The Secret is out

TheStar.com - What's better than dodgeball?

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What's better than dodgeball?

There can be only one thing: Late-night dodgeball, each and every Friday night York University has a tradition in the making, reports Shauna Rempel

Feb. 14, 2006.

SHAUNA REMPEL
TORONTO STAR

In the line outside the Underground bar on York University campus, dozens of students are ready and waiting for a Friday night of dancing and drinking.

But Phil Hartman and his buddies have other ideas. Near the campus nightspot, in an indoor rotunda filled with nooks and crannies, dodgeball is afoot.

This not-so-secret society of undergrads meets every Friday at midnight in Vari Hall for a couple hours of a-throwin' and a-dodgin.'

"It takes a particular kind of person to want to spend their Friday nights playing dodgeball," says Hartman, 22.

Some diehard dodgeballers may be attracted by the chance to enjoy a familiar childhood activity, smack dab in the middle of the daunting and unfamiliar terrain of university life.

"It reminds us of our childhood at a time when (it) seems to be slipping away from us," says Hartman, who looks more like David Spade than his Saturday Night Live namesake.
But there's something else; that tiny illicit thrill of doing something not condoned by university.
See, this dodgeclub is not a varsity sport or even an intramural, and Hartman says there's no way they'd be allowed official club status.

The players have long had to er, dodge, security guards worried the students will damage not only property but also unsuspecting students trying to cross Vari Hall. Because of this, midnight dodgeballers like to keep things on the down low. Players don't even use their real names, says Hartman, and prefer nicknames.

Despite, or perhaps because, of all the secrecy, the dodgeclub has flourished just under York administration radar for four years. That, by the way, predates the craze started by the 2004 Vince Vaughn flick.

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The above article is excerpted from today's Toronto Star newspaper. The article has probably ruined the fun of a group of university students for good. Why? The Toronto Star is Canada's most read newspaper by far. As well, the Toronto Star distributes, for free, thousands of copies on York University's campus which are quite often picked up by both students and staff a like. Thus, I would bet that when midnight rolls around this coming Friday night at York's Vari Hall a team of York's finest rent-a-cops will be out in force to ruin the fun. No longer will the midnight tradition of dodgeball occur. Sometimes the big bad man (Toronto Star) ruins the fun of the little guy (York's students). Thanks a lot Toronto Star!