In the beginning, there was Brad Voyles.
“He just thought it would be a cool idea to involve halls in different competitions and kind of build this sense of camaraderie and healthy competition across campus,” said Emily Balint, Coordinator of Student Leadership. “He brought [the idea] to the person who was in my position at the time and together they created what is today the hall cup.”
First introduced in the 2017-2018 school year, Hall Cup events were originally stand-alone events.
“There was a minute-to-win-it competition, an individual trivia night that was separate from the other trivia nights—that year they were trying to really set Hall Cup apart from other events on campus,” said Balint.
However, with an already full event calendar, attendance remained minimal, and the following school year (2018-2019), Balint slowly incorporated Hall Cup events into pre-existing ones. The change came with mixed reviews.
“In the past, Hall Cup has been very sports-dominated,” said Leila Vaughn, Resident Hall President of Founders. “Nobody seemed super interested in them.”
Jonathan George ’21, Resident Hall President of Maclellan-Rymer, shared similar sentiments.
“Last year I was aware of [Hall Cup],” said George. “I knew there were some events, like sporting events that you could go to and get points, but I didn’t really participate in it… Nobody really seemed to take it seriously.”
For Vaughn, who found that last year’s Hall Cup events often revolved around sports events, getting involved was hard.
“I’m not that interested in sports,” said Vaughn. “Like, I would go if I had some really good friends playing, but I didn’t really go to any Hall Cup events last year. Maybe a trivia night or two, but I wasn’t really interested in the sports events.”
As Vaughn noted, however, last year’s numerous sports-related events make sense when the Covenant’s student demographic is taken into consideration. According to her, approximately “45% of the student body are athletes, so it’s very hard to accommodate for other events when athletics happen all year long and almost half of [Covenant’s] student body are athletes.”
Since last year, however, the presidents of each building have begun meeting weekly with Balint in order to discuss ways to vamp up events and increase student participation.
“Every Monday we discuss what events we’re planning as a building, working together to make sure our schedules don’t conflict and also working on Hall Cup Stuff,” said Vaughn.
For George, the fruits of these efforts are already evident.
“Coming in this year, [the Resident Hall Presidents] were really excited to branch out to theater events, music events, and hall events as well,” George said, “which meant people from different parts of campus could get involved and people are enjoying it a lot more. They’re also taking it more seriously, especially after [the RHPs] have upped the bragging rights with the trophy and the banner.”
Vaughn also feels more optimistic this year, both about getting her fellow classmates involved and helping advertise exciting events on campus.
“I’m hoping that the wider variety of events this year [i.e. not just sports events] people will get more excited,” she said. “It’s been bothering me that the theater and music departments don’t get a lot of recognition outside of the people who are already involved in them and this year we’re trying to change that.”
As Voyles’ idea slowly comes to realization, George observes the change in attitude of his own dorm building towards Hall Cup.
“The purpose of Hall Cup is to build school spirit and camaraderie,” said George. “I think sometimes people look at Hall Cup and say, ‘Oh, we’re just trying to rip off Harry Potter.’ Which, granted, we are doing a similar thing, but at the same time these events are actually encouraging students. In Mac, we’ve really gotten behind the idea of building unity, and seeing that is really fun.”
At the end of the day, one of the biggest goals of Hall Cup is to have fun while hanging out with people from across campus. If that’s accomplished, Hall Cup is a success. For George, achieving that kind of success is part of what makes his job as building president fulfilling.
“I enjoy seeing the people from my building show up [at Hall Cup events] and having them come up to me to let me know they’re present,” he said. “It’s super encouraging for me and it’s super fun to see that the people in Mac don’t see [Hall Cup events] as something ridiculous but as something worthwhile.”
Currently the Hall Cup standings are as follows: Mac in first place with 375 points, Andreas/Apartments with 225, Founders in third with 200, and Carter with 175. Upcoming events include a costume contest at Quest Kilter on November 1 and attendance for the upcoming “Tartuffe” play on November 15-16.