Organizations collide to celebrate Black History Month

By Asia McGill

What is a night full of trivia, snacks and laughter held by four campus organizations called– what is Black Jeopardy? 

Zeta Phi Beta, Black Student Union (BSU), Black Men Unified (BMU) and Rider African Student Association (RASA) collaborated to host a Black Jeopardy game open to the Rider community on  Feb. 13.

Those in attendance were split into four groups, and all players answered one question from their selected category with the difficulty of the questions ranging by the price associated with the question. Opposing teams could steal and answer for points if the current team could not come up with an answer to the question they chose.

The categories of questions included: famous people, Black film, food, Black card revoked, guess that song and miscellaneous.

Questions such as “Who is the most famous black person in the world?” or “Who was the first African American to play baseball?” tested each player’s knowledge of Black history and culture.

Players quickly learned to use teamwork as their strategy, and the game began to pick up its speed as each team was either serving quick answers or stealing the questions for gains in the game.

As more rounds were played, the game began to dwindle down to a tight race amoung three teams. In the end, the underdog team took victory and shared group high-fives.

Arianna Asare is a sophomore psychology major that said she enjoys attending Black events and always looks forward to them. 

“I would say they allow for representation, they allow for us to see people who look like us and make connections with people who look like us,” Asare said

Asare also mentioned that attending these events is not only to make connections with people of color around campus, but to form a sense of community.

“It just allows us to be seen and heard and for us to be represented in a PWI [Predominantly White Institution],” Asare said.

One of the hosts of Black Jeopardy, sophomore marketing major Maleehah Barnett, shared why keeping events like this not only celebrates Black history, but creates a sense of unity around Rider’s campus.

“I feel like being at a PWI, Black people don’t really have a space to come together, so hosting Black events just gives us a space to come together and connect,” Barnett said.

Barnett is the event coordinator for BMU, and though her responsibilities mainly pertain to BMU, she is still a fellow member of BSU. 

“Just to be connected on campus … it’s always good to see familiar faces,” Barnett said.

Though not all questions could be answered by some teams, it still served as a learning experience of the history of Black America, as well as the culture that it has created. 

All of those who played in the game or came for support joined in for a group photo and concluded yet another successful event in the celebration of Black History Month.