Politicians, entertainers compete with students to benefit nonprofits

Is a city mayor, county commissioner, radio personality or famed bartender smarter than a fifth grader? They said they didn’t think so.

Before the competition began, Mayor Mark Kruzan shook the hands of the fifth graders who whispered to each other, asking who he was.

“You guys are going down!” Mayor Kruzan said.

Ten small voices cried back indignantly.

They told the competitors they had studied and were very smart.

Bluebird Nightclub bartender Leo Cook offered Jim Inman, the host of the competition, an apple with a dollar taped to it. Apparently, he knew he had no chance.

Local personalities Mayor Mark Kruzan, B97 DJ Pam Thrash, Bluebird bartender Leo Cook and Monroe County Commissioner Iris Kiesling competed against 10 Lakeview Elementary School fifth graders in the annual “Are They Smarter Than a Fifth Grader?” competition Thursday.

Ticket sales to the event benefited Martha’s House and Stepping Stones, which are local homeless shelters, and Mother Hubbard’s Cupboard, a Bloomington food pantry.

The competition was organized in honor of National Hunger and Homelessness Awareness Week.

The fifth graders were selected based on an essay contest. Students wrote about how they would solve hunger and homelessness.

The students selected were Brynne Newland, Reid Sills, Garrett Flynn, Caitlyn Betar, Max Heinrich, Reece Young, Nathan Umphress, Lukasz Walendzak, Alison Erman and Bailey Duncan.

The rules were simple. The competition was separated into two rounds, with two adult contestants and five fifth graders per round.

There were 10 questions in each round.

Each pair of contestants got two “cheats” and one “save.” For the cheats, they could “peek,” checking a chosen fifth grader’s answer to decide whether or not to use it, or “copy,” taking a fifth grader’s answer without looking at it.

The “save” would come into play if they were out of cheats but their fifth grader got the answer right.

If they answered a question wrong after using both cheats and a save, they had to admit they were not smarter than a fifth grader.

The first round was Thrash and Cook against the first five fifth graders.

Cook wore a dunce cap, and Thrash brought a Buzz Lightyear action figure for luck.

Thrash promptly dropped Lightyear, and the action figure broke, causing her doom — or so she said.

The topics of each question ranged from first grade art to fifth grade world geography.

Both cheats and the save had been used by the final question. The subject matter was fifth grade U.S. history.

“Who was the first U.S. President to be born in a hospital, Nixon, Taft, Carter or
Kennedy?”

Cook and Thrash guessed Taft, but every fifth grader guessed Carter. The fifth graders were right.

The students were smarter in the first round.

But the adults had one more chance to prove themselves.

There was a bonus question related to the event’s theme. “What is the fastest growing segment of the homeless population — adult men, families with children, teenage runaways or victims of domestic violence?”

“Families with children” was the guess of both the fifth graders and the contestants, so the adults were able to prove they were as smart as the fifth graders.

“I’m barely smarter than a fifth grader,” Cook said.

After a 10 minute intermission, Kruzan and Kiesling took the stage to compete against the other five fifth graders.

“I have made a terrible life decision,” Kruzan said humorously as he took the stage. “There was one question I knew the answer to in that first round — ‘Are you smarter than a fifth grader?’”

“And the answer was?” Inman asked.

“No,” Kruzan said jokingly.

Kruzan and Kiesling missed the first question, and the fifth graders were off to a good start.

By the final question, the peek and copy had been used. The final category was fourth grade music.

“Of these four instruments, which is the largest: piccolo, clarinet, recorder or oboe?”

The fifth graders and competitors answered oboe, but the answer was clarinet.

“This past election night was the longest night of my life,” Kruzan said. “And then there was tonight.”

Inman declared the competition a tie, but the adult competitors would not accept his generosity.

“The fifth graders won that round,” Thrash said.