First of all I have a confession to make. I, Andy Schader, was the person who's team had left and assembled a few friends so as to continue to participate in the Laser Tag tournament this past Friday night. Not that I was the only one to do this, but it appears that my actions gained some attention Monday's column by Chris Kelly '96.
Kelly's column draws some pretty disturbing conclusions as to the attitudes of students at Dartmouth. He insinuates that the only thing people at Dartmouth are really concerned with is winning, and if they have fun in the process so be it. Does this disturb anyone else? Is there no joy in simply participating in an activity anymore?
In his column, Kelly states that every team participated in Laser Tag strictly to win. He writes, "Our team looked liked a bunch of killjoys -- hyper-competitive freaks who would do anything to win. The thing is, that's precisely what we were. That's precisely what everyone who showed up to play Laser Tag was."
Such cynicism! I personally can say that I went to play Laser Tag simply to have fun. If I won that would have been neat, but it really was not a particularly big deal.
When Kelly's team protested against playing my "new" team in the second round, I was given the option of playing by myself since I was the lone representative of the original Team 31. Had I chosen this option I would have had the opportunity to advance on into the next round had I won.
Now it may seem that the odds of one person beating five or six are pretty slim. However, as anyone who participated in Laser Tag can tell you, I actually would have had a pretty good shot.
Basically I could have run out at the beginning of the round and attempted to shoot one of my opponents. If I had succeeded in scoring first I then could have run to the back of my side, never shown my face for the remaining three minutes, and proceeded to win the match 1 to 0. And oh what fun that would have been -- taking one shot and then wasting away my three minutes just so I could have won.
I did not choose to pursue this path because my motives for attending Laser Tag were vastly different from those of Kelly's team. I was there to have fun; sitting in the back and hiding for three minutes did not sound like much fun. Plus, there were my four friends who wanted to play.
I understand that Kelly's team did not want to be eliminated by the five of us when only myself was an original member of this team. This was a fair objection and that is why I offered to play them simply for the sake of playing and allow them to advance in the tournament regardless. I just wanted three minutes of fun Laser Tag for myself and my four friends.
As Kelly pointed out in his column yesterday, his team did not like this idea, for "If [they] lost, but still ended up in the round of 16, [they] would look like complainers without any real Laser Tag skill."
Now the idea of a tournament is to determine who the best team is. It would seem to be that if Kelly's team was truly to be the best they would have no problem defeating a makeshift team that resembled the Oilers or the Bengals.
Perhaps the worst part is that Kelly seems to think that this "win no matter what" attitude is prevalent in all aspects of Dartmouth life. I hope this is not the case.
While there are times that unconditional competition is appropriate with regard to simple things such as a game of Laser Tag, perhaps some of us need to re-evaluate our priorities.
