The Yates Cup Competition is coming to Queen’s University this Saturday facing the classic rivals, UWO Mustangs. The level of excitement on campus is pretty high and there are high hopes that Queen’s is victorious on home turf. I keep up with the football games but I’m definitely no die-hard fan. I’d attend Saturday’s game (despite the $10 fee) but sadly I have to move apartments that day. Last year when I lived right beside the stadium, I used to hear the chaos on Saturdays in the fall and listened in from time to time (not like I could really shut that noise out). And on some occasion, when the cheers were much to loud to ignore, I finally gave in and watched the game from my common room or on the steps downstairs. I used to even see the boys practicing on the field late at night, whistlers and loud thuds all around. It’ll be interesting how this all goes down on Saturday. It’d be a true shame if we lost at home. I’m really not in the mood to see crazy Mustang fans roaming campus yelling obscenities and rude remarks that follow variations of ‘you suck, we rule’ attitude.
The point of this post is that, one of my closest friends actually goes to Western in their business program. And although nothing as silly as a school rivalry would ever get between us (or is ever even brought up in conversation) its interesting to note that out of friendship context, we are on severely opposing sides. I’m not generally a confrontational person and although undoubtedly I’m willing to stand up for myself, I don’t think I could take on the remarks of Westerners and continue to battle out the rivalry, which is probably why I have yet to visit my friend. I’ve spent the last hour or so browsing through the anti-Western/anti-every other university groups on Facebook to reveal how deep this rivalry can really get. A lot of it seems like immature bickering from sides who really can’t say much more than ‘your school sucks’ Is Western really better than Queen’s or vice versa? What does it matter? As I see it, you can defend your school all you want, more school spirit the better, but useless fighting isn’t going to change anyone’s mind. It’s not like anyone at Western will see an argument made by Queen’s student and go ‘oh crap, I made a mistake; Let’s flip my whole life around and transfer’. Whose voice is louder, is most heard? That’s essentially what it comes down to.
It’s disappointing how far some people will go, from either side. I don’t defend my school. Of course we never report our misbehaviour against other schools in our school newspaper but I’m sure it exists (unfortunately). On the other hand, I’ve seen the slander against the Queen’s community, normally around our infamous homecoming events. It seems to me that we should spend less time fighting each other and more time improving our relations. Ontario isn’t the be all, end all of universities. We still compete internationally and frankly, fail in my opinion. Only one of our schools ever makes it to the top 20 (McGill) and most of us fall to the wayside, not even making top 100.
All in all, most of it is in just good fun. As long as it remains that way, then there’s no harm. But when slander and vandalism come into the picture, well then I don’t think any school can claim to be any better…
tabula rasa 