And Justice for Some
Second floor Cretin is my former floor. They are still the floor I belong to in spirit, it’s just that my physical body ended up on fifth floor. Anyways, Cretin 2 does happen to be, this year at least, the best/highest caliber male floor on campus. Fifth floor can’t really hold a candle to the coolness that is second floor … maybe it’s the dude who smokes in his room up here, maybe it’s the loud music at all hours from right next door, maybe it’s the child right below me who is rapidly losing his hearing to an incredible set of speakers playing less-than-incredible music at higher-than-safe levels. But that’s neither here nor there.
This week, Residence Hall Association held a series of activities for homecoming week and, taken all together, they were deemed something like the “Residence Hall Olympics”. Or a title to that effect. Now, three activities were planned in which a floor sent participants (participantS) to compete. Second floor Cretin happened to completely dominate the first event, the tug-o-war. And by dominate, I mean completely crush all opposition. Continuing on: the commonly agreed upon idea of “Olympics” is for a floor/team to advance from the first event to the next events in a progression (quarter finals, semi-finals, etc.).
A progression.
The next competition involved plucking gummy worms from cream pies using one’s mouth. Now, considering that Olympics are a team sport that progresses from one event to the next, wouldn’t it make sense that the competition that Cretin 2 faced in the pie eating contest would be both a.) a participant of the previous competition and b.) comprised of greater than one (1) member. Neither of these happened to be true of the single female representing Dowling, who repeatedly pulled gummy worms from various pies without any other floor members present and without Dowling having even participated in the tug-o-war. This left Cretin 2 asking the questions a.) What gives? and b.) Could someone explain this?
That brings us to tonight. Earlier this evening, carrying cowbells, airhorn, the imperial march blaring, wearing our Southcampus t-shirt, we went to fight for our pride. We went to battle against immorality and prove without a doubt that cheaters never win. My throat still hurts from screaming during the relay in which we faced five Dowling women. In terms of time, we beat them by a little over 1 second. However, the judge made a strange call. She determined that we broke a rule in the race. Sound fair? What if I added: that rule wasn’t there at the beginning. Arbitrarily, they decided to apply a penalty of five (5) seconds to our time. A penalty for not following rules that didn’t exist wasn’t mentioned before the relay.
Muddy and dejected, with only two bins of gummy worms to show for their fight for justice, Cretin 2 left the playing field.
It’s not the inconsistent application of a changing ruleset, nor the endorsement of a hall (Dowling) that didn’t come close to following the rules, and it wasn’t even the fact that Cretin lost. It’s the principal of the thing. I mean, at college you have to throw away your preconceptions about people and your inhibitions and just learn to endorse things that, in your earlier years, you would have thought yourself “too cool” to participate in. You have to look at the world with an open mind and a down-to-earth attitude.
What I saw this past week was an entire floor doing just that; throwing away their inhibitions and preconceived notions and whole-heartedly endorsing the spirit of competition. What I hated to see was the way in which they were continually cut down by hairs being split against them in the name of making things “fair” and “open to all”.
If you compete, you have to play by the rules. That means entering by the rules and participating by the rules. Cretin 2 played by the rules and fought the fair fight. Maybe next time, justice will prevail.
We’ll wait.