UV Late Nights, a series of fun activities sponsored by the Student Finance Board (SFB) each Friday night, started off on a favorable note with its first show. Intensity, a trivia game show, was featured on Friday, Sept. 29, in the Travers/Wolfe dining hall.
Named after its location - the letters "U" and "V" are in between "T" (for Travers) and "W" (for Wolfe) - the events are to be held every Friday of this semester as a part of the College's weekend enhancement efforts.
In conjunction with movie nights hosted by the College Union Board, SFB's UV Late Night program will serve to "combat people going home and be an alternative to drinking," Omar Selim, SFB operations director, said. All events are scheduled to start at 9 p.m. and are free and open to all students.
SFB has planned various future activities, including Bingo, poker and a Halloween dance and costume contest with prizes for winners. Friday's kick-off event was intended as a "test run, a learning experience to see what events work," Selim said.
Intensity was a trivia game for individuals and teams. Contestants had a chance to win up to $125 in cash. About 30 to 40 students were present at a time, and at least 11 teams participated at each showing.
Despite the turnout, SFB faced some challenges. Because the program was only approved a week and a half ago, Intensity was only publicized for a short time. In addition, the show was delayed about 10 minutes because Travers had a fire drill Friday evening. However, the event was successful in providing a wholesome alternative activity for at least 70 students.
Cutting Edge Productions was hired for the show, which consisted of three stages. The first stage was four rounds of team trivia on topics such as general trivia, sports, music and geography. The winning team of each round would delegate one member to the next stage, where the four individuals stood on the podium to identify sound clips from popular culture.
The first two contestants to score 500 points advanced to the final "Lightning Stage," which measured the contestant's endurance to pain. Finalists sat in electric chairs and held handles that shocked their bodies; the first one to let go lost.
The audience was also invited to participate in short games for small prizes of $5, $10 and $15 between rounds, including a hula hoop contest, chubby bunny (saying "chubby bunny" with a mouthful of marshmallows), finding bubble gum on a plate of whipped cream and a dance-off.
During the first game, Nathan Tick, sophomore open options in the school of Science, and Victor Salloum, sophomore accounting major, advanced to the finals; Tick won the grand prize of $85. Jamie Mann, freshman interactive multimedia major, won the second game. "My hand hurts, but it was pretty sweet that I just won 85 bucks. It was really fun," Mann said.
Most of the students present learned of the event through fliers posted around campus. Some students said that they would have done schoolwork, watched a movie or gone out to a party if they had not attended the event.
"It was a way to get people together for some good, clean fun," Lindsey Hickman, freshman open options in the school of Science, said.
Most of the participants agreed that the game show was a good idea and that they would like to see more events like it in the future.
