Pi Kappa Phi
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40 free Pi Kappa Phi trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Pi Kappa Phi began with a lost student election. A few friends at a small Southern school, shut out of campus office by the existing Greek-letter chapters, answered by starting a brotherhood of their own in December 1904. More than a century later it counts over 160,000 initiates. The Student Creed sits at the centre of that story. J. Friend Day wrote it in 1932, it has not been revised since, and the public values every member is asked to live by are drawn from it. This quiz covers the creed's background and those values, along with the founding, the symbols and traditions, the national philanthropy and its long-distance bike rides, and alumni from the Senate to the space program. It is written for brothers, associate members preparing for initiation, and anyone curious about how a college fraternity actually works. Every answer comes with a short explanation.
30 of 40 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Nu Phi, the 1904 campus party that became Pi Kappa Phi, assigned one member to do what to likely rival voters?
Kidnap them
Kidnap them was the election-day plan for anyone likely to back the other ticket. Nu Phi still lost, because several of its own men quietly voted for the opposing slate.
Q 02Pi Kappa Phi member Gaylord Nelson, a governor and U.S. senator from Wisconsin, founded which annual observance in 1970?
Earth Day
Earth Day began as a teach-in on environmental issues on April 22, 1970, and it launched a new wave of environmental activism across the United States.
Q 03Pi Kappa Phi member Adrian Cronauer's years as an Armed Forces Radio disc jockey inspired which 1987 film?
Good Morning, Vietnam
Good Morning, Vietnam starred Robin Williams as Cronauer, an Air Force sergeant who had chosen broadcasting over flight training when he enlisted in the early 1960s.
Q 04Which Hall of Fame manager, who ran the Los Angeles Dodgers from 1976 to 1996, was also a Pi Kappa Phi member?
Tommy Lasorda
Tommy Lasorda won two World Series with the Dodgers and reached Cooperstown in 1997. Pi Kappa Phi lists him as a member-at-large, not with any campus chapter.
Q 05Pi Kappa Phi brother William Kouwenhoven, a Johns Hopkins engineer, is credited with inventing which lifesaving device?
The heart defibrillator
The heart defibrillator made Kouwenhoven's name, but he also helped develop closed-chest cardiac massage, which earned him the title Father of Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation.
Q 06Before Pi Kappa Phi existed, its future members ran a campus election slate called Nu Phi, which stood for what?
Non-fraternity
Non-fraternity was the whole point: Nu Phi's 15 men banded together because the three national chapters on campus voted as a bloc and kept outsiders from winning office.
Q 07Pi Kappa Phi brother Malcolm Johnson won a Pulitzer Prize for newspaper articles that inspired which 1954 film?
On the Waterfront
On the Waterfront drew on Johnson's 24-part New York Sun series about crime on the city's docks, though the film moved the story across the river to Hoboken, New Jersey.
Q 08Pi Kappa Phi was started on December 10, 1904, by three students at which South Carolina school?
College of Charleston
College of Charleston is the oldest municipal college in the United States, and all three of the students who started Pi Kappa Phi there had grown up in the city around it.
Q 09Which Pi Kappa Phi cycling event grew out of Bruce Rogers's 1987 solo fundraising ride?
Journey of Hope
Journey of Hope began the next summer, when a 21-member team rode coast to coast. Its teams now cover more than 8,000 combined miles each year for people with disabilities.
Q 10Pi Kappa Phi brother and ex-astronaut Ed Lu co-founded the B612 Foundation to protect the planet from which threat?
Asteroid strikes
Asteroid strikes are what the B612 Foundation works to prevent. Lu helped start it in 2002 while still flying for NASA, then left the agency five years later for Google.
Q 11Brothers of Pi Kappa Phi, not to be confused with the Pikes of Pi Kappa Alpha, go by which common nickname?
Pi Kapps
Pi Kapps is the short form the national office uses itself, from its lists of well-known alumni to the leadership school it runs for chapter officers.
Q 12Which flower, also the emblem of England's House of Lancaster, is the official flower of Pi Kappa Phi?
Red rose
Red rose is the official flower. It sits beside primary colors of gold and white, which Pi Kappa Phi pairs with royal blue as an auxiliary color.
Q 13Pi Kappa Phi's official magazine, published since 1909, took which name in 1911 from two of its symbols?
The Star and Lamp
Q 21Pi Kappa Phi's Gamma chapter, its first long-distance chapter and first with a house, formed in 1909 at which school?
