Maya Gandhi, Vice President of the History Bowl club asks, “Who doesn’t want to defeat their favorite teacher, or least favorite teacher, in a competition of trivia?”

Twice a year, the History Bowl club organizes a trivia tournament for teachers and students to test their prowess with a buzzer system and their knowledge of history, pop culture, sports and more. Recently, some students have been discussing the advantages and disadvantages created by faculty participation in trivia tournaments. So, we wanted to gain a greater understanding of the Berkeley community’s thoughts regarding faculty involvement in the trivia tournament.

Some feel that the teachers’ age causes an imbalance in the tournament, especially when multiple teachers compete against all-student teams. Eleventh-grader Elias Tsavoussis says that the tournament can be unfair when “teachers have a twenty to thirty year advantage.” Furthermore, Tim Torkilsen, history teacher and champion of last semester’s trivia tournament, also agrees that the age difference can be a bit unfair. Torkilsen stated, “We’ve been around longer and have studied longer. We have more experience…. and it seems like it would be more evenly matched if it would be teachers against teachers and students against students”

However, others support the current system of the trivia tournament. For example, Maya Gandhi reasons that “just like the teachers who are really good at trivia, there are also students who are really good at trivia, and they would provide the same potential advantage that any teacher would.” Gandhi also emphasizes that a team’s success in this tournament does not depend on the age of the team members, but rather, it depends on how much they enjoy trivia.

Other students favor the current role of teachers in the trivia tournament because it creates more camaraderie and excitement.  An anonymous student stated that interacting with the teachers unites the Berkeley community and honors the motto, 16 Sports, 1 Team. In contrast, if teachers and students participated in separate tournaments, they would no longer be “bonding at a level other than the classroom.” In addition, although Mr. Torkilsen revealed his support for separate faculty and student trivia tournaments, he also recognized that this separation could result in less excitement as the tournament would occur more often. Thus, by removing teachers from History Bowl trivia tournaments or by creating separate teams, students and teachers may no longer be united in the same way.

Despite conflicting opinions, everyone can agree that History Bowl sponsored trivia tournaments have been a continued success and have united the upper division community as a whole.

The survey, shown below, was answered by the Upper Division, and shows that the majority of the students who responded would like the trivia tournament to stay the way it is.

If the data is unconvincing, possible compromises were also expressed by some students. For example, the number of teachers per team could be limited in order to make the teacher-student ratio on competing teams even. Additionally, one student wrote, “So far, History Bowl has shown that students can often beat teachers. However, a team with a history teacher has won every tournament, so maybe the rest of the faculty should still be allowed on teams while the history teachers are on one team that only competes in the final round.” This idea could be the solution to everyone’s concerns, as it could result in a fairer competition, while maintaining the camaraderie and excitement everyone loves about the trivia tournaments.