Students, profs link up for 'Jeopardy!'

Contestants were playing for Penn umbrellas instead of money and using bells and bicycle horns instead of buzzers, but last week's College of Arts and Sciences Student-Faculty Jeopardy! event had its share of fierce competition. The event, which was organized by the College Dean's Advisory Board -- chaired by College juniors Rashmi Gupta and Courtney Breen -- took place in College Hall. College Dean Richard Beeman enthusiastically played the role of host -- in the process improvising his own zany antics, such as humming the familiar Jeopardy! theme song. The three teams competing in the match -- which Breen said she wants to make an "annual event" -- were each comprised of three students and one professor. Gupta explained that all College students were sent an e-mail and that the contestants were "randomly selected" from those who expressed an interest in participating. The professors, she added, were selected from a "specific pool" of "popular professors." Despite the fact that each team had a faculty representative, students answered most of the questions. "We were there to make them look good," said Ponzy Lu, a Chemistry professor and member of Team A. Team C -- consisting of Psychology Professor Robert DeRubeis, senior Barry Trachtenberg, sophomore Sebastian Stockman, a Daily Pennsylvanian staff member, and freshman Katie Hoffman -- easily emerged victorious in the competition. Trachtenberg attributed Team C's large margin of victory to "the right team chemistry." However, the team might have had something else up its sleeve. Stockman actually appeared on Jeopardy! last year. Questions were chosen from the categories "Current Events and History," "Potpourri," "Entertainment," "Sports" and "Penn Trivia." The sports category moved the fastest, prompting the dean to joke about the "intellectual" ability of participants. In the middle of the game, Beeman even asked the audience a couple of questions and awarded prizes for correct answers. One of the questions asked was the name of Beeman's dog, Chief Justice John Marshmallow. Though the competition was exciting, one of the more interesting parts of the evening came at intermission during an impromptu "Meet the Contestants" session organized by Beeman. During the session, it became clear that the students weren't the only ones preoccupied with the University's recently implemented alcohol policy. The topic was brought up when Beeman questioned Lu about what he does in his spare time. Lu answered that one of the things he likes to do "is no longer allowed on campus," drawing the largest crowd response of the evening. "It's good that [the professors] are not unwilling to talk about it, and that people can be open," Gupta said, when asked what she thought of the fact that alcohol became a topic of conversation even at a student-faculty Jeopardy! match. But the alcohol issue didn't take away from the event, which audience member and Wharton sophomore Brian Curlow deemed "better than real Jeopardy!"