 |
STUMPED: Team Deuce member
Dana Johnson, with teammates and fellow first-year
law students Ognen Stojanovski and Craig Segall,
reacts to a question posed by Battle of the Brains
host—and Jeopardy! juggernaut—Ken
Jennings (top).
Linda A. Cicero |
the teams boasted names
like The Brooding Omnipresence and Booyakasha. A group
of female faculty donned black suits and red blouses,
dubbing themselves “NOT Men in Black.” One
member of the Million Dollar Babies, administrator Randy
Mont-Reynaud, flexed her way to the stage, complete
with robe, boxing gloves, sports bra and gold-ribbon-threaded
hair.
It was typical flamboyance from the Battle of the Brains,
a student-faculty trivia tournament at Stanford Law
School, with one additional feature: the 10th annual
competition was hosted by none other than Ken Jennings,
the all-time-winningest Jeopardy! champion.
The law school community packed Kresge Auditorium March
4 to watch Jennings quiz the teams—three made
up of students, three composed of faculty and staff—on
chemical equations, geographical knowledge and actors’
middle names. “Students enjoy watching each other
excel in different things outside of law, whether it’s
the intramural basketball team, the annual Law School
musical or a trivia bowl. Battle of the Brains is the
time of year for the trivia experts to shine,”
says event director and second-year law student Lisa
Schwartz.
Sponsored by the Law Students Association, the event
also has a serious purpose. This year, Battle of the
Brains raised a record $23,000 from law firms and corporations,
which will help the Stanford Community Law Clinic provide
free legal services and enable students from the Stanford
Community Action for Human Rights Project to promote
health care in Ghana.
At the March competition, pop-culture knowledge proved
some teams’ ace in the hole and others’
undoing. Skinner and the B.F.s made a comeback at the
end of the student elimination round as David Rybicki
recognized a lyric from ABBA’s 1976 smash hit
“Dancing Queen” and Joshua Kaul jumped up
to identify Jessica Simpson’s husband. Faculty
teams fared less well when Jennings asked them to name
a body-temperature boy band. The Million Dollar Babies
proposed *NSYNC; the Brooding Omnipresence suggested
Backstreet Boys; and NOT Men in Black member and law
professor Pamela Karlan asked, “You’re asking
me about a boy band?” The answer: 98 Degrees.
In the final round, faculty winner Million Dollar Babies,
leading student team Skinner and the B.F.s, and wild-card
student team Booyakasha faced off. Jennings hissed along
with spectators while the teams made their wagers on
the last question: who were the No. 1- and No. 3-ranked
students in the Law School class of 1952? All three
teams identified the alumni, but the faculty/staff team
put them in the wrong order and Booyakasha bet too few
points. That left the eponymous Michelle Skinner and
B.F.s James Darrow, Kaul and Rybicki, all second-year
students, triumphant. The answer, by the way, is not
trivial. You’ve heard of William H. Rehnquist
and Sandra Day O’Connor? |
