Chris White

Chris White
Noted subjects	Music, Urban Planning
Current college	University of Pennsylvania (2009-2010)
Past colleges	Swarthmore (2002-2005)
High school	Bloomfield
Stats	HDWhite • NAQT

Chris White is currently a graduate student at Penn in the field of urban planning, starting in 2008. Previously, he attended Swarthmore College from 2001 to 2005, and Bloomfield HS before then. He knows some music, and is probably the only person left in quizbowl who remains nostalgic for the 30-20-10 and other "nonstandard" bonus formats.

High School

Was a long time ago. Chris attended the 2001 NAC as a senior, and the team finished somewhere in the middle of the pack. They qualified for the HSNCT as well, but only had money for one national and didn't know any better.

Swarthmore

While Chris was mildly active as a freshman, his participation in quizbowl greatly increased his sophomore year, when the graduation of Peter Austin and general mass turnover within the club left him the only person willing and able to run things. Chris led the Swarthmore team his sophomore and junior years, rebuilding the team, editing several tournaments (SNEWT in 2002 and 2003, QOTC in 2003 and 2004), and earning the justified ire of packet editors everywhere by writing lots of impossible music theory questions. As a senior, he relinquished control of the club, but remained active and helped to edit SNEWT in 2004. During this time, he managed one top scoring prize (at Princeton's "Kickboxer" tournament) and was on the Swarthmore team that won D2 at NAQT's 2003 Sectionals, still his only tournament victory (though Swarthmore teams were occasionally the top all-undergrad squad at various tournaments).

After his dream of leaving Swarthmore as a quizbowl team with enough institutional stability to survive the inevitable lean years was dashed mere months after graduation in 2005, he decided to completely abandon quizbowl in a fit of spite.

Penn

In 2008, Chris began graduate school at Penn, studying urban planning. Around this time, he heard that Swarthmore had a team again, and decided to finally succumb to Weiner's Law #2, returning to quizbowl after three years of retirement. Despite an inauspicious start (going winless at the 2008 VCU Open with Josh Sokol), he has remained active with the Penn team since then. The next year, he helped the team to top-bracket finishes at both ACF Nationals and ICT despite his absence probably not going over very well with his graduate program.

For one year, he was the only active member of the team over 21 and had the burden of driving everyone around, despite not actually owning a car. With Eric Mukherjee's arrival and a few fender-benders on Chris' part, the team now largely takes trains.