Super Smash Bros Helps Raise Money for Habitat

By Sam Rauschenfels, The Dartmouth Staff | 2/28/11 2:15pm

Be­lieve it or not, you can help out a good cause from the com­fort of a frat couch.

Lights dimmed and cur­tains drawn, teams of two — con­trollers in hand —pressed in around twin tele­vi­sions on the first floor of Alpha Chi Alpha fra­ter­nity this past Sat­ur­day, play­ing Super Smash Broth­ers in a fundrais­ing ef­fort for Dart­mouth's Habi­tat for Hu­man­ity.

With team names like "Smash by Noob," "One Point Five Asians" and "Stuffed An­i­mals," at least 10 pairs of Dart­mouth un­der­grads and grad­u­ate stu­dents bat­tled each other in a dou­ble elim­i­na­tion-style cham­pi­onship, ac­cord­ing to Alpha Chi ser­vice chair Ben­jamin Paly ’11.

Paly said he helped or­ga­nize this fundraiser after Habi­tat for Hu­man­ity con­tacted him with the idea of hold­ing a video game tour­na­ment.

Nour­ished by Ra­munto's pizza, par­tic­i­pants com­peted for gift cer­tifi­cates from local busi­nesses like the Nugget The­ater and Dirt Cow­boy Café. With an en­trance fee of eight dol­lars per per­son, the fundraiser was ex­pected to raise around $200, Paly said.

After about an hour and a half of friendly com­pe­ti­tion, team mem­bers Samuel Peck, a Thayer School of En­gi­neer­ing stu­dent, and Dmitriy Gutkovich ’10 took first place, fol­lowed by Samuel McIn­tire ’11 and William Mergner ’11 in sec­ond.

Pro­ceeds from the event will ben­e­fit the Upper Val­ley Habi­tat for Hu­man­ity, ac­cord­ing to Paly.