We arrived blearily eyed into Indianapolis after our flight via Chicago. Geoff who is the debate coach drove us to our hotel in Greencastle. DePauw is a small liberal arts college a lot like Kenyon, except on a slightly bigger scale. On the first evening we went for Steak with the team, Geoff and his two daughters. We returned to the hotel to find it had a free DVD library and selected ‘The Fan’ – a fairly awful sports movie with Robert De Nero and Denzel Washington, before we watched the end of the Indianapolis Colts lose to the San Diego Chargers (a comment relevant to those who follow this ‘American’ Football game).
The next morning Geoff took us for an authentic breakfast at an old rail-stop and for a walk around an old quarry that the university purchased for $1 and turned into a nature reserve. We then visited Geoff’s argumentation class where we debated two of his students on the motion, ‘This house would rather be witty than pretty’ – it was a fun debate, much of it at the Spice Girls expense. For the record Alex and Alistair do not have tickets for the LA reunion concert.
The main debate event took place at 4pm and was well attend with about 80 people; we took on the DePauw team in opposition to the motion ‘This House would scrap the Olympics’. We had done the debate several times before so had our arguments well rehearsed and we were able to carry the vast majority of the audience and save the Olympics. After some press interviews we were taken to Marvin’s – which is a local institution for DePauw students. The walls are covered with pictures of DePauw students around the world carrying large signs that say ‘Marvin Delivers’, one of the most famous pictures shows students with a large painted banner bearing the slogan in Red Square during the 1980s. Just after the photo was taken they were promptly arrested as the authorities thought Marvin was a missile delivery system! We enjoyed the house special of garlic cheeseburgers (GCB) before retiring to watch another and altogether better film, ‘Gridiron Gang’ with the Rock coaching a prison football team. We were thoroughly inspired.
The next morning we drove to West Lafayette for brunch at the famous XXX dinner, we had a little time before our drop off so Geoff took us to the sight of the Tippecanoe battle, were we picked up some very nifty Native American whistles…
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