The University’s senior management team has won this year’s Staff vs. Students University Challenge.
Deputy Vice-Chancellor Jane Grenville, Pro-Vice-Chancellor John Robinson, Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Research Deborah Smith and the Director of Finance Graham Gilbert beat the 2014 team of students in a closely fought contest by 270 points to 230.
Questions on the Tour de France, William Shakespeare, physics and maths helped the management team triumph over students Jack Alexander, Josef Crowther, Adam Koper and Alasadair Middleton at the Roger Kirk Centre in James College.
But there was concern for the senior staff team at half-time as the group of undergraduates and postgraduates managed to notch up a 35 point lead with 120 points to 85.
Student team member Jack Alexander told Vision that at half-time the team thought they were going to “win it”.
“We were doing quite well for most of it and then we got beaten up at the end there,” he said.
“We haven’t actually played as a team before so it’s a bit of a different experience, but I thought we gelled quite well. It was disappointing to be beaten obviously but we sort of expected to be beaten. At half time, we thought we were going to win it.”
YUSU Academic Officer Dan Whitmore took the place of Jeremy Paxman as host for the annual event, with ITV film crews shooting the 2-hour contest for a documentary to be aired later this year.
“It was good,” Dan said.
“I really enjoyed being Paxman for the evening, even though I wasn’t quite as sharp as he was potentially. Both teams did well and the staff won. You can’t win everything as the students just found out, but they did pretty well.”
The student team will now go on to represent York on the next series of BBC Two’s University Challenge later this year.
It is hoped that the new group of students will be able to “bring home the bacon” after last year’s team were dealt an early second round knockout by the University of Oxford.
At the selection process opening in November, Whitmore told Vision that he was keen to “bring home the bacon, vanquishing all who stand before them with displays of outrageous intellectual prowess.”