DLA Day Five! --By Taryn

        Campers and RAs alike are officially beginning to settle into the DLA schedule, getting to class, mealtimes, and other events on time.  However, one event is an annual house competition that, because of its spontaneous nature, leaves the veteran campers fearful and the new campers confused:  Mayhem.  Mayhem is exactly what the name implies; campers are not aware of when this competition takes place, as it is not on the schedule distributed to us at the beginning of camp.  Each year, the method that the RAs use to announce Mayhem differs, which creates spontaneity.

         This year Mayhem was disguised as a "Leadership Forum" that released campers from their afternoon class 30 minutes early and gathered everyone in the Lay Hall auditorium to announce the initiation of Mayhem.  Upon the announcement, houses were separated and given a clue to find the site of their challenge.  Challenges ranged from guessing who spoke a specific quote, to the validity of a chess move, to deciphering the lyrics of the now infamous "Never Gonna Give You Up" by Rick Astley, to obtain coordinate points used to find the next clue under designated auditorium seats.


         All six house groups were next called to Sunderland Field to compete in a flag signal event, where each house group waved flags in positions corresponding to letters or numbers to decipher a code; however, this event was ended early, as Mayhem took place before dinner.  To campers' surprise, Mayhem resumed after dinner when a designated team leader was held hostage in a room in the Findlay Student Center. Houses had to split into groups of two to perform smaller tasks, receiving clues after each task was successfully completed that would lead to the hostage team leader. 


     Houses then headed back to Sunderland Hall to meet with Chance and were given three different choices, which in the best-case scenario would give the house a time reduction on their total time spent in Mayhem.   It was another great day of camp, but one question lingers on all of our minds... Is Mayhem really over?