The 84th Semi-Annual Williams Trivia Contest is tonight. If you don’t play Trivia at least once during your time at Williams, you are making a mistake. If any readers are playing, please update us on the event. Non-players are welcome to suggest funny team names, ideally based on campus controversies. Standing By Myself? Quality of Privilege Defenders?

If you haven’t played Trivia at least once in your Williams career, you are missing out. Play tonight. Perhaps one of the team names will feature a campus controversy. Note that “Mary Jane Hitlers” is still available . . .

Surely this quote from Frank Ferry ‘69 about Williams Trivia belongs on our Quote Wall.

It is a tremendous emotional experience. We don’t deal in minutia, which may be defined as useless facts with no emotional value. Trivia concerns something you know but can’t quite remember.

But is that version accurate? I seem to remember it being longer . . .

Did any of our readers participate in Trivia on Saturday? Jonathan mentioned it before. Here is the main web page. Participants didn’t put team details on Willipedia. Comments:

1) Loved the team with nothing but Yorgeys.

2) Loved the trash talk from JC Superstars, the winning team. “We have God on our side! (and his son)”

3) The future of Trivia seems secure since there was plenty of First Year participation. Besides the winning team (based in Lehman), a Williams C team came in 4th. Many/most of the teams, however, seemed off-campus.

4) Did the existence of neighborhood housing have any impact on Trivia? For example, were any of the teams explicitly based on a neighborhood? Did any of the neighborhood governing boards encourage participation? Recall that revitalizing Trivia was one of the benefits that neighborhoods were supposed to create. This was always a bogus argument since it implied (with zero evidence) that the popularity of Trivia had fallen in the last 20 years.

5) Was participation greater or less than usual? The contest was remarkably close. The top 3 teams were with 11 points of each other and there were 5 teams within 50 points of the winner. How many students on campus participated? Ideally, Trivia would have both lots of alumni and lots of student participation.

6) Where is the recap (like this one from 2004) for the contest. A member of Suite Suite Lovin ought to record this history while it is still fresh.

The winter contest seems to have started, even though it’s not midnight yet. I’m sure I’d know why if I were on campus. To follow the fun if you’re awake now, go to http://www.suitesuiteloving.com/

Congratulates to Awesome Sauce for hosting what appears to be a successful Williams Trivia contest(much earlier) today. Kudos also to Suite Suite Lovin’ on their victory. Now they “get to” host Trivia next January!

1) Best question: “Give us a perspective on cluster housing in the style of Dr. Seuss.” I realize that this was an Action Item, but surely there is a script or two about. Fans of CUL would love to read them.

2) No doubt participation was much higher this year than previous years because of Neighborhood Housing!

3) Best team name? Dharma Initiative!

4) It would be fun to read a recap of highlights and a summary of how the scoring went. Did anyone write one this year?

In all our many discussions about Williams housing, a recurring claim (see Mike’s comments here) has been that, back in the misty past of affliation, “Williams traditions” were more robust and important in campus life. A subsidiary claim is that one of the primary reasons for this robustness is that seniors living with sophomores passed on these traditions.

Color me skeptical.

But, rather than polemics, I am interested in data. The two most commonly cited examples are the decrease in participation in snow sculptures and in Trvia. Leave aside snow sculptures for now. Question: Is is true that participation in Williams Trivia is lower now than it was 10 or 20 years ago?

A priori, I am certainly ready to believe that it is. Students today, what with all this technology stuffery, have many more entertainment options than we had back in the 80’s. But consider the Williams Trivia site.

Compare the final scores from Spring 1992 and Winter 2004. As best I can tell, Trivia was as about as widely played in these two eras. As best I can recall from the 1980’s, Trivia was no more popular then. I certainly don’t recall anyone playing in Carter House during my three years there.

To do a thorough study, we would need to know more, of course, about the size of the teams, the number of current students who were playing and so on. But, poking around the site, I see no evidence that would support the claim that Trivia today is much less widely played than it was 10 or 20 years ago. See also David Ramos’s ‘00 comments here.

If there is such evidence, I would appreciate knowing about it.

Trivia starts in 20 minutes. Go play. If you spend 4 years at Williams and never play a serious evening of trivia, I suspect that you will regret it for the next 20 years.

My only fear is that someone will use “ephblog” in their team name . . .