March 4—The room of around 45 people sat in groups as Michelle Martens, Master of Ceremonies and speaker in the Undergraduate Student Government, called out answers to multiple rounds of trivia facts. The University of Massachusetts Boston’s Honors College holds multiple Trivia Nights during the semester.
Located in a wing of Wheatley Hall, the Honors College staff and students served pizza and soda such as root beer and caffeine free coca-cola. After they handed out the papers and pens, Martens got straight into it. Categories were varied—with sports, literature, geography, and UMass Boston as some topics for questions. Names for the teams were very different from each other. One was KK, for both players’ names started with a “K,” while another were the Fundguys. People streamed in as the night went along with a final count of 11 groups sitting down and participating in the activity.
Every round had five questions and at the end of the round participants would weigh each question one through five. Five being the most likely to be right and one being the least confident the player and their team was. Of course some didn’t pay attention and filled it in the opposite way.
A sports category question was, “Which team won the first Super Bowl?” (The answer is the Green Bay Packers). For the UMass Boston category, they had an extra credit question asking, “Who is your Student Trustee?” Unbeknownst to a number of students, Kush Patel, Student Trustee, was in attendance. One team snatched those extra points with the answer, “The guy over there with the hella good hair.” Another way to win extra points was at the end of the 80’s section. One of the questions was asking about Michael Jackson’s iconic dance move—the moonwalk. If someone from the team could moonwalk, then their team received extra points.
At the end Martens said, “I loved trivia night! I can’t wait for the Honors College to host another. Being MC was fun and I hope we’ll do another one soon. The best part was that everyone there got really excited about it and super into it!” Patel also chimed in: “Trivia night was a lot of fun. I learned new things about 80s and 90s trivia. The MC was also amazing.” Kait Castillo, another student, said, “It was great! I had an awesome time with my friends, just hanging out.”
Sophomore Aoife Devine stated, “Well, I appreciated that the Honors College organized this fun activity people could do with a group! The trivia itself was interesting, the categories were varied and the questions were well chosen. Overall I’m super glad that I went, it was a worthwhile experience and I’m sure the school will host the event again.”
Another student said, “I thought it was very well put together. The trivia facts were challenging but doable, I absolutely loved the refreshments, and Michelle did an awesome job!”
Staff from the Honors College walked around taking pictures for Instagram. At the end one group reigned supreme and got almost all the questions correct.