Here on campus, there’s been a bit of a thing going around, called the “Dollar Challenge.” Although originally inspired by Christie AHD Max Kalchthaler, Villa has overcome the hatred of all things Christie and embraced the Challenge. The other day at dinner, Michael R. was issued a challenge by Jake H., to pour a glass of water on his head, and received the dollar. The dollar Jake paid with was the exact one that he had received for a previous challenge, and thus the “Dollar Challenge Dollar” was born.

If it isn’t clear yet, the Dollar Challenge is essentially a dare, in which the participant gets a dollar upon completion of the event. Friday night at dinner, we were trying to get someone else to accept a challenge, and somehow or other, we all decided that we would pressure Brett T. to accept the next challenge. A number of challenges were proposed at dinner, none accepted. On the way back to Villa, we stopped by Mehling, for Lindsey to get her glasses. Originally, we were just going to continue to Villa and meet Lindsey there, but we ended up deciding to wait for her to come back down. While we were waiting, Jake was talking to the Hall director of Mehling, and a few RAs that were in the hall office. Somewhere in this interval, Matt P. accepted a challenge to roll an apple into the office as if it were a grenade, shout “fire in the hole”, and tackle Jake to the ground. For this, he became the new owner of the Dollar Challenge Dollar.

Somewhere during this time, a new dollar challenge was thought up by the RAs, that Brett would wear a pair of boxers on the outside of his pants and parade around Mehling. We eventually gave up waiting for Lindsey, and returned to Villa, only to find that as she was not expecting for us to wait for her, she’d gone out the back way, and was already in Villa. Brett got on some boxers, and we decided to watch the first episode of Firefly–a very good series, but I digress. After it was over, we prepared to head over to Mehling.

It was decided that Brett should have an escort, and we all decided to dress in kahaki pants and black shirts. The group assembled, and we escorted him to Mehling. There was a brief scuffle, and we were unable to convince him to remove his coat, so we decided he could leave it on.

We proceeded to escort him through all the floors, one at a time, and then up the stairwell to the next floor. All eight floors. We protected him from any stray threats in the rooms, as we stood in front of any open doorways until he had passed by. There was a small disturbance on the seventh floor, but we were able to protect him from it. Upon reaching the eighth floor, we descended, again, passing through each floor. (Mehling has one central hall, and stairwells on either end of the building.) This time, the insurgents on the seventh floor had obtained weapons, and we just barely saved Brett from being hit by a barrage of foam rings. Upon reaching the 2nd floor, we realized that the stairwell at that end of the building connected only to the outdoors, not to the first floor, so we decided that we would have to go back, and ended up detouring via the seventh floor, where we were able to quell the insurgency and got a few photo ops.

Upon reaching the ground floor, Brett tried to escape to Villa, but we were able to catch up with him, and escorted him back to his room, where he collected the Dollar Challenge Dollar from Matt, his roommate. The guards decided to return to Mehling to offer to guard the RAs on their rounds, as we weren’t quite sure they would be safe on the seventh floor. Jake was chosen as negotiator. They felt that they would be safe in Mehling, but suggested that they might not be safe traveling to Wendy’s for frosties. Driving a hard bargain, Jake was able to get them to arrange a dessert date for us, with some Mehling ladies, at Papa Haydns at some date near Valentines day. (It did help that Jake is behind on planning events again.) With that agreement, we proceeded to pile into 2 cars, (By then, we numbered only eight, plus Jake, who stayed with the RAs.) Only the drive thru was open, and the fellow had to verify that Michael wanted to order 10 frosties. They were obtained, and we returned to campus, delivered the frosties, and returned to Villa, and watched another episode of Firefly. All in all, quite a memorable night–and I must say, the best Dollar Challenge Ever.

More pictures from this event can be found on Page 3 of the Sophomore Gallery.