a gay bar's trivia host crowned a rape joke "best team name." the host is now an ex-host. correct answer.
via NJ.com and Daily Voice
Pint has been a bar since 1911, according to NJ.com, which is 115 years of Jersey City nightlife. On Wednesday it met something new: a trivia host.
A team at Pint's weekly Wednesday trivia named itself "Cornell 7 inches," per NJ.com and Daily Voice. "Cornell 7" is what people have been calling the seven current and former Chi Phi fraternity members a former Cornell student accuses, in a civil suit filed in September, of drugging and gang raping her at the fraternity in October 2024. No one has been criminally charged, ABC News reports. The Tompkins County district attorney declined to bring charges in 2024 and has since reopened the case, telling ABC News he intends to put it before a grand jury with the woman's cooperation. The "7 inches" part is the team's own addition, and you can work it out.
The host gave it "best team name." According to a social media post quoted by NJ.com, the host later told the room the "name is a little uncomfortable… but voted best name!" The person who posted noted there were two teams of women in the bar that night.
what the owner said
On Thursday, Pint's founder and owner, Wolf Sterling, posted a video. "When we came into work today, we found out that last night, without our knowledge, our trivia host awarded 'best team name' to a team that had a truly offensive name, a name that violates both how we want to treat our community and the standards we have for our business," Sterling said, as transcribed by NJ.com.
The host has been fired, both outlets report, and Sterling said the bar is donating all of the money it made Wednesday night to sexual violence prevention programs. "Our goal, and the goal we've had for 17 years running this bar, is to make it a safe, welcoming space for everyone," Sterling said, per NJ.com.
The local council member for the ward, Eleana Little, told NJ.com that the behavior "has no place in Jersey City" and that "accountability matters."
the part the reddit thread argued about
Daily Voice says the online fight split the usual way: some people saying a gay bar that lets this happen is not safe, others saying the bar fixed it within a day and should be left alone. One commenter put the stakes plainly: "There are a lot of gay SA survivors in this city, it's especially abhorrent that one of our spaces is doing this." That is the point. Our bars are where a lot of us go precisely because the rest of the world is not careful with us. A microphone in one of them does not get to treat sexual assault as a pun.
The bar got this right fast. The only real question left is what the team members thought they were going to win.
