Upcoming: East Trivia Night

The third annual SME Trivia Night will be taking place Friday March 1st. It’s open to category veterans and knowledge game newbies alike according to the event hosts, the East Student Council. 

“A lot of people are like ‘Oh I don’t know anything about trivia I don’t want to do it’ but don’t let that stop you from going because there’s a lot of weird knowledge that you might have,” StuCo member Jana Banerjea said.

Each team must pay a $25 entry fee to enter the competition, and at the end of the night half of the money collected will go to the winning team and the other half will be donated to a charity of the winning team’s choice. None of the proceeds go towards the StuCo fund.

“It’s a really exciting way to be a part of the East community outside of the classroom and get together with your peers to have some fun,” Jet Semrick said.

Last year, twenty teams gathered in the East cafeteria and answered 80 questions from eight different categories. This year’s battle of the brains will be in a similar format with new categories and a fresh set of questions, so studying up on last year’s answers probably isn’t the key to becoming this year’s trivia champion according to psychology teacher Nick Paris and social studies teacher Robert Bickers.

Teacher Nick Paris has been heavily invested in trivia games throughout his teaching career. He was a sponsor for the East Categories team and during that time the team claimed 12 championship titles. In last year’s trivia night his team came in third. Paris says trivia isn’t something you can necessarily prepare for, but some prep work is better than none.

“Get in there and Google. Look around, pick up a few tidbits, and if you have a good category, really throw yourself into that category and be that categories team member,” Paris said. “You can’t really study for something like [trivia]”

One of the 2018 East Trivia winners, Robert Bickers, has had a slightly different approach for dominating the game.

When asked how he prepares for the competition, Bickers jokingly said “I got so much stuff in my brain it hurts to add anything else.”

What both Paris and Bickers agreed on is that the most important aspects of the night are getting students involved and enjoying yourself.

“Don’t take it too seriously, have fun, and don’t be afraid to take wild guesses because half of the time you’re going to be right,” Bickers said.