UC Berkeley
UC Berkeley gave Pi Kappa Phi a West Coast chapter within five years of its 1904 start, the leap that turned a small South Carolina brotherhood into a national organization.
Q 22Pi Kappa Phi's national convention, held every two years to conduct legislative business, goes by which name?
Supreme Chapter
Supreme Chapter is formed by temporarily dissolving every chapter into one body, and it also elects the seven alumni who sit on the governing National Council.
Q 23J. Friend Day wrote Pi Kappa Phi's Student Creed in 1932 while holding which office?
National Historian
The Star and Lamp replaced a plainer first title that simply called the publication a journal. Every member now gets a life subscription to the twice-yearly magazine.
Q 14Pi Kappa Phi's national headquarters, the Kelley A. Bergstrom Leadership Center, is in which North Carolina city?
Charlotte
Charlotte is home to the center, which also houses a museum displaying the original minutes from December 10, 1904, and the very first membership badge.
Q 15Which annual Pi Kappa Phi celebration traces back to a dinner cooked by Harry Mixson's mother on December 10, 1905?
Founders' Day
Founders' Day marks the December 10 anniversary. That first dinner toasted a successful opening year, and alumni groups across the country still gather for it each winter.
Q 16Which Pi Kappa Phi founder, a 19-year-old senior in 1904, became its first president and drafted its constitution?
Andrew Kroeg
Andrew Kroeg resolved to start his own Greek-letter group after the Nu Phi ticket lost its campus election, reasoning that nothing less could match the existing chapters' influence.
Q 17Pi Kappa Phi chapters call their president by which title, borrowed from the chief magistrates of ancient Athens?
Archon
Archon has been the president's title since the first meeting in 1904, and 12 current or past holders of the office sit on a student board that advises the national council.
Q 18Nu Phi, the forerunner of Pi Kappa Phi, announced secret meetings by sketching which symbol on a classroom chalkboard?
A hand
A hand was the secret sign. Inside the sketched outline, members wrote the meeting time and the last name of whoever was hosting that night.
Q 19Pi Kappa Phi alumnus Wally Butts won a 1942 national championship as head football coach of which team?
Georgia Bulldogs
Georgia Bulldogs teams under Butts also won four Southeastern Conference titles. He coached in Athens from 1939 to 1960 after playing three sports at Mercer University.
Q 20Pi Kappa Phi's second chapter, Beta, was chartered in 1907 at which South Carolina school?
Presbyterian College
Presbyterian College and the Alpha campus were then the only two South Carolina schools where Greek-letter groups were allowed, because state law barred them at public colleges.
National Historian was Day's post when the National Council directed him to write it. A member of the Emory chapter, he produced a text that has never been revised.
Q 24Which value, defined as a commitment that transcends personal selfishness, heads Pi Kappa Phi's list of public values?
Common Loyalty
Common Loyalty comes first of the seven. The list closes with Lifelong Commitment, the obligation to stay involved after graduation and keep building the ideal chapter.
Q 25Pi Kappa Phi's accountability value tells members to use which approach when confronting brothers who fall short?
Ultimate Respect
Ultimate Respect is also a workshop, in which a trained facilitator teaches chapters how to step in effectively when members break Pi Kappa Phi's expectations.
Q 26Pi Kappa Phi's national philanthropy, known as Push America until 2014, now goes by which name?
The Ability Experience
The Ability Experience was chosen to reflect a mission of recognizing what people can do, and chapters raise more than $1,000,000 a year for the cause.
Q 27Pi Kappa Phi's 1977 service project grew from what, designed by sculptor Thomas Sayre for children with disabilities?
Play units
Play units by Sayre caught the executive director's eye in 1976, and within a year Pi Kappa Phi had adopted the P.U.S.H. project as a national cause of its own.
Q 28Pi Kappa Phi cyclists who cross the United States each summer for charity finish their ride in which city?
Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C. is the finish line: two teams leave the West Coast, average about 75 miles a day and end together on the steps of the U.S. Capitol.
Q 29Gear Up Florida, Pi Kappa Phi's two-week charity bike ride that starts in Miami, finishes each May in which city?
Tallahassee
Tallahassee hosts the finish, a ride-in at the Florida State Capitol that caps about 850 miles through orange-grove country, the Gulf Coast, Orlando and Jacksonville.
Q 30On Pi Kappa Phi's charity bike rides, what are the stops where cyclists celebrate with people with disabilities called?
Friendship Visits
Friendship Visits might be a dance party, adaptive games, a shared meal or campfire songs, and many host organizations circle the team's arrival on the calendar like a holiday.