Bethel Boys Cel­e­brate Dude Week

MISHAWAKA – Dude Week has ar­rived, mean­ing that all the boys’ dorms on cam­pus are about to get a lot more ram­bunc­tious. 

The Dude Week dates this year are Feb. 10-14. Dur­ing this time, the res­i­dents of Oak­wood-Slater Hall, Manges Hall and Founder’s Vil­lage will be par­tic­i­pat­ing in an elec­tron­ics cleanse; no com­put­ers, tele­vi­sions or video games are per­mit­ted, and only min­i­mal use of phones is al­lowed. Granted, this is op­tional for these res­i­dents be­cause sev­eral of them are tak­ing courses that re­quire the use of elec­tron­ics, and the min­i­mal use of phones sim­ply means no so­cial me­dia. How­ever, all res­i­dents are highly en­cour­aged to par­tic­i­pate by their RA’s. 

In ad­di­tion to the elec­tron­ics cleanse, Dude Week con­sists of sev­eral events for the par­tic­i­pants, in­clud­ing res­i­dent trivia nights, when res­i­dents of the dorms an­swer ques­tions about their RA’s in a Jeop­ardy-style set­ting. The twist for the event is this: the boys aren’t al­lowed to an­swer ques­tions con­cern­ing the RA of their hall – only the other RA’s are fair game. Fur­ther­more, the RA’s par­tic­i­pate as well, but with higher stakes: if the ques­tions are an­swered cor­rectly, they’re safe; how­ever, if they an­swer a ques­tion in­cor­rectly, they are to be sub­mit­ted to any num­ber of sin­is­ter pun­ish­ments de­vised by the oth­ers. 

Wa­ter Pong is an­other of the games that will be played. Oak­wood-Slater Hall is hav­ing a tour­na­ment for the Beth­i­cal ver­sion of this col­lege-sta­ple; each hall has two teams of two to rep­re­sent them, and they will all com­pete for honor and glory by throw­ing ping pong balls at Solo cups filled with wa­ter. 

Oak­wood-Slater is also hav­ing a dorm-wide Bible study in place of the weekly hall Bible stud­ies. To com­pen­sate for the larger crowd, the Bible study will be held in AC 342 at 8:00 p.m. on Tues­day. As with all the Dude Week events, each hall will earn points based on the per­cent­age of their hall that is pre­sent. 

There will also be dorm vs. dorm sport­ing events: soc­cer, foot­ball and bas­ket­ball are all on the docket for the boys to com­pete in and earn their hall even more points. 

The goal of all of this is for the epony­mous “dudes” on cam­pus to grow closer as a com­mu­nity; by elim­i­nat­ing dis­trac­tions like elec­tron­ics and gath­er­ing all of them into events that will fos­ter an at­mos­phere of com­pe­ti­tion and ca­ma­raderie, the hope is that all of these guys meet new peo­ple, make new friends and de­velop a new sense of com­mu­nity, both as young men and as Chris­tians.