On Saturday, November 28th, the junior class officers (Kate Swann, Henry Art, Emma Sandstrom and Anthony Welch) organized and ran a virtual trivia night with the help of their advisor, Mrs. Houle. 

“We decided to do it over break so people would be free to do it and have something to look forward to, especially since you can’t travel right now,” explained junior class Vice President Kate Swann. 

The junior class officers meet every Thursday during directed study. Over the course of a few weeks, they planned the trivia night, approved final details with the administration, and sent out their sign up sheet. 

“The most challenging aspect is the fundraiser part because we are trying to figure out a way to have teams enter that is safe, which is one of the reasons that our last trivia night was free” Swann said. 

The trivia night took place over Zoom, and the people on teams who were not in the same household were put into breakout rooms to discuss their answers for each round. At the beginning of each round, the questions were read aloud  for a quick run through, and then a google form was put in the chat. 

“You had ten minutes to answer ten questions each round, as well as a bonus question”, Swann said.“But we are planning on making the time shorter in the future.” 

There were five rounds: sports, film/television, art/music, history/geography and a wildcard. “We are planning on altering this slightly for next time” said Swann. 

While participants answered the questions in one round, the class officers went through each teams’ answers for the previous round and tallied their score on a scoresheet. In between rounds they went over the answers and announced the top five teams.

The winners of the first virtual trivia was a group called the “Girl Scout dropouts”. The “impastas” were awarded second place and “mlj” got third. Overall, Swann said that “the first virtual trivia night was a success, despite a few minor difficulties which we will fix for the future.”

“It’s definitely happening again. From now on it’s going to be five dollars per person unless you have more than five people,” Junior President Henry Art said. “We are aiming for the Wednesday before break and then possibly something over break as well for people to look forward to.”

At the end of trivia the junior class officers put a final form into the chat for everyone to fill out asking them to rate their experience from 1-5 (1 being the worst and 5 being the best) and all of the responses were fours and fives. “There were a couple of kinks which we’ve worked out for the next time, but I think people had a lot of fun,” said Art. 

The next time the virtual trivia night happens there will be a few changes, “such as the addition of a science/math round and making the rounds shorter to hopefully make the experience better based on our feedback,” said Swann.

“We look forward to making trivia night a regular occurrence,” said Art.