The "New" UChicago

Rny2
Fri, 18 May 2012 14:58:50 +0000

I’m a first-year in South, so I might be able to chime in here. First-years made up a very small portion of the South Scav team. However, I don’t think this indicates a shift in kind from the old UChicago ideals. For one thing, having eight houses of ~100 people each makes it much harder to generate common excitement towards something like Scav. You really have to go out of your way to participate in Scav, and if none of your friends seem to be interested, this just isn’t going to happen. A lot of people saw Scav as being something that could potentially be fun, but didn’t feel a strong enough desire to participate with so many other things going on. You would need the buzz that’s more characteristic of a tightly-knit group to convince people of its relative importance. It’s much easier to get a group of 200 together than it is to get a group of 800 together to make 1/4 of the commitment. This also contributes to the major difference in amount of off-campus/alumni help received by each dorm, giving Snitchcock and BJ an even greater advantage. South has been particularly disadvantaged in this regard with the move from the Shoreland. And people here who are serious about Scav go elsewhere. The overall effect is that South begin to see intense involvement in Scav like trying too hard in gym class, whether that is an accurate portrayal or not.

(fwiw: I never felt particularly compelled to participate myself, though I was away for Saturday and Sunday anyhow)



That’s quite a shame; I knew the captain of the Shoreland team a few years back and they were gung-ho as could be. For those that don’t know, MacPierce and Breck put out fantastic performances at this year’s scav, rising in place for the second consecutive year in a row, so it’s not like Snitchcock and BJ were the only teams doing well.

I think what you say rings true for South, though (I’ve never heard anyone talking about ‘being from South’ as anything special). With regards to Max, my impression has been that the Max team is not as inclusive as some of the other teams are, in addition to the dorm being large in general. I know that both Snitchcock and BJ have had people from Max scavving for them instead of the Max team, for reasons like that.