Nearly a dozen teams came together to have fun, compete, eat pizza, and most importantly, learn about sustainability at the first ever Trivia Tournament for Earthlings hosted at The Nugget Grill & Pub Thursday.
The event was part of this year’s Earth Week, an annual weeklong effort to educate the campus community on environmental issues and sustainability.
“Overall Earth Week is about raising awareness about environmental issues,” Long Beach State Sustainability Coordinator Holli Fajack said. “We want to educate the campus community, and also any Long Beach community members that attend the events, about what the university is doing to promote a more environmentally sustainable campus.”
There was an atmosphere of playful competition as students answered questions related to sustainability. Some of the questions were about sustainability in general, while others focused on LBSU and the greater Long Beach community.
The tournament was run using the web application Kahoot, a platform that allows users to create multiple choice quizzes that others can simultaneously respond to from their own electronic devices.
Participants received free meatless pizza for attending, and some students even received extra credit.
There were 11 teams that entered the tournament, most of which had ironic or punny names like “Alright I’m Sad,” “Chardi Phi” and “LIFO the party.”
Ultimately it was LIFO the party, a team made up of fourth year accounting majors James Eung and Michael Rindfleisch, that came out on top.
“We weren’t going to stay,” Rindfleisch said. “We decided to stay and we got some money out of it.”
Both Eung and Rindfleisch went home with $50 worth of gift cards to Sprouts for winning the tournament that they originally weren’t aware was happening.
“We were just celebrating after an exam and then we just happened to be at the right place at the right time,” Eung said.
Eung said he appreciated the educational value of the event.
“I found it interesting to hear about how green our campus is actually becoming,” Eung said. “I didn’t know we had a zero emissions building here.”
Rindfleisch said that while he appreciated the educational value, he especially enjoyed the competitive aspect.
“I enjoyed the competitive nature of the event,” Rindfleisch said. “Answering questions, competing against teams and your classmates is always a plus for me.”
Fajack said that she was happy with results of the first ever Trivia Tournament for Earthlings.
“It’s the first time we’ve done a trivia event for Earth Week,” Fajack said. “It seemed like it was pretty successful — something we’d definitely want to try again.”