Two students stand on their own inflatable pedestal. One swings their jumbo joust and knocks the other person off their pedestal.

That was the scene many times during Kappa Sigma’s Gladiator Competition on Wednesday, Sept. 7 on the lawn in front of Meadow Lodge. Participants spent the afternoon jousting with the intention of knocking their opponents off their pedestal to win the match.

Jerome Finn, business senior and president of Kappa Sigma, said the fraternity wanted to set this event apart from their rush.

“Well, we usually have a bunch of rush events during the first few weeks of school,” Finn said. “And since we’re new, we want to do something big to try to build our chapter up, and we always see these at parties and we thought it’d be a pretty good time if we had one out here.”

The inflatable octagon served a multitude of purposes for this event. It not only allowed participants the opportunity to joust, but had two basketball and soccer goals located inside as well. Participants could also box each other with inflatable gloves.

Khushboo Lad, business senior, stood by and watched as some of the participants came out looking unscathed, while others were bleeding from the nose and mouth.

“I’m going to go in there,” Lad said. “As soon as another girl will go in there with me.”

Lad, who came to the event after hearing the music playing in front of Meadow Lodge, said the members of Kappa Sigma would not be as rough with her.

“They’d be so easy on me because they all love me,” Lad said.

Although the event had been rescheduled from Aug. 31 due to scheduling conflicts, members of Kappa Sigma, including Evan Hollcamp, a junior electrical engineering major through Purdue Polytech, said they were not worried that the change in schedule would affect attendance.

“I think we’ll still have a great attendance,” Hollcamp said. “We made up for having missed last week, so it gives us another event we can do this week.”

Although some members thought the date change would affect attendance, Finn said big numbers were not what this event was about.

“It’s more of a social event,” Finn said. “We’re just trying to get new guys out here, trying to get the school involved a little bit, trying to get the guys in the dorms out here, everyone like that.”

Kappa Sigma held other events during their rush, including a Slip N Slide and Casino Night.

“Each school year is when it starts and everybody comes in and we try and recruit kids to our fraternity,” Hollcamp said. “We do it through events on campus. We show them our credentials and how we can help them develop as men.”