Article by Eli Holm. Photos by Eli Holm.
When the ghosts and goblins clear out from Halloween’s final witching hour, snow usually takes their place. Pumpkin spice turns to winter ice and all the ghouls fill in the shadows of the early sunsets.
But for central Minnesota’s premiere, student-run radio station, KVSC, the Halloween chill was too enticing to leave in October. When picking a theme for the 46th annual Trivia Weekend, the signature event for the station, those spooks and shivers seemed like the perfect trick to play.
This year’s theme for Trivia Weekend is Trick-or-Trivia. That means a 50-hour, non-stop competition featuring teams from across the state, country, and world, using their knowledge to win the biggest Halloween treat of them all, The KVSC Trivia Trophy.
“This isn’t your regular bar trivia,” Dan Seeger, KVSC Station Manager said.
From Friday night to Sunday night, nine questions are asked every hour over the KVSC Radio waves. It’s an entirely remote competition; teams answer questions by calling into the trivia phone hotlines. They’re allowed to use whatever resources they want; nothing is off-limits.
“One time I needed to find a trivia answer in the middle of “Valley Girl” and that was a lot of fun.” Winston Johnson, KVSC Music Director and former Trivia Weekend participant said, reminiscing on the unexpected places some of these questions have taken him.
“That’s one of the things that makes KVSC’s trivia contest so exciting,” Johnson said. “Our trivia team writers really do a great job with digging deep, finding obscure curiosities,”
In a post-internet, post-pandemic world, all this detective work, internet sleuthing, and remote competition seems natural. But Trivia Weekend started in 1980, at a time before the internet gave us all the chance to become Sherlock Holmes for a trivia competition.
“The first contest we ever did was run by Reslife,” Seeger said. “Everybody who participated was living in the resident halls and these different dorm floors were in rivalries.”
Three years after, KVSC took over the competition, but even to this day, one of the main motivating factors is the rivalry between different student groups.
According to the Trivia Weekend History, the competition began to alleviate the dreaded cabin fever college kids might feel, away from home, stuck in Minnesota’s seemingly endless winters.
But the longevity of the event shows that the weekend’s not just about rivalry, homesickness, and fun.
“It is about togetherness,” Seeger said. “There are alumni who started playing this contest 30 years ago, and this is their excuse to come back to St. Cloud, hang out with their college buddies, and do this fun, goofy thing that they bonded over in the first place”
“They all know that in February, we’re going to come back to St. Cloud and we’re gonna be together again and it’s gonna feel like no time at all has passed,” Seeger said.
“From my perspective, what makes it so special, it goes even beyond that,” Johnson said. “As people grow up, there are less and less opportunities for people to be able to express themselves and their niche interests in a context where that’s validated and championed”
Trivia Weekend marches along as a St. Cloud tradition, something that started as school rivalry has grown to a global event where college graduates can relive the nostalgia of their college days, retain connection with people who might be on the opposite side of the world, and feel “validated for seeing every episode of MacGyver,” as Johnson put it.
The 46th year of Trivia Weekend kicks off at 5 p.m. on KVSC 88.1 FM, this Friday, Feb. 14th.
“You might think ‘Oh it’d be perfect to do a Valentine’s theme,’ we’ve already done that,” Seeger says. “We did that several years ago.”
The KVSC Trivia Weekend is free to register until 3 p.m. on Friday. You can find more information on the KVSC Website.
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