BY ALEX HO

In print | November 9, 2006

On Friday night, the likes of Cindi Lauper and other ‘80s greats could be heard booming from speakers in the Mary Lyon breakfast room. The banner formerly announcing "Ms. Gwendolyn Swabbe’s Dinner Theatre" now read “Ms. Gwendolyn Swabbe’s Casino Room.” Cheery faces crowded around tables to play good-hearted card games. Some, like Mary Lyon RA Scott Storm ‘08 and Mertz RA Paige Gentry ’07, even dressed for the occasion. The ignorant observer would never suspect that that night, there lay a hatred as black as Gentry’s pants or a thirst for blood as red as Storm’s dress shirt. This was not merely an innocuous college casino night. This was a battleground.

The Casino Night was the second leg in a yearlong M&M Cup competition between Mertz and Mary Lyon that was the brainchild of Storm and Gentry. The first battle of the M&M Cup, a game of Capture the Flag with water balloons, was held on the field in front of Mertz. The home team defeated the Mary Lyon team and won the golden M&M Cup, filled to the brim with bags of mini M&Ms. That was over a month ago, and since then, both sides have been eager to fight again for the coveted goblet.

This time, the stakes were raised. Gentry and Mary Lyon RA Genevra Pittman ’08 bought $80 worth of milk chocolate, peanut and peanut butter M&Ms. The prize was made all the sweeter by the fact that they were exclusively orange and brown and were 50 percent off from after-Halloween sales.

The winner of Casino Night was determined by which dorm had accumulated the greatest number of chips, which were specially designed on pieces of paper by Storm. Each ML and Mertz resident received 25 chips on entry. If they lost all of their chips, they could get a loan from the bank, which would have to be repaid before the end of the night or else would be deducted from the dormitory’s final count.

Standard casino games, such as poker and blackjack, were played, but the RAs had also prepared a series of larger games. The first was a “deal or no deal”-like event, followed by Twister and arm wrestling. The night climaxed in one final game: limbo. Competitors strained their knees, doing everything in their power not to get kicked out. But in the end, only Mertzians Laura Post ‘09 and Lauren Richie ’09 were left standing. “Actually, [limbo] resulted in my injury,” said Julian Thomas ’10. "I’m going to Worth tomorrow to get an X-ray. That’s how intense it was."

Unfortunately, this minor victory was not nearly enough to sway the outcome of the competition. By the end, Mary Lyon was undoubtedly the winner. The winning strategy seemed to combine skill with recklessness. Yet ML was kept from experiencing the full glory of its comeback. The previous night, the M&M Cup had been stolen from the Mertz lounge. Storm was more than suspicious. “Mertz was just too afraid to lose the cup,” he said. He further accused Jack Keefe ‘10, saying: "It’s probably in your room right now."

The mudslinging was quickly diverted as RAs were able to find another bucket in which to place the booty. After the bowl of M&Ms had been circulated among the victors and the defeated alike, it was closing time. Mary Lyon residents happily bid their competitors goodbye. And though some Mertzians returned to the campus with murmurs of foul play and vows of reprisal come the next M&M Cup, tentatively scheduled as a snowball fight to be held at the end of the semester, it seemed some friendships had been forged. “It was great because I got to meet people from campus,” Sergio Rivas ’10 said, “and we never get to see them because we live so far away.”

Additional Reporting by Tamar Lerer

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