Room Wars

The Current System

1. participants must drink heavily before, during, and after room wars.
2. freshman must show up early and eager under the false assumption that room wars will actually happen on time and to catch all the "fun and excitement" of getting a new leaky hole to live in for another year.
3. upperclassmen must bitch about 'maintaining the flavor of Bemis', 'extending Bemis to Goodale', 'making Walcott cool' and other vapid shit.
4. at least one crusty alum must be present to tell 'back in the day' stories to the underclassmen.
5. at least one person must be in tears by the end of Room Wars.
6. at least one person must bitch for 60 minutes straight after room wars about the results.
7. quiet people with good draws must be carefully and\or violently coerced to take nice corner rooms in Goodale and Walcott.
8. multiple trips must be made to look into various rooms to determine under critical scrutiny which leaky hole has more usable wall space.
9. elaborate plans for interconnecting adjacent rooms must be made and then broken when a higher drawing denzin who could give a shit less about your utopian dreams decides they want the leaky hole you've got your heart set on.
10. feeble attempts to cut deals with higher card drawers must be made, then broken when the higher drawers decide they don't want to live in the phone closet.
11. much angst must ensue.

Objective

This document will attempt to spell out in excruciating detail how Room Wars are to run on Fifth East.

This will hopefully prevent moronic power plays from hall chairs trying to get 666 by quoting what happened "...back in the day."

Framework

This is the framework for room wars.

1. Deal with any exceptions that may be happening this Wars.
2. All available rooms are listed on a visible black board.
3. For each of the three or four classes (proceeding from senior to freshmen):
   1. Each class members choose a card from the deck.
   2. Class members may give or exchange cards with others in their class.
   3. Once all exchanging is completed, for each class member holding at least one card, proceeding in decreasing order of cards held:
      1. The class member may choose a room from those listed on the board, or may choose to squat his current room.
      2. If he chooses a room from the board, that room is erased and his current room is added to the list. The chosen room becomes his.
      3. The class member turns in all his cards.
   4. The deck is shuffled for the next class.
4. Room wars is over, go in peace.

Rooms

Rooms available at the start of Room Wars are those which are going to be empty (duh). They also include rooms which are not squattable.

Squatting

Any resident may remain in their current room (squat) and not be concerned about losing the room except a resident who exchanged rooms.

Residents who exchange rooms who are the same year have squatting rights in the room they exchanged to. But if the trade is across years, then the tradees have squatting rights only in the rooms that they traded from.

This means that if Bob the frosh gets 666 'cause some senior is a wierdo, he can't squat 666, as a sophomore (although he could squat his bitch frosh room).

Calling Room Wars

Rooms wars may only be called by the hall chairs, and should be called when there is at least one room open on the hall that is desired by more than one person currently living on the hall, who are both of the same seniority, according to the policies of Room Wars. That is to say, if it is the case that the Wars would settle anything.

Room Wars should also be called at the end of each spring term, to assign rooms for the following September.

Seniority

This is the stuff that you have been waiting for. Basically, I work on the assumption that "year" in school can be a difficult thing to assign for Fifth Easters, but the housing office seems to always have a clear idea of how many terms of housing each of us has left. Therefore I default to that number.

Thus a Senior is one with 1 or 2 terms of housing left, a Junior has 3 or 4, a Sophomore 5 or 6, and Freshmen have 7 or 8.

All times (number of terms lived on hall, number of terms left) are measured by the date on which room changes take effect. This means the start of fall term, for Wars which decide fall term rooms, for instance.

Vesting

A student must live on hall on hall one (1) full term (that is, from a first day of class through a final exam period) in order to chose with their class. If a Room Wars occurs, and a student has not lived on hall long enough, he will choose as a special year, after the year before his, but before the year 2 years before his.

That is, junior transfer in a mid-semester room wars would draw after the sophomores, but before the freshman.

Ninth-Term Housing

During their ninth-term, people choose as seniors.

Exceptions

Exceptions to the Seniority system can be made by a majority vote of hall members at a Room Wars. Yes, this means that everything can get fucked.

Cards

Order

The order should be written on the board being used for room wars before the start of Wars. It doesn't really matter, but the canonical order is Ace high, 2 low, high card picks first. In the event of a tie in number, change to suit precedence, which is Clubs, Spades, Hearts, Diamonds. (This is the sheepshead (and Skat) order. I think sheepshead is popular in Wisconsin. Skat is wicked cool, and is Germany's official card game. It's also the best 3 player card game ever.)

Exchange

They are just cards. Trade them for sexual favors. Make deals before hand. Whatever. Don't try to palm them or someone will kick you in the balls. Oh yeah

Changes to these Rules

A two-thirds majority at an announced hall meeting shall be required to amend these rules.

Lawyers

If anyone starts quoting these rules like a lawyer, they should be kicked in the balls by the person with the most heavily shod foot in the room.