Mika Ellison: Last Saturday, in a Fisk auditorium, a group of students from two resident colleges gathered together to play a game of Jeopardy.
[nat sound]
But this wasn’t any friendly neighborhood game of trivia. Oh no. Whoever won this game would gain the rhetorical upper hand in a long-standing campus rivalry. This was the Battle of the Fairchildren.
Patricia Liu: I was just trying to start a war. And then I but like, and then like, everyone, like, you don’t want it to be obviously a violent war. So this is, like, the best, like way, you know, awesome. Initially, this was supposed to be a snowball fight, but that’s a little too much, a little too much, so we are settling with Jeopardy.
That was School of Comm freshman Patricia Liu, whose penchant for the absurd led her to this idea.
East Fairchild and West Fairchild were built in the early 1980s, and house the International Studies and Communications Residential Colleges, respectively. The two buildings are separate, but mirror each other, leading to frequent comparisons.
Professor Roger Boye is the faculty chair of CRC and was in attendance with East Farichild’s canine mascot, Mugsy. Over the sounds of the Jeopardy theme song, he told me that the Fairchildren rivalry has been going on for at least a few decades, and that snowball fights and snow forts have indeed been fought over the years.
ISRC President and Weinberg sophomore Angely Rose said she enjoyed collaborating with CRC, and also had high hopes for the West Farichildren.
Angely Rose: Hopefully they know, hopefully they won’t embarrass me. I’m kidding. I’m sure they’ll do great.
Angely Rose: I like our mascot as they at pineapple, so hopefully they know, like the history and like the meaning of that.
In teams of four each, the Fairchildren battled it out, Jeopardy style, to determine the most knowledgeable, with categories like “Evanston” and “Both Fairchildren,” and questions like, “How many washers and dryers does East Fairchild have?”
[nat pop]
After a tumultuous game that included extra moderators, audience input, and some East Fairchildren joining the West Fairchild team, CRC emerged victorious, with a final score of 1400 to West Fairchild’s 0.
Post-game, I spoke to School of Comm freshman Clare Keady and Bienen and McCormick first-year Ethan Weingust.
Clare Keady: My name is Clare Keady, and I am representing East Fairchild. I think the game was awesome, and CRC is the best fairchild.
Ethan Weingust: We’re a little bit bummed about this loss. We probably could have been a little bit better prepared … We made it out of the negative. We made it out of the negative. Well, we finished at zero. Well, okay, I guess that’s technically not negative, but we’re chilling, and I think we all bonded, especially with all of the East Fairchild people who played with our team. Feels very telling. Yeah, I feel like that says a lot.
After all, maybe the real Fairchildren rivalry is about the friends we make along the way – Even if they’re from a different dorm.
For WNUR News, I’m Mika Ellison.
