{"id":165853,"date":"2024-10-25T09:40:36","date_gmt":"2024-10-25T13:40:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/?p=165853"},"modified":"2024-10-29T15:18:39","modified_gmt":"2024-10-29T19:18:39","slug":"bates-at-night-into-the-the-den-for-presidential-trivia-night","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/2024\/10\/25\/bates-at-night-into-the-the-den-for-presidential-trivia-night\/","title":{"rendered":"Bates at Night: Into the Den for Election Trivia Night"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

If Kamala Harris is elected president this year, she will be the shortest president in history. Who is the other shortest president?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That\u2019s the favorite presidential trivia question of Stephen Engel, professor of politics and associate dean of faculty. If you really want to know the answer, he’ll tell you it\u2019s James Madison, at 5 feet, 4 inches. But as co-host of Election Trivia Night in the Den, he also makes you promise not to take any points for that question.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"students
A cheer goes up as teams offer a correct answer \u2014 favorite Bates son Edmund Muskie ’36 \u2014 to a the question, “Which Bates graduate was a nominee for vice president of the U.S.?” Part of the college’s Election 2024 programming<\/a>, Election Trivia Night at the Den on Oct. 9 offered students a chance for political engagement, community building, and some fun. (Carly Philpott ’27 for Bates College)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

This year\u2019s trivia night, held Oct. 9, marked the second round for Engel and his faculty co-host, Stephanie Kelley-Romano. The event debuted during the 2016 presidential race, and after skipping 2020 due to the pandemic, the duo brought it back for the first post-pandemic election cycle.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIn 2016 we just needed to have some fun, wanted some levity,\u201d says Kelley-Romano, a professor of rhetoric, film, and screen studies. \u201cAnd it\u2019s fun to think of all the weird things that we end up putting in the trivia questions.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Pre-event, Election Trivia Night already feels fun, with Kelley-Romano wearing bobcat pajama pants and receiving chicken bites from a student worker at the Den, while students pour into the room, separating into teams of three or four. They head to Engel, who is busy opening boxes of mini whiteboard erasers, to tell him their team names.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"a
Seniors Eliza Dewey (left) and Katherine Moe, both of Washington, D.C., confer about an answer for their team, The Situation, during Election Trivia Night in the Den on Oct. 9, 2024. (Carly Philpott ’27 for Bates College)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

A half-dozen teams square off in the event, some with politically clever names, like “Pokemon Go to the Polls,” a name that plays off then-candidate Hillary Clinton\u2019s awkward Pokemon joke from 2016.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The team El Gatos (\u201cthe Cats\u201d), meanwhile, call out \u201cCinco<\/em>!\u201d when asked how many presidents they think went to NESCAC schools (it\u2019s actually tres<\/em>: Coolidge went to Amherst, Pierce to Bowdoin, and Garfield to Williams). The two-person team called “The Republicans” laugh with surprise when they are able to name the most Republican candidates from the 2024 primaries (nine!).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"a
Sophomores Nikhil Chavda of Nottingham, N.H., and Campbell Macdonald of Carlisle, Mass., offer their answer to the question “Which independent candidate decided to put an already dead bear cub in the trunk of his car, and then left it in Central Park in NYC?” Their team, The Republicans, tied for first with 49 points. (Carly Philpott for Bates College)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Leah Belber \u201926 of Washington, D.C., makes an appearance fully in character as U.S. Sen. Claire Bennett, one of two candidates running mock presidential campaigns this fall as part of Kelley-Romano\u2019s course \u201cPresidential Campaign Rhetoric.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Working the room as candidate Bennett, Belber takes a photo for her campaign\u2019s social media feed. Shifting back to her student identity for the trivia competition, her team, named “Kingdom of Hawaii” as a nod to teammate Hugh Piper \u201925 of Honolulu, Hawaii, finishes third.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"two
Kingdom of Hawaii teammates Philip Han ’25 (left) of Seoul, South Korea, and Leah Belber \u201926 of Washington, D.C., ponder an answer during Election Trivia Night at the Den on Oct. 9. (Carly Philpott ’27 for Bates College)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s clear that many of the students at the event are there because of Kelley-Romano, whether they are part of her presidential campaign rhetoric course, which has 17 students, or they know her outside of class. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

