Students used their smartphones as buzzers during the UPC-hosted event. Winners of the rounds were awarded cash prizes. Photo by Jasmyne Ray.

On Feb. 19, UPC hosted a Black History Month trivia night in Farmer Hall. To participate, students used their smartphones to log into an online quiz to answer the questions that were displayed on flat screen televisions.

All of the questions were multiple choice and displayed until every student submitted their answer. Based on elementary level history, the difficulty of the questions increased as the game progressed. One of the first questions asked was who the first African American Nobel Peace Prize winner was (Answer: Ralph Bunche) and a question from the final round asked what the slave population was at its height in the U.S. (Answer: three million).

There were seven rounds in the game and cash prizes were given to each winner. The winners of the first four rounds were given $20, the winners of the fifth and sixth rounds were given $50 and the winner of the seventh round was given $100. Once a student won one round, they were free to keep playing but were not allowed to win anymore prizes.

“It’s a lot of fun,” said Marcus Moore, a junior elementary education major. Moore won $20 in the third round.

“It’s a great event to bring minorities and people who want to learn about minorities together,” said Taylor Collier, a sophomore family consumer science major. Collier won $20 in the second round.

Lamar Mayton and Micah Saunders from JAMM Entertainment Services were MCs for the evening, with Mayton monitoring the game and Saunders working as the DJ.

Brianna Bryant, freshman a graphic design and business marketing double major, was the last winner of the night, winning $100 in the seventh round.

“I learned a lot of things that I had forgotten in elementary school,” Bryant said.

In between the sixth and seventh rounds, Mayton asked the students to participate in a survey. One of the questions was if they wanted more events like trivia night at Montevallo, to which many students answered a vocal “yes.”