Team CHaSS crushes opponents in college’s Quiz Bowl contest
March 31st, 2011 Posted in Arts and LifeStory by April Ashland
LOGAN—It’s “CHaSS Week” at Utah State University this week, highlighting the new College of Humanities and Social Sciences, beginning with a knock-down “Quiz Bowl” competition on Monday.
Teams representing all seven of USU’s colleges—Agriculture, Art, Business, Education, Engineering, HSS and Science—competed through two rounds of questions to test contestants’ knowledge from across the university’s disciplines. And the team from the host CHaSS crushed the opposition.
Each round had different rules: In Round 1, students answered questions picked from the different colleges’ areas of study, such as, “In computer programming, how many nibbles make a byte?” The college that the question ‘belonged’ to was not allowed to answer unless all the other teams were stumped.
In Round 2, teams had 15 seconds to buzz in to answer the question, and 5 seconds to answer. Points were awarded and taken for correct and incorrect answers in both rounds.
Three judges presided—Allee Evensen and Anna Armas, both PR members for CHaSS week, and CHaSS Senator Tanner Wright. ASUSU President Tyler Tolson played emcee.
Sophomore Carlos Murillo, a member of the CHaSS student council, said the group came up with the idea in a brainstorm, and decided to make it the first event of the week to encourage student involvement.
“We decided to start with the Quiz Bowl because it’s an event in which not only CHaSS but also the other colleges could participate in,” Murillo said.
There were many well-known participants at the event, including Tolson and Bill “Wildman” Sproat, the Aggie Superfan. Other high-profile students were the current and next education senators, the current arts senator, and the editor-in-chief of the Utah Statesman.
The most memorable moments, Murillo said, came toward the end of the event, when Sproat and the other members of the Huntsman College of Business team started to jump around. And then came the lightning round.
“In the speed round, everyone started buzzing in before the questions had even fully been asked,” Murillo said.
The last question was for the participants to know all the words and to sing the Scotsman song, but the Business team buzzed in before Tyler Tolson had finished asking the question. So to answer, two of the members sang both the Fight Song and the Scotsman, to “cover our butts,” said Jake Frisby, the Business man at the buzzer.
“Bill got right in my face, and was like, ‘What if it was the fight song?’ but they sang both,” Frisby said. “Too bad we were disqualified from the question.”
The engineering team was the only team missing for the first half of the Quiz Bowl, but regrouped in Round 2 to finish in third place with fewer negative points than four other teams.
Team Agriculture came in second, with 1 point, and the “home team” from CHaSS ran away with the trophy, crushing the opposition with 1,001 points. The group won the Quiz Bowl trophy, and a basket of candy.
“We hope to make this a yearly thing, since it’s fun,” Murillo said.
Other CHaSS Week events include Tuesday’s dance party, the CHaSS International picnic on Wednesday and other offerings.
TP
Tags: CHaSS Week, Quiz Bowl
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