Starvation Gulch 2K16

Hi everyone!

Welcome to my blog! We will see where it takes us this year!

Today I am going to enlighten you all on the beauty of sports: specifically intramural sports. Specifically volleyball. Specifically my team: the Killer Bees. Cus we killin’ it. Not really because we have only won one game out of five. Do the math, we are not actually tearing the courts up with our skills; we are tearing it up with our hearts and our passion to win! We began losing our games 8-25 and so on. This week, we have begun losing 22-25 and such. So by next week, we should be flipping the score boards and on the path to the championships. From then on, to being the number one team etcetera. It’s intense! Other than that, there have been lots of homework this week, lots of laughs and giggles, lots of exercise by foot and searching Facebook for GIFS as part of this student ambassador job. Also: lots of excitement for this weekend… Which just so happens to be Starvation Gulch! If anyone is unfamiliar with this tradition, let me fill you in. From the mouths of your fellow student nanooks,

Here are a few myths:

Rumor #1: “After Charles Bunnell homesteaded campus, they needed to clear room for a dorm building so they burnt all of the cabins that were in the way.”

Rumor #2: “It was a fire to heat up the homeless people around campus so there was a fire to keep them warm after the first snowfall.”

Rumor #3: “The whole campus was haunted so the last ditch effort to save our beautiful campus was to burn the whole thing down and start from scratch.”

And last but not least…

Rumor #4: “It was an ancient tradition dating back to the years of the buffalo hunters who used these fires to find mates.”

Whether or not these could have been true, here’s the real deal:

Starvation Gulch has been around since 1923, when students built a mock town acting as an activity hub for things such as divorcing for a dollar, jailing friends and enemies, etc. during day and an outrageous bonfire by night. UAF President Bunnell deemed the bonfires a symbol of “passing the torch of knowledge”, according to https://uaf.edu/activities/traditions/starvation-gulch/, where one can get all the history from these festivities. Be sure to check it out!

I hope you all have a great weekend!

Adios, Alexess