shawn Klein’s Business and Economics Ethics course. Students were asked to defend or criticize the following claim made by the character Gordon Gecko in the movie Wall Street: “Greed, in all of its forms—greed for life, for money, for love, knowledge—has marked the upward surge of mankind.” Congratulations to our three winners!

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