College elections are like a group of children playing a board game. The rules are simple and anyone can play, but the outcome relies on chance since the players lack the mental ability for any kind of strategy.

In the past two days, various parties and interest groups employed all means imaginable to coerce students to vote. The majority of these groups relied on garrulous displays. Each had their own colored T-shirts and slid around campus like the pieces in a child’s game of Sorry!, waiting for their turn to smack the 50-foot invisible bubble over the polling places and send their opponents home crying.

For voters, it was more like a game of tag. Students ran through the areas outside the UCen and the library, hoping they could reach the 50-foot safety zone and scream olly olly oxen free.

While the colored pieces with personalities of plastic pounced on moving objects, their chromatic designation helped to inform victims of the type of assault they would receive.

Those in red preferred loud, obnoxious tactics. They relied on shaking hands, touching and passing out pamphlets rife with unforgivable spelling mistakes and grammatical errors.

If the red pieces weren’t glad-handing or heightening awareness, they were blasting hip hop from Storke Plaza, hoping the groove would flush out any intelligent thought from voters passing by.

The green team wins the award for bestial viciousness. Their shirts, with grassy imagery reminiscent of Africa, seemed to imbue the wearer with hyena-like qualities. They ran in packs, giggling and shouting wildly at any bipedal mammal. Occasionally, in a flurry of dyed cotton, they managed to drag down one of the weaker students headed to class.

When the pack cleared, the victims found themselves wearing a green shirt with a forest of paper fliers tacked on their backs. If these animals weren’t hunting down students, they hung around the polls after voting, jabbering away about the prestige magnet that is AstroTurf.

Now though, it’s time to pack up the pieces, put away the dice and store it all back in its box until we’ve enough strength to play again.

Assistant opinion editor Steven Ruszczycky is fond of Chutes and Ladders. His column appears occasionally.