This story first appeared in the January 2018 edition of The Hilltop.
“Syndicate forced me to use my strategic side, which was a challenging but refreshing change of pace from HVZ,” said Anna Benjamin, a Syndicate participant. “With some adjusting, I think this game has some real potential to become integrated into the Corban culture.”
The first Syndicate — created by SAB — took place from Sunday, Jan. 21, to Wednesday, Jan 24.
The seemingly complex game represented an intricate version of tag and was designed to replicate a mob war.
“There were two sides to the game, which included the speed to get away from cops and monsters, and the intellect to crack all the dang codes,” Madison Steele, a participant, said.
According to Zalena Su’e, a member of SAB, the idea behind Syndicate was to provide an opportunity similar to Humans vs. Zombies (HVZ) during the spring semester.
“I love to see when loyalties are strung out,” Su’e said. “That’s my favorite thing about HVZ itself. With [Syndicate], it’s the opposite, and you have to find people to trust. The human aspect of everything is what I’m looking forward to.”
The game has a variety of rules created primarily by SAB members Kane Wilton and Cameron Kisling. Students who participated received a copy of this book and were instructed to familiarize themselves with the rules.
“This is kind of like a beta test year,” Wilton said. “Students … they’re kind of along for the ride. They’re very graceful in helping us figure out the little kinks and things we can change to make it better.”
In the game, students were grouped together by “families” that correlated to their dorm community, and the end goal was to become the richest family on campus.
“A lot of what we focus on with SAB is our ‘why’ of what we do for events,” Kisling said. “So our ‘why’ for this one was encouraging teamwork, especially between the dorms. We wanted to encourage community in those areas.”
Syndicate had approximately 40 participants, and the family to come out on top was “Hell and Family” from Fraagard with a total cash amount of $8,452. According to Wilton, there will be a trophy for the winners displayed in Farrar and Aagard.
“We did this to promote teamwork,” Kisling said, “and to see that ‘why’ fulfilled in front of our eyes was my favorite thing about this week. Yes, Kane and I are exhausted, but to see people come together like that makes all the hard work worth it.”
The student feedback for the first Syndicate reflected Kisling and Wilton’s goals.
“Corban Syndicate was my first real taste of who the Corban student body really is,” Rebecca Carlson, another student who participated, said. “With this game I was able to step outside of myself and really feel like a part of the Corban family.”