The Oberlin Review
<< Front page News October 1, 2004

Blood on the Harkness floor

Entangled in Harkness: Co-opers found a way to relieve stress and challenged other dorms to join them.
 

A visitor to Harkness lounge last Monday evening might have been startled to catch a glimpse of juniors Case Conover and Colin Gunn wrestling on the ground, shirtless in front of an audience.

Much of Harkness and a few outsiders had encircled the wrestlers, part of the co-op’s new-fangled Fight Club.

“Now get naked!” someone shouted. Conover bucked and hit Gunn in the face.

“Yo man, are you okay? Your nose?” Gunn said.

“Yeah it’s just my forehead,” replied Case, and they leapt back at each other.

Most of the people were here as well a week ago Monday when the fighting was far more intense and the spectators were hungry for a show.

By 2 a.m. during that battle, the wrestlers had taken off their clothes in what first-year Matt Evens described as traditional naked Greco-Roman wrestling “celebrating the instinctual Dionysian spirit of man.”

The Harkness Book, a thick sketchpad which functions as Harkness’ collective diary, lists 25 separate fights this year, eight of them co-ed.

A page dated Sept. 21 records last weeks events in pencil and crayon.

“The most unbelievable wrestling match is going on right now – a whole tournament, an event, an informal explosion of wrestling matches in the Harkness Lounge. This is insane: rugburns, headlocks bodyslams, headbanging, bones shattering (almost), naked people, lots of yelling + people + beer.”

When this week’s last fight was over, junior Zac Beechler’s nose and ankle were bleeding and a wicked smile was running across his lightly bearded face as he gasped for breath.

“You haven’t lived until you’ve tasted your own blood,” he said, licking his finger.

Beechler recounted how the fights had begun.

“It all started two Sundays ago [Sept. 19],” he said. “I told Colin to shut the fuck up cause I was trying to sleep, but he kept taunting me.”

The two fought for two or three hours that night and the next day they were wrestling and Katie came in and challenged Beechler, and everyone gathered around.

“People just got primal!” Beechler exclaimed. “They were yelling, ‘kill ‘em!’” However primal it got, it all seemed to be good-natured.

“If there was any real animosity at all, I wouldn’t lay a finger on anyone,” said Beechler.

So why wrestle?

“To feel alive!” Conover said, echoing many of his housemates.

“It’s okay to get up and fight, it doesn’t have to be aggressive, it can be beautiful, like dance,” Gunn added.

“At times we’re involved in so many reasoning problems at this school and we’re encouraged to think so much and it’s great to get away from that, it’s good to realize that there’s an instinctual part to us, that’s a complete contrast to what we experience in the classroom. Anyone can fight, animals fight, students fight, politicians fight,” said Evans.

Despite the lower turnout, everyone was still excited about it and hoped that there would be more wrestling next week.“On behalf of Harkness,” said Beechler, “I challenge all other dorms!”
 
 

   

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