Georgetown Program Board (GPB), a student-led organization that plans campus activities, crowned Eli Blumenfeld (CAS ’25) Georgetown University’s Funniest Human at the annual student-run comedy competition Feb. 21.
Full disclosure: Eli Blumenfeld previously served as a Sports columnist for The Hoya.
Nine comedians — Anna Dewey (CAS ’26), Ian Hicks (CAS ’25), Stephen Purdum (CAS ’26), Dori Rosenstrauch (CAS ’27), Eli Blumenfeld (CAS ’25), Jasmine Criqui (CAS ’26), John Matuszewski (SFS ’25), Frankie Weil (SFS ’25) and Tai Remus Elliot (University of Edinburgh) — each performed a ten-minute stand-up routine in Gaston Hall. Comedians poked fun at a range of topics, from family dynamics, roommate conflicts and dating history to study abroad experiences, cultural misunderstandings and Georgetown’s campus culture.
Full disclosure: Jasmine Criqui is The Hoya’s Creative Director, John Matuszewski previously served in The Hoya’s Photo division and Stephen Purdum previously wrote for The Guide.
Members of the audience voted on their favorite stand-up routines, with Dewey, Purdum, Blumenfeld and Matusezwski advancing to the final four. Sophie Maretz (CAS ’26) — emcee and the contest’s 2024 winner — announced that Blumenfeld won the title of Georgetown’s Funniest Human.
Blumenfeld, a former president of Georgetown Sketch Comedy, a club for students to write and practice comedy sets, said he spent 20 hours preparing his set and brainstorming ideas in a notes app for months prior to the show.
“I came into the audition with a brief idea, maybe a three-minute segment of the full story that I wanted to tell,” Blumenfeld told The Hoya. “I knew I wanted the previous Hoya article to be the starting point of the standup. And from there, for the past week I was writing and editing at a coffee shop a lot, and then the last few days I was kind of honing down the delivery of certain lines and getting feedback from other people on delivery.”
Blumenfeld’s routine drew on his Jewish faith, as well as his performance at the competition two years ago, referencing The Guide’s review of the competition two years ago.
Matuszewski, one of the four finalists, aimed to be a top competitor to validate his hard work on his comedy set.
“My goal was to be a finalist. It would show my friends that it wasn’t a total waste of time for them to listen and criticize my jokes over the dinner table,” Matuszewski wrote to The Hoya. “I was really grateful for their support and wanted to show it wasn’t for nothing. I achieved everything I set out to do and am proud of being a finalist, especially given the fact that I only had five to seven minutes of stand-up experience from performing a few years ago.”
Dewey, another one of the finalists, said she took a collaborative approach to developing her routine.
“I start by writing down bits or anecdotes I think are funny, then usually say them out loud to myself, trying to think about where people might laugh,” Dewey wrote to The Hoya. “The most important part, though, is running it by my friends, and seeing what they might add or cut out. Workshopping with the other performers for Funniest Human this year was definitely the most essential part of the process!”
Maretz said she helped to select competitors for the show this year, who came from a variety of different comedy backgrounds.
“We picked nine people this year, so it’s a pretty good selection pool,” Maretz told The Hoya. “A lot of people that were selected were from the comedy clubs, but a lot of people that auditioned had no experience in comedy and were just trying it out, which I think was super cool.”
Bettina Bottome (CAS ’25), who serves as the events chair of GPB and was in charge of planning the show, said her goal for the event was to create the opportunity for people to laugh.
“Funniest Human is a long-standing tradition for Georgetown and GPB, so I wanted to uphold that tradition and ensure it was a successful event that could be maintained into the future,” Bottome wrote to The Hoya. “Mostly, I just hoped it would provide two hours where people could laugh and have fun. I think the event, by spotlighting some of the school’s funniest people, is important because it allows students to bring joy and humor into other students’ lives.”
Dewey said she saw the event as a celebration of the Georgetown comedy scene rather than a competition.
“My favorite moment from the show was each time a performer walked down from the stage back to the area where all the competitors were sitting, and everyone was silently murmuring congratulations, their favorite bit from the set and giving quiet high-fives and fist bumps,” Dewey wrote. “Yeah, Funniest Human is a competition, but more importantly, a night celebrating comedy on campus, where everyone is supporting everyone, and everyone wants you to succeed.”