The BYU–Hawaii Honors Program hosted their group trivia competition, Brainstorm, on Sept. 25 in the Aloha Center Ballroom. Sounds of laughter, markers scratching out answers on paper, and whispers conferring amongst competitors filled the ballroom as students, faculty, and community members gathered to experience the event, which is held every Fall and Winter Semester. Trivia questions were on subjects ranging from literature to Polynesian history to rock music.
The winning team consisted of four women: Ulemj Munkh-Erdene,a freshman math major from Mongolia, Hannah Van Matre freshman ICS major from Washington, Christine Morte a junior biology major from the Philippines, and Yi-Ting Chu a freshman marketing major from Taiwan. Morte had previously been in Brainstorm, playing on the team that came in last place in last year’s competition and was excited to return.
Morte said, “We talked beforehand and thought, ‘We have to win first.’ We wanted to win first, but we didn’t really expect to.” The women gave their teammates credit for the victory and received gift cards for dinner at Ruby Tuesdays and Consolidated Theaters for two.
Chu told of how she ended up competing. “I thought it was required for the Honors Program, so I came here and they [Munkh-Erdene, Matre, and Morte] invited me to join their team.”
Although the Honors Program puts on Brainstorm, it is not mandatory and students who are not in the Honors Program are encouraged to form teams and come compete as well. Both rookie and veteran Brainstorm participants filled the tables.
DJ Magee, a junior business management major from Maryland, Brooke Dillingham, a sophomore graphic design major from California, and Kainalu Barino, a junior math major from Kauai comprised one of the teams for the evening.
Barino, who had previously participated in Brainstorm, said his past experience with the event was quite enjoyable, prompting him to return for another night of trivia. His teammates, Magee and Dillingham, had not competed in Brainstorm before and were looking forward to the events that would follow. Both said they were expecting fun times, food, and a lot of laughter.
Dr. Randal Allred, professor of English and director of the Honors, read a variety of trivia questions and in 20 seconds students had to formulate responses for which they would be awarded points if correct. The event consisted of three 25-minute periods of trivia bursts with five-minute breaks in between. Allred said his favorite questions included, “which member of the rock band Queen holds a PhD in astrophysics” and another requiring students to name the cities certain television shows were set in, such as “The Big Bang Theory.”
This semester, the Honors Program tried to add more diversity to the questions. Allred said, “We had more questions that involved Polynesia, the Pacific, and Asia because we’ve had students tell us before that questions seemed to be all Western oriented so we really tried to spread it around a little more.”