Blood, sweat, and gears

The following day, competitors hop on the LRT and take the short trip to the Oil City Roadhouse in Downtown Edmonton for Drieger’s favourite event, the Battle of the Bands.

“Some of the bands are actually really good, so you get some great music and it’s a great time for us,” explained Drieger. “It’s the most exciting event. Each faculty has their own band and a dance troupe that goes up and dances to the songs. The band’s set has to be half composed of theme-related songs.”

Each faculty picks a defining theme for their performances at events; mainly Battle of the Bands and Movie Night. EngPhys’ winning theme last year was The Bohr Identity; a play on words combining Danish physicist Neils Bohr and the Robert Ludlum novel, The Bourne Identity.

“For Battle of the Bands (this year), one of our themed songs is ‘Sunglasses at Night’ by Corey Hart. Because of Horatio on CSI: Miami and his sunglasses,” Drieger explained.

But in typical Geer Week fashion, not everything is as it first appears. While every team is trying to stick with their theme while wowing the judges, impressive splits or teamwork aren’t the only way teams rack up points.

“If a band is not so good, they make up for it by buying the judges’ drinks,” says Kelsey Kennedy-Leblanc, gesturing toward numerous empty glasses and bottles scattered on the table. “And there is a lot of bribery going on tonight.”

Kennedy-LeBlanc is the Associate Vice President (Geer Week) for the Engineering Students’ Society. The faculty association takes the week so seriously they appoint one young engineer to oversee the competition, doing everything from setting up venues to lining up judges for events.

Each venue needs to be booked well in advance of the competition, and all of the equipment and materials needed have to be in place before the event starts. The ESS is also required to obtain liability insurance in the event anything goes seriously wrong during Geer Week.

And for Kennedy-LeBlanc, judging events like the battle of the bands is just as much part of the job as organizing the evening. Each engineering discipline enters a band and a dance troupe. Every band is allowed to play a 20-minute set, and each band is judged on their stage presence and their set list. It’s a long night, but everyone has a good time, and the judges get their fair share of “inducements.”

The battle of the bands isn’t the last thing on the docket. The movie night is the final evening competition event of Geer Week. Students of all disciplines pile into a large lecture theatre in ETLC to enjoy short films prepared by each engineering club.

The productions are low-budget, but the fun lies in the lighthearted jokes directed at other clubs and at the faculty itself. Each film usually parodies a recent popular movie or TV series, and they are generally well-received as long as there is gratuitous slapstick, toilet, and sexual humor in conjunction with a minimum attempt at a plot. There is almost always a film that is impossible to follow due to unintelligible dialogue. These films receive the loudest cheers when they finally end or are mercifully stopped by an ESS representative.

The different department themes flow through from battle of the bands to the movie night competitions. In their last winning year, EngPhys placed fourth in this competition. Their last movie night win was three years ago, where ‘District P,’a spoof of District 9, swept audiences off their feet. EngPhys would come a close second this year to a surprising winner, the First Years.

Just as important as competing in Geer Week are the stunts and pranks each teams pull on other departments. As well as some of which are able to score the teams Spirit Points. When asked about what was up the EngPhys team was planning this year, Drieger gets up and shuts the door to protect the confidential nature of the schemes.

“Since our theme is CSPsy, we’re going to set up a crime scene somewhere,” Drieger explains. “We originally wanted to block off a pedway, but we can’t due to fire hazards. We’ll probably just have someone who looks like they’ve been shot alongside crime scene tape, and try to make it look pretty official.”

“As for pranks, we’re planning to focus on the Mechanical Engineers; we want to use an air compressor to blow condoms under their office door in the middle of the night. That’s all we have planned for now, but we’ll probably do a lot of spur-of-the-moment things.”

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