They approach her, waving and laughing as they arrive, and she circles the tables while they answer, commenting on their responses without giving anything away. Engel balances her energy by standing at the front of the room, reading the questions. When asked who is better at trivia, each points to the other and they both laugh.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Last summer, Engel and Kelley-Romano were part of a working group that developed a wide-ranging slate of pre-election programming<\/a>, which includes debate watch parties, talks by Bates faculty as well as visiting scholars, experts, and information nights. The program complements the Bates Votes initiative focused on voter education, registration, and mobilization.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"From
Professor of Rhetoric, Film, and Screen Studies Stephanie Kelley-Romano, co-host of the trivia night event, talks with Colby Michaud \u201925 of Hopkinton, Mass., on Oct. 23, during a combined session of her course “Presidential Campaign Rhetoric” and Professor of Mathematics Meredith Greer’s course “Mathematical Models in Biology.” (Phyllis Graber Jensen\/Bates College)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

\u201cOur goal with the whole series was to be very proactive during what we see as a very challenging campaign season,\u201d says Engel. \u201cSo there are a lot of things we\u2019re building into this series to help students, but also faculty and staff can take advantage of learning more, and just so they feel like they have a place to come to ask questions.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We asked Engel how a trivia night fits into helping students navigate a difficult election season. \u201cIt\u2019s an event where we\u2019re not really engaging with the election, but it keeps the election front of mind. And it\u2019s an event where students feel free to ask questions about registration, accessing the vote, and other ways they can be engaged,\u201d Engel says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s also about helping students gain a larger sense of familiarity with politics, opening up a dialogue, and creating community.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"professor
Stephen Engel, professor of politics and trivia night quizmaster, says the fun of trivia night has a purpose, so that when “things do get tense \u2014 because politics can get tense \u2014 you have that prior connection” of being together in a politics-focuses event. (Carly Philpott ’27 for Bates College)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

“I find that a lot of students at Bates want to be politically engaged and but don’t know how: Don’t know how to find their information, don’t know how to have these conversations. So this is a super low stakes way to laugh and learn stuff, like about the electoral college,” says Kelley-Romano.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cCreating an opportunity for students to come together in a heated moment in a way that lowers the temperature a little bit and maybe builds community, so that when we do have a disagreement with another student, you can fall back on, \u2018But we hung out the night before,\u2019\u201d Engel says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cSo when things do get tense \u2014 because politics can get tense \u2014 you have that prior connection. And it’s events like this that build those connections.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Election Trivia Night, co-hosted by professors Stephen Engel and Stephanie Kelley-Romano in the Den on Oct. 9, offered students a low-stakes way to talk about presidential politics.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1819,"featured_media":166011,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_hide_ai_chatbot":false,"_ai_chatbot_style":"","associated_faculty":[],"_Page_Specific_Css":"","_bates_restrict_mod":false,"_table_of_contents_display":false,"_table_of_contents_location":"","_table_of_contents_disableSticky":false,"_is_featured":false,"footnotes":"","_bates_seo_meta_description":"","_bates_seo_block_robots":false,"_bates_seo_sharing_image_id":0,"_bates_seo_sharing_image_twitter_id":0,"_bates_seo_share_title":"","_bates_seo_canonical_overwrite":"","_bates_seo_twitter_template":""},"categories":[4,30,130],"tags":[11217],"class_list":["post-165853","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-academic-life","category-civic-engagement","category-collaboration","tag-bates-at-night"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/165853","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1819"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=165853"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/165853\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":166042,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/165853\/revisions\/166042"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/166011"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=165853"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=165853"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=165853"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}