The long held tradition of Trivia Night was not abandoned due to coronavirus. On Tuesday, 75 students used Zoom to participate in a fun-filled night of tough questions. Just before 9 p.m., students started popping up in the Zoom chat, getting enthusiastic greetings from Tyler Goss, Assistant Director of Student Programs and Residence Director, and one of the leaders of trivia night. 

Teams had already signed up with the names of teams and participants, so Goss worked furiously to organize everyone into the right groups. People continued to file in, virtually of course, until 9:15 p.m., when the event began. Professors Andy Miller and Leah Kratz were the hosts for the night. Before they could reveal the questions for the first round, all the questions were accidentally sent out in the chat, and participants were quickly told to not peek. 

The first round of questions was released officially a few minutes later, and Goss sent everyone to breakout rooms with the other members of their team. The teams then had the chance to discuss the four questions for each round to decide on the best answers. When all final decisions were made, each team would return to the main session with everyone, and private message one of the leaders with their team’s answers to allow this event to happen from afar. 

The whole event hinged on the honesty and fairness of students, who had no patrolling and had every opportunity to look up answers. Luckly, there seemed to be no problem there. Small prizes were awarded in the form of Amazon gift cards for the players of the teams in first, second, and last place, adding a little competitive twist. 

There was some down time in between rounds while some teams were still hashing out their answers, and that led to a number of fun surprises throughout the night. One such surprise was junior Lucas Wenger playing ukulele for all the students. Other students played around with their virtual backgrounds, adding images of friends and competitors. 

Between technical difficulties and the unprecedented mode of trivia night, the game lasted two hours, not wrapping up until about 11 p.m. with the final question: How many state capitals of the United States start with the letter “S”. This final question mixed up the placings of many teams and was an exciting finish to the night. 

In the end, ideas were put forth to improve the system and make it all more efficient for next time. Recently, there has also been screaming bingo via Zoom and a number of other exciting opportunities for students to stay connected and have some fun. These will continue through the end of the semester, with many more creative ideas to come from the CAC.