A Dude Re­views Dude Week

MISHAWAKA – Dude Week has fi­nally come to an end, and it’s time to look back at all the pan-dude-mo­nium that took place. 

On Mon­day night, Feb. 10, a slip and slide ran the length of one of Oak­wood’s halls. The in­no­v­a­tive gen­tle­men of Oak­wood ac­com­plished this by cov­er­ing a first-floor hall in a gi­ant tarp, slather­ing it with wa­ter and body wash and putting a mat­tress at the end to avoid gra­tu­itous in­juries. Con­se­quently, it’s about the nicest Oak­wood has smelled in a year. Af­ter the wa­ter and soap had mixed well enough, the boys could build up enough speed to move the mat­tress a few feet back from where the oth­ers were hold­ing it.  

Tues­day, Feb. 11, Oak­wood held a dorm Bible study. The res­i­dents trekked up to AC 342 for a mini-chapel ser­vice and a Res­i­dent Ad­vi­sor trivia night. The catch is that the halls could­n’t an­swer ques­tions about their own RAs; a tie be­tween two of the halls led to a tie-break­ing round of rock-pa­per-scis­sors. The win­ner of the event was Bai­ley Mot­t’s hall on the first floor of Oak­wood.  

Im­me­di­ately fol­low­ing this was a Fam­ily Feud-like event where each RA had to an­swer three ques­tions, with each an­swer be­ing drawn from a poll of every fresh­man in Oak­wood. If the RAs an­swered the ques­tions cor­rectly, they were safe; if they an­swered in­cor­rectly, they had to suf­fer a pun­ish­ment. Em­bar­rass­ing phone calls, tick­ling and other hor­rors were vis­ited upon the un­lucky RAs who could­n’t cor­rectly an­swer ques­tions like who had the best hair among their ranks. 

On Wednes­day, Feb. 12, Oak­wood held a Wa­ter Pong tour­na­ment in the base­ment. The bracket con­sisted of roughly two teams per hall; each team had two mem­bers that al­ter­nated throw­ing two ping­pong balls at the op­pos­ing team’s cups of wa­ter. The Oak­wood Res­i­dent Di­rec­tor, Nat Mon­tiel, served pan­cakes hot off the grid­dle to the hun­gry crowd. Af­ter a few tense games, one of the two teams from Matthew Pietsch’s hall emerged vic­to­ri­ous. 

The last event of Dude Week was the dorm vs. dorm (vs. dorm) com­pe­ti­tion on Thurs­day, Feb. 13. The boys in Oak­wood, Manges and Founders’ Vil­lage all com­peted to win var­i­ous chal­lenges: a com­pet­i­tive eat­ing re­lay, a three-point shoot-out com­pe­ti­tion, a Mario Kart tour­na­ment, a home-run com­pe­ti­tion and a three-way dodge­ball game. A win for each game was worth three points for first place, two points for sec­ond place and one point for third place. All dorms made valiant ef­forts, but Oak­wood took home the Dude Week flag. 

In ret­ro­spect, the most im­por­tant as­pect to re­mem­ber about Dude Week is the fel­low­ship and broth­er­hood it in­spired among the young men on cam­pus. The tech-cleanse and com­mu­nal events helped every­one who par­tic­i­pated grow closer to neigh­bors they might have oth­er­wise not even met. That is what fella-ship is all about.