By Aimah Moiz
IntRoweeks have always been exhilarating. But no past IntRoweek could even come close to the Spring IntRoweek 2015 as RASA finally took advantage of Franklin’s Gothic exterior and Theatra’s eerie practice room, and decided to convert the school into Hogwarts for three days.
IntRoweek began on Monday, kicking off with a sorting ceremony complete with the sorting hat and a very eager Professor McGonagall (who transfigures into Professor Luscombe, head of the Academic Core Department, during the semester). Sadly the sorting hat was suffering from a speech impediment therefore it designed a questionnaire and sent it to the candidates beforehand, thus determining their houses, or rather, families.
The new students greatly praised this system and felt that this alternate was very effective as they felt their family members were very much like them, as one Slytherin remarked that she could feel all of them having the sneaky streak in them.
Next up was a trip to Hogsmeade. After breakfasting with the ever helpful, ever wise ghosts of UCR , the four families of Gryffindor, Ravenclaw, Hufflepuff and Slytherin took a tour of the town and won points doing a series of absurd activities as instructed by which included creating a human wall and singing the Pianoman with two strangers. But no trip to Hogsmeade is complete without a glass of Butterbeer at the Three Broomsticks, sadly the wizarding community has not disclosed the recipe therefore it was substituted with a bartending workshop where students learnt to tap their own beer.
After this, it was time to play the most popular sport in the wizarding community: Quidditch. As it would be unsafe if Muggles were to catch a group of flying wizards and witches on old-fashioned broomsticks, players were forced to use a regular ball as a Quaffle to throw through the hoops and score points. Small yellow balls were used as the Bludgers to divert the Chasers after the Quaffle. Also the Snitch was disguised as person carrying a ball sought after by the Seekers alone. Though disguise was quite splendid, players were still required to stay on their brooms, but then again, Quidditch is not Quidditch without the brooms.
To deceive the Muggles another game closer to the human world was played. Rugby, rather Sock Rugby; a game essentially similar to Rugby but instead of tackling the opponent, players are only allowed to pull one of the socks hanging from the tow of the opponent’s pockets. If both socks are pulled out then the player must be replaced by another team member. Points are scored by touching the ball at the end of the opposing team’s court.
Ultimately, IntRoweek was won by the Ravenclaw family, with Slytherin a close runner up. After the prize ceremony a screening of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire was held.
The last day of IntRoweek marked the ultimate showdown between the old students and the new students. Moving on from the Harry Potter theme, these games were based on elements distinct to life in UCR. Yes the time had come for the three fishes to make their (symbolic) appearance.
Sleep, Study and Socializing. All activities were based around either one of these three integral components of life at UCR. Presenting the current students were teams Odin (comprising of members of the rowing team), Lotti, Rolling Stones and quite aptly named, The Horcruxes.
Starting with the studying part, the first activity was a cheating exam in which each member of the team received the answer to one of the questions in a multiple choice exam. The team then had to find means to share their answers with all of their other team members. Surprisingly all four of the newer student teams ousted all four of the older student teams. Perhaps a bit of magic had rubbed off on them.
The next round was a short version of what each UCR student goes through in the last week of the semester. All ten participants were supposed to finish a typing test, eat a piece of chocolate, get rid of a bag of trash, find a link between two topics they were handed and finally give a short presentation on it in as little time as they could.
After this rather stressful game they then moved on to everyone’s favourite yet thoroughly deprived fish: Sleep. This involved everything other than actually sleeping because as we all know, a UCR student can only dream of that. After thoroughly beating up the another team in a pillow fight and building pillow forts which were never slept in the IntRoweek team had an activity arranged which really did make some people’s dream come true. Laser Tag.
Yes. This IntRoweek actually had laser tag game spanned on three entire floors in Bachtensteene and I must say the God Parents did an excellent job of covering every bit of glass and light cover with black sheets to create the perfect at-home Laser Tag battlefield. This event probably made the Spring IntRoweek 2015 the best IntRoweek yet.
After attempting to completely destroy each other during Laser Tag the eight teams finally met for a proper socializing event, an event in which they acted so outlandishly that they have forever, etched into their peers’ minds certain images never to be forgotten. The exhilarating and intoxicating finale to end the 8-8-8 games was a pub crawl spanning across four Middelburg pubs and ending in Elliot which hereby declared Team Odin as winners of the day.
It was a very successful IntRoweek, and undoubtedly made the new students ready for the real work: the start of the semester!
Tabula Rasa would like to welcome all the new students to UCR and hope they will have a magical time here!
Aimah Moiz, Class of 2017, is a Mathematics and Physics major from Karachi, Pakistan.
