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?
