Chris Richardson

Reporter

Cardboard isn't known for being good material for boat construction, but that's what residence halls on campus had to use in the first event of the Parliament Cup.

Campus Recreation hosted the first-ever Parliament Cup boat race at the pool. Each residence hall on campus had a small team of individuals that created boats. The catch was that they could only use cardboard boxes and duct tape to create the boats.

The man in charge of the event was Glenn Alexander, the residence hall director for Columbus Hall, Calloway Hall, Hasting-Simmons Hall and Grossnickle Hall.

"I liked the event. It was a lot of participation. It was a couple of rough edges starting out, because we had to promote, but I think it's gonna be an overall good event. A lot of people turned out, even though it's a late-night event. And registration was a little late, because people weren't quite sure of how it was gonna go, but I think it's gonna turn out good," said Alexander.

The event featured a lot of laughter, shouting and splashing. Most of teams' boats either sank or the person who was in the boat fell out of it. A few teams made it across the pool, and Grossnickle Hall came out the winner. Tyler Cutrer, a member of the Grossnickle team, said he enjoyed the event.

"It was really fun. It was good. It's kind of a big communicable experience. It was great. Pretty much the entire Grossnickle showed up to participate, so that was awesome, and yeah, I really enjoyed it," said Cutrer, a junior nursing major at The W.

The whole point of the Parliament Cup is to encourage students to interact more with each other. Andrew Moneymaker, the director of Housing and Residence Life, and the person who came up with the idea, said there are several more events before the Parliament Cup winner is decided.

"The Parliament Cup is basically a building-versus-building competition that will last all year. Each month will have, like, a major event. The whole point behind it is to build pride and ownership in the halls, to where students will get together and form teams to compete against other halls and just show their pride of where they live," explained Moneymaker.

Moneymaker also stated that the university hopes that with building the pride and the ownership of where students live, the university will see an increase in student retention.