St. Thomas students prefer pop culture quizzes over academic ones, and trivia nights are a regular thing on campus with multiple clubs hosting events nearly every week.
St. Thomas Activities and Recreation hosts bi-weekly Tuesday Trivia in Scooters. STAR President Lauren Capra said students are consistently interested in trivia. According to Capra, trivia night is more popular than other STAR events.
“We get huge turnouts just because there’s such a following around those subjects,” Capra said. “I think it’s just a fun thing that people will consistently show up for.”
The nights are themed around cult classic television shows and movies, such as Friends, The Office and Harry Potter. For these themed trivia nights, Capra goes through a specific question selection process.
“It’s hard, we come up with like 120 questions for each night so, it’s a lot,” Capra said. “Kahoot quizzes basically makes it super easy for us to do the trivia, I just pull them from internet quizzes.”
Many students will join simply because they’re fans of that night’s category. Second-years Ciara Ferris and Jasmine Schulz decided to attend Tuesday Trivia after finding out the theme of the night.
“We’re big Friends fans,” Schulz said. “We watch a lot of Friends, and it’s fun to be here and compete with my friends,” Ferris said.
Tuesday Trivia attracts a large number of people, some of whom are religiously committed. Second-year Lauren Fornshell has not once missed an event; she can be found in Scooter’s every other Tuesday evening, usually winning first-place.
“I think it’s really fun just to come here with my friends and we all team together to get the points, and the prizes are really cool too,” Fornshell said. “I like how competitive we get, it makes it fun, we put so much pressure on ourselves but it’s in a fun way so that when we do well it’s super exciting.”
The Society of Women Engineers has also been offering trivia nights both this year and last. Junior Lauren Eldridge, who is on the board for SWE, organizes the events and has hosted online and in-person trivia.
“It’s just a fun easy way to get people together, and everyone likes trivia, and then we give out some fun prizes to give to people who come as well,” Eldridge said. “I like that you get to learn something as well, while doing a game and competing, and then you come away with some new knowledge.”
STAR hosts trivia bi-weekly on Tuesday at 7 p.m in Scooter’s, and students can find additional events by checking Tommie Link.
“We have big groups of people that come and they get super into it,” Capra said. “It’s really fun to see the energy and to see how happy people are to get prizes, we give out some good Tommie Shop stuff.”
Noelle Gahnz can be reached at gahn8228@stthomas.edu.