Are you smarter than a JMU professor?
Posted on January 24, 2008
All four pens hit the paper simultaneously, and the writers scribbled down everything they could think of in 30 seconds. When the timer buzzed, the piece of paper was raised in the air to be collected for judging.
Eighteen teams competed Tuesday at the “Are You Smarter than a JMU Professor? Trivia Night!” event. Six groups in the Alternative Spring Break held the program as a fundraiser for their trips.
“This is our first trivia night, so hopefully we’ll have a good turnout,” Lisa Mathews, ASB graduate assistant, said before the program began. “This is the first fundraising event this year for multiple groups.”
The event raised $240 to be divided among the six ASB groups. Participation cost $3 per person, or $10 for a team of four. Teams could earn additional points with extra donations.
“This is fun,” said team member Liz Chalker, a junior IDLS major, as the groups scores were announced. “I’m very competitive.”
Chalker is going on the ASB trip to Redwoods Park to help preserve the California Redwoods, which is what the team participants named their team after.
The teams of four people sat at the 10 round tables in the Festival Ballroom as the trivia questions were projected on the screen at the front of the room. The categories included JMU, sports, music, pop culture, history and geography. There were eight questions in each category and teams recorded their answers on paper. The ninth question was a 30-second speed question to write down as many answers to the question as possible. The papers were then collected and scored between each round.
As the first questions were read, the room quieted as teams whispered possible answers among themselves. Some teams were more competitive and placed books or bags in the middle of the table. One student even said, “That team over there is the devil.”
“The questions are a lot harder than I thought they would be,” Dan Jensen, a graduate student and another member of Team Redwoods, said. However, during the movies and TV category, the team answered every question correctly.
“We all have our strengths,” Chalker said. “Jensen was good at sports, and then we got a lot of the pop culture since we read Us Weekly a lot.”
Two teams of professors and faculty competed as well.
“I’m a little worried about the pop culture part,” Anna Colby from Student Affairs said. “We may be a little up on the history category though.”
History, science and geography may have been the only categories where answers could be found in textbooks. Most were about current events and pop culture.
Between each round, raffle prizes were also called out, including items donated from local businesses and ASB T-shirts.
“I wanted everyone to have fun with it,” said Dara Silbert, a junior communication sciences and disorders major who helped organize the event. She is also a co-leader of an ASB trip to Oklahoma to work with the Cherokee Nation Head Start Program.
“We were really scared we’d only have two tables, but this worked out great, and we had a perfect number,” Silbert said. “Hopefully we’ll make this a yearly tradition.”
One of the original ideas for the fundraiser was a variety show, but Silbert said that because of the winter break, the planning did not work out.
ASB groups have used many types of fundraising in the past, including letter writing. The long distance and international trips cost between $500 and $1200.
“It was a really good way to raise money and socialize, too,” Andrea Surette, a sophomore international business and Spanish major, said. “My favorite part was getting to know old friends again.”
Some students didn’t know their team members before the program began. Team Redwoods was comprised of a pair of roommates, an ASB participant, and another friend.
As the final round of questions began, teams made wagers similar to those in Final Jeopardy. Team Redwoods was down by 100 points and chose to wager all 803 points.
When the question appeared on the screen the team’s spirits quickly dropped. They didn’t know when the first ASB trip was held and what kind of service was done.
The final scores were added up and the hosts read them aloud. Many teams used a similar tactic of wagering all their points, so there were many zeros. Finally the top two teams were announced, and Team Redwoods was the runner-up.
Surprised, the four-team members collected their prize and discussed how to split up the collection of gift cards totaling $50 donated from several local restaurants and businesses. The first-place team received a prize valued up to $100.
