The student mentors of this year’s First Year Seminar (FYS) classes have initiated a modified revival of an old Boxer Toss tradition: Find the Boxer.
Decades ago, students would participate in the Boxer Toss, a mass fight over the original Boxer statues, often resulting in injury to individuals or damage to the statue itself. Eventually, bits and pieces of the first two Boxer statues went missing. Now, the spirit of the tradition has been revived through the milder and less violent Find the Boxer game. Rather than wrestling over a statue, each FYS class takes a turn hiding a statuette of the Boxer in different places on campus for other FYS classes to find. The class that hides the Boxer the longest is named victor and is rewarded with a pizza party at the end of the program.
“I feel like it’s more accessible to everyone,” said sophomore Megan Farmer, the FYS student mentor for the Transformative Writing section, in regards to the modification of the original tradition. you don’t have to be really strong or fast to fight over the Boxer.”
In theory, each member of each class in the FYS program is participating in the new game, about one fourth of the undergraduate student body. This is documented via the Find the Boxer Instagram page (@findtheboxer). However, a more accurate count of participants can be found on their Instagram, which has 173 followers at the time of writing.
“I hope it’s the beginning of a tradition that we’ve brought back and can put it forward in these new modern ways,” said Brent Johnson, head of the FYS program when asked his thoughts on the game. “I think it’s fantastic that it came from these guys, the students.”
“We did it to reinvigorate the spirit of the Boxer.” said senior Joey Grafton, another FYS student mentor. Grafton, who mentors for the class titled Encountering the Other, also said that the new tradition has the capacity to connect new students to campus in a way that hasn’t been done before. — Kyla Wilson
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