By K. E. Washington
Livingstone College News Service

For the most part, intramural competition at the college level pits groups of rough-and-tough students on basketball courts or football fields to show who has the most dominance.

But Livingstone College this year celebrated its academic heritage by holding the Presidential Quiz Bowl, an intramural competition between student teams, in honor of the 10^th anniversary of President Dr. Jimmy R. Jenkins Sr. 

On Nov. 16 before an audience of 1,000 of their classmates, three coed teams spent 40 minutes answering a series of questions in hopes of capturing first place, according to Professor James Fakunle of the Business Division. “We had general knowledge questions on economics, business and psychology, subjects that are taught here,” Fakunle said. “The 2016-2017 Presidential Quiz Bowl is a showcase of Livingstone’s scholastic excellence in competition.”

Quiz Bowl students were chosen by their professors. Team three, which included Sherrita Gavin, Tyler Taylor, Sandeep Singh Negi, Rajika Khurana and Gagandeep Kaur, captured first-place honors in the competition after spending several weeks preparing for it.

“We studied very hard over three or four weeks,” Gavin said. “It was awesome! We really did work hard,” added Taylor.

Livingstone College is no slouch in the Quiz Bowl department, having participated for the past 20 years. In fact, as recently as March 2015, Livingstone was one of 48 HBCUs in the Honda Campus All-Star Challenge’s National Championship and received a $4,000 grant for qualifying.

The Presidential Quiz Bowl is one of several events that occurred during the weeklong anniversary celebration. Others were the Royal Endowment Gala, hosted by Livingstone First Lady Dr. Faleese Moore Jenkins, an Ecumenical Prayer Breakfast, a golf tournament and the President’s Masked Scholarship Ball, which raised more than half a million dollars.

Founded in 1879, Livingstone College is a private, historically black college serving roughly 1,200 students from the U.S. and several other countries. It was founded by the African-American Episcopal Zion Church and offers Bachelor of Arts and Bachelor of Science degrees.

All proceeds from the anniversary events will support scholarships as part of Livingstone’s five year, $25 million Campaign for Excellence.