On Friday night, the Student Activities Club hosted a Hamilton Trivia Night event.
As University of Connecticut students anxiously returned to a quarantined campus even more hermetic than the semester prior, wintry conditions that are nigh inhospitable to acceptable outdoor gatherings ensured that healthy social lives of students would prove challenging to maintain. The Student Activities Club graciously aims to weather these challenges for students by braving the virtual and hosting a series of virtual trivia night events, the second of which focused on the critically acclaimed and wildly popular musical “Hamilton”.
“I am a huge Hamilton fan myself, so I am excited to test my Hamilton knowledge alongside everyone else tonight!” Skylar Sandler, a psychological science graduate student and the coordinator of the event, stated.
Young, scrappy and hungry students pooled into the virtual trivia night en masse, with the vast majority having jubilantly selected screen names parodying or referencing the musical. The online game was facilitated through Kahoot and featured 60 questions divided into several rounds.
The first round was “General Knowledge,” which eased attendees into the game. The second round, “When You’re Here, You’re Family,” quizzed competitors on the family of the eponymous Alexander Hamilton. The third round required students to correctly identify the titles of songs in the musical and the fourth grilled attendees on the musical’s lyrics. The last two rounds, “Actor to Character / Character to Actor” and another iteration of “General Knowledge,” were more grueling as they required expertise external to the musical itself — for instance, identifying the other projects of the musical’s actors, or the number of Tony Awards awarded to the musical.
The game was driven by exciting tension as 44 students struggled to outpace one another in their Hamilton knowledge. Some students started out with a steady reign over the leaderboard, only to meet their downfall later — “oceans rise and empires fall!” Other attendees ascended to the Top Five only in the climactic closing rounds of the game — their strategies being to “wait for it” and recognize that they weren’t “falling behind or running late.” References aside, the players with screen names “guns and ships,” “Blue Cookies” as well as “and PEGGY!” ended up winning the game, with the game’s runners-up including the author of this article (“aaron burr”) and the player “A. Ham.”
All in all, the Hamilton Trivia Night was a success, with Student Activities having more in store for quarantining students in the near future.
“Student Activities has a lot in store to engage students this semester!” Sandler said. “Follow @uconnstudentactivities on Instagram or check out the uKindness website for up to date information on all of our upcoming events. As for upcoming Hamilton related events, SUBOG, UConn’s largest student run program board, is hosting a virtual Q&A with Anthony Ramos on Thursday, Feb. 11 at 7 p.m. Ramos is best known for playing John Laurens and Philip Hamilton in the original Broadway cast of Hamilton. Follow @subogatuconn for more information and to submit questions for Ramos to answer live on Feb. 11!”