2008 Woodie Awards
Campus in recess with playground game
Julie Balise
Issue date: 5/23/07 Section: News
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Junior civil engineering major Filipe Vieira lifted his shirt and displayed his "battle wounds" - small scrapes on his stomach.
"There was one person from my team in front and an enemy at the side. There was nowhere to go except into the bush," he said. "A 'leap of faith,' I guess you could call it."
Vieira received these injuries while attempting to steal the flag, a blue-striped towel, for his team during last Monday's two and a half hour capture the flag game. The three-round game spanned across campus, from the Snell Library quad to the West Village quad, and about 70 students participated.
Seniors Jonathan Cohn, Meghan Colloton and Mike Sovak said they organized the game as a way to bring students together.
"During the summer, the campus really slows down and a lot of your friends go home, so I was hoping people would come out and they'd be able to meet all these new people to hang out with in the summer," he said.
Colloton said planning for the event took two hours. She researched rules for urban capture the flag, where games can cover several blocks and participants may use public transportation, before customizing them for Northeastern's campus.
Contrary to standard Capture the Flag rules, Monday's game did not feature "jails" for tagged competitors to wait in. Instead, students wore wrist bands, which were torn off after a player was tagged by their opponents.
Cohn, Colloton and Sovak advertised the game on Facebook, where they invited more than 1,000 Northeastern students. More than 120 responded by Monday and Cohn split them into two teams: red and blue.
At 6 p.m., students began arriving at Centennial Commons to learn about the rules, restrictions and boundaries of the game. To earn a point, the red team had to bring the blue team's flag into their territory, while the blue team's goal was to bring the red flag into their side. The space between Forsyth and Leon streets would be neutral for either team: only the flag-bearer could be tagged. Cars, tunnels and buildings could not be used for the evening.
One student asked, "And trees?"
"Yeah, you can climb trees," Cohn said, laughing.
Each round ended with the sound of a foghorn signaling students to return to Centennial Commons to receive new rules intended to change the difficulty and length of the next round. For the first round, both teams were required to put the flag in the center of their base, keeping it visible to the other team.
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