Calvin News

A Calvin student organization is sponsoring the college’s first-ever official Rock, Paper, Scissors tournament. 
The event will take place from Monday, February 18 through Thursday, March 27, 2008. 
“We first planned on doing arm wrestling, but that’s a pretty select group of people who would do that,” said Kristin Crawford, a first-year student and member of the Calvin Video Network (CVN), which is hosting the event. “Rock, Paper, Scissors is easy for anyone to play.” 
The tournament is organized as a residence hall contest. 
Participants from each of the seven Calvin residence halls and the Knollcrest East Apartments (plus off-campus students) will compete on their designated evenings. The final two contestants from each dorm will throw down—literally—in the finale on Thursday, March 27, 2008. 

The entire shebang, complete with emcees and referees, will be filmed by CVN to create a program suitable for showing on Calvin’s Channel 4. 
The student videographers hope to mimic the format of the World Series of Poker or other tournament shows for the format of their program.
“Once we’ve narrowed the field to the top two contestants from each dorm, we hope to do background and interviews on them as part of the program,” said freshman CVN member Josh Schroyer.
The student organizers hope that the Rock, Paper Scissors tournament becomes an annual Calvin event a la Chaos Day and Mud Bowl.
“The dorms tend to have fewer activities in the winter,” Schroyer said. “Maybe this could be the Chaos Day of the spring.”
Though both Crawford and Schroyer admit to recently studying Rock, Paper, Scissors strategy, neither will be playing in the tournament. 
“We have to keep things organized and on track because we’ll have cameras filming the whole time,” Schroyer said.
“We’ll also be making sure people don’t cheat,” Crawford added.
Both are happy that CVN has chosen a contest that doesn’t require a great deal of skill and training to play. 
“It’s not something you have to prepare for and sign up to do,” Schroyer said. “It’s just something you have to show up and do. Last night, I was talking about it with some guys in my dorm, and they started doing it. They had their own little practice camp to get ready.”