IM Format Changes Rile Up Canaday

“YES WE CAN(ADAY)!” has become the cry to rally support among Canaday Hall residents who hope to dispute the Freshman Intramural (IM) staff’s decision to change the format of its spring tennis tournament.

According to Brad M. Paraszczak ’11, a Canaday IM representative and leader of the protest effort, “the last-minute change to the tennis competition and unfair multiplier that puts bigger dorms at a disadvantage” has resulted in “mortal combat” with rival Apley Hall.

According to the Frosh IM Web site, individual events within the Yard Bucket Competition are weighted according to a normalized scale from one to four based on the actual number of people in the dorm. Thus Canaday, the largest dorm, is multiplied by one.

In an e-mail sent Tuesday, the freshman IM coordinators announced a change in format because it was “impossible for us to play out the tournament with this many registrants.”

Canaday residents comprised a staggering 170 of the 225 registered participants for IM tennis this spring.

“If we flooded this, we had a very definite chance of winning,” Canaday resident Spencer H. Hardwick ’11 said.

According to the announcement by the Frosh IM staff, the organization of the tournament was changed to parallel the house format, with matches consisting of one men’s singles, one women’s singles, and one mixed doubles. Each dorm is also required to field that number of teams.

In a heated Canaday e-mail thread, Julienne K. Coleman ’11 criticized the decision for overlooking the “tireless recruitment, the explosion of pride, the electric excitement that hadn’t coursed through this brick prison since fall semester.”

According to Canday residents, the prospects of participating in the upcoming tennis tournament generated dorm pride and unity.

“We found a common ground and prepared to accomplish the unthinkable: defeat a small dorm and bring home the Yard Bucket,” Coleman wrote.

“Now that we’ve gotten so far, they’re trying to take everything we’ve earned away from us” agreed Hardwick.

Canaday residents endorsing the petition said the IM system is in need of reform.

“Apley wins all their matches through forfeit” said Paraszczak.

Apley IM Rep. Danielle C. Kijewski ’11 refuted the claim, arguing that the system is fundamentally fair and calling the issues raised by the reformatting of the tennis tournament “anomalies.”

“We go to Harvard,” said Canaday’s Hardwick. “There has to be someone who can fix this system.”