Floor 9 and their winning entry to the Clothing Drive Fashion Show, modeled by Jen Jarvis

Each year, amidst the regularity of hall dinners and the sporadic joint hall event drawing but a few floors, there is the House Cup, a collection of zany events which draw together all halls for blood, sweat, tears, team-building, and rallying against a common enemy: all the other halls.

The setup is simple. Roughly once a month during the academic school year, there is a House Cup event for which the 13 Hall Councilors lead their halls in fierce competition for bragging rights, eternal glory, and swanky prizes. The events themselves are diverse in topic ranging anywhere from and beyond cooking, donating a ton of food (this year’s House Cup food drive collected 1967 pounds), painting, sprinting around campus taking pictures, carrying giant bags of flour (3-North’s secret recipe), and dressing up in garbage bags and cardboard boxes (Floor 9’s ace in the hole for this year’s fashion show). The hope is that diverse events draw diverse crowds and perhaps even teach residents some fancy new and occasionally useful life skills.

Some desserts from the Pi Day Dessert Showdown.

And we try to reward participants handsomely. A random sampling of this year’s awards includes movie tickets, Toscanini gift cards, large square plates, USB sticks, and glass mugs. And the hall that aggregates the most points across each year gets etched into a trophy so that thousands of years later, when someone enters the SP lobby, she or he shall see the winner from the 2011-2012 academic year engraved eternal like an epitaph on a tombstone.

After taunts were shouted, votes were cast, peer rankings were submitted, and Japonaise cake was eaten, Hall Councilor Jen Jarvis led Floor 9 to glorious victory this year. Trailing in second and third place were Jon Malmaud of 3-North and Becky Asher of 5-South, respectively. For a full listing of this year’s House Cup events along with event descriptions, photos, and outcomes, please visit: http://s-p.mit.edu/about_sp/house_cup.php

Teams 2N & 5S grab a drink during the scavenger hunt.