Senior communication major, Mason Dauphin, was the host and master of ceremonies for the Press Club Trivia Night. Dauphin kept the event lively and entertaining for the attendees.
Zachary Billiot/The Lion’s Roar

The university’s Press Club held its latest Trivia Night last week on the second floor of the Student Union in rooms 2203, 2205 and 2207. 

The event took place on Wednesday, Apr. 5. from 7-11 p.m. The cost of admission was $5 for each individual or $20 per team of five and included free food, drinks and prizes. The event was hosted by Mason Dauphin, a member of the Press Club. Dauphin was excited for the event and had high hopes for it before the night got started.

“I think the event’s gonna go really well,” said Dauphin. “We have a lot of staff, and we’ve done a lot of promotion around campus. A lot of the people I know are from Press Club are very excited. Some of them have been working on the questions. So, obviously, they won’t be qualified to enter, but those who haven’t, we’re happy to have them.”

President of the Press Club Connor Raborn was also in attendance. He explained how the Trivia Night started.

“This whole thing kind of was inspired by me and a lot of my friends from Press Club like to go out to sports bar trivia nights.” Raborn said. “It’s kind of been a little bit of a tradition for about a year now where we kind of do it whenever we can, every so often. We liked the idea, and we thought it would make for a fun fundraiser event.”

Raborn explained how they were going to manage the event as well by trying to model it after trivia nights in sports bars.

“It’s gonna be sports bar style where we have an M.C.,” said Raborn. “We’re gonna project the questions and everything. But we’ll have kind of a master of ceremonies to read the questions out, we’re gonna have proctors out to ensure nobody’s cheating using their phones or anything like that. People will be able to register as either teams or as individuals.”

In total, there were 20 participants across five teams competing for prizes throughout the night. Team names varied, ranging from pop culture references like “How Bout Dah” and “Two and a Half Women” to more localized references that pertained to the university, such as “Mirando’s Muckrakers.” Most of the teams were comprised of three to five players, but other teams like “Gold Team Rules” consisted of only two members.

Each team competed in a customized version of the game “Jeopardy!” to see who would score the most points and win prizes. Each winner was awarded prizes from a selection of movie posters, vinyl figurines, movie passes and popcorn cups with a variety of candy. The game itself was set up in the standard “Jeopardy!” style with five categories, multiple rounds and varying levels of difficulty yielding more points in proportion to the difficulty of each question. Each team chose from one of the five categories that included sports, music, movies, television and SELU. Each category had five questions valued from 100 to 500, with 100 being the easier trivia questions and 500 being the harder ones. The initial plan was for five rounds to be played, but the amount teams playing slowed the game down considerably, and there was only enough time to play two rounds. 

“I thought it was gonna be a lot more packed than it really is,” said Miranda Bordelon, a junior English major. “I like the smaller crowds, and we’re able to meet new friends. It’s a fun way to meet new people around campus.”

Bordelon was one of five members on team “How Bout Dah,” who was first up to play in the event’s custom version of “Jeopardy!”

Many other players were very excited to be a part of the event and thought it was a wonderful way to get students involved socially even if their teams did not do well during the competition.

“If you look around, you can see all the people that are in it,” said Dustin Arroyo, a “Two and a Half Women” team member. His team consisted of three other people. “I feel like we did terrible, but we still had a lot of fun, we still had a great time and the Press Club gets to put its name out there, so it’s pretty cool.”