The following article is part of an April Fools’ Edition of The Etownian: the stories are fake the but interviews/quotes are real.
This weekend on Saturday, March 33, Elizabethtown College’s Community Living will host a paintball tournament for better housing selection lottery numbers. The tournament will run from dawn until whenever a winner is chosen. The last person standing will be able to pick where they want to live in Fall 2022.
The paintball tournament was proposed as a last-ditch effort to make students understand how the lottery numbers work. Instead of wasting time explaining to students why their lottery numbers are what they are, the Community Living Team thought it best to just host a paintball tournament and give students the chance to earn their lottery numbers. Also, it’s a pain to figure out the number of credits and the cohorts for each student. Obviously, those with ADA accommodations will be playing hide and seek for their own lottery numbers and rooms the following Sunday.
The rules are pretty straightforward: if you’re shot with a paintball, you are out of the challenge. The longer in the competition, the earlier you pick your room. Unfortunately, the opposite is true: the quicker you get out, the later you pick your room.
To keep everything fair, everyone is required to use the College’s provided paintball guns and eco-safe paintballs. We don’t need extra staff over Easter break to clean up the paint splatters. In addition, Campus Security will be locking all campus buildings to prevent anyone from damaging personal belongings and the interiors of buildings. The Jay Truck will be supplying food and water bottles for those who need a pick-me-up in the middle of the game. If you do not want to participate in the competition, it’s recommended to stay in your dorm or go home for the weekend.
This heated competition is sure to get the blood pumping! Some Etown students are getting ready to do battle.
First-year Grace Flocco is excited to be a part of the first-ever paintball tournament. “It’s a great idea and it sounds fun,” she said.
“I’m a little scared to participate,” first-year Adriana Burmeister said. “I would be a little sad if I lost right away.”
Because Community Living is using the assigned lottery numbers to test the paintball tournament, there’s a huge risk of having your lottery number dropped. Some students are forming their own strategies to protect their current numbers. Some include forming alliances with their desired roommate/roommates and taking out the ones with the higher lottery numbers. “I’m definitely teaming up with the person I want to room with so we get where we want to live,” Flocco said.
First-year Cheyenne Lewis said, “My roommate and I are going to find the seniors and take them down. We have the lower numbers so what do we have to lose?”
If the paintball tournament goes well, hopefully, this will be the new way of picking dorms to keep things fair. “I think for some there’s a benefit as if you have a low number you can raise it, but if I had a high number, I wouldn’t want to risk it,” first-year Lindsay Murr said.
If you have any questions or concerns about the paintball tournament, please email the sportseditor@etown.edu and we will try to answer your questions as best we can.
