Provost Ron Daniels fulfilled one of his dreams yesterday at the Greek Week trivia bowl in Huntsman Hall - he got to be a fraternity guy.
"It's just a lot of fun," said Daniels, who was never in a fraternity as a student at the University of Toronto, though he wishes he had been.
"I just jumped at the opportunity" to moderate the bowl, he said.
The event was held as a part of Greek Week, a week of events celebrating Greek life on Penn's campus. The week will include a recruitment panel to answer freshmen's questions, powder-puff football and a run for breast cancer.
Phi Kappa Sigma - commonly known as Skulls - won the trivia bowl after taking a tie-breaker round against Beta Theta Pi.
"We watch Jeopardy every night," College senior and Skulls brother Josh Berman said to explain his fraternity's win. "We watch an exorbitant amount of television."
Other fraternities prepared in similar ways, though their efforts did not pay off as well.
"We were drunk and played trivial pursuit" Saturday night, College sophomore and Pi Kappa Phi team member Dan Tavana said.
Fourteen fraternities and sororities participated, with up to six members on each team.
The Delta Delta Delta sorority came in last.
Questions fell in the categories of entertainment news, current events, sports and Penn trivia and ranged from "Who is the current liberal party leader of Canada?" (Stephen Harper) to "Who is the CEO of Philadelphia's largest private employer?" (Amy Gutmann) to "The third brother of which '90s pop band just got married?" (Hanson).
Some questions elicited interesting and very wrong answers from the fraternity and sorority members. The question "What large item was stolen in Australia last week?" was answered with a fire truck, a kidney and crocodile hunter Steve Irwin's body.
The correct answer was 12 green-tree pythons.
InterFraternity Council president and College senior Max Dubin considered the kickoff events of Greek Week successful. On Saturday, fraternities and sororities participated in a service project at Morris Park in West Philadelphia's Overbrook neighborhood.
"This week, we hope to connect with the rest of the University with a lot of our open events," Dubin said.
