It was an uphill battle to spread cheer during last Saturday’s gray and gloom, but the Youthful Alliance of Merrymaking (YAM) was up to the challenge. From 11 a.m. until 6 p.m., a group of 45 YAM members slaved away over cardboard and masking tape. They fought mud and wind all in pursuit of making history; they were determined to create the world’s largest box fort.
The idea was conceived a few years ago when YAM was first organized. The group’s president, Luke Greenway ’14.5, noticed the overflow of cardboard on campus, particularly during move-in week, and figured it should be put to use. Meanwhile, his hometown friend, Lauren D’Asaro, had a similar stroke of genius and set out to make the world’s largest box fort with her residential house at Harvard University.
Last September, D’Asaro’s team succeeded in breaking the world record with 586 boxes (double what they needed), and since then the competition has not stopped. On Feb. 6, Brigham Young University one-upped Harvard’s team with a fort of 734 boxes. Earlier this month, Harvard retaliated with a 1,064-box fort. YAM decided it was time for Middlebury students had to try their hand in box-fort making as well.
In early September, YAM members reached out to the Material Recovery Facility (Recycling Center) and the Office of Sustainability Integration to begin the collection and storage of boxes.
Jack Byrne, director of sustainability integration, was a major supporter of the club’s initiative and a great admirer of the students’ ability to learn about Middlebury’s recycling system, assemble a team and plan a structural design – all to further encourage the recycling initiatives already in place at the College.
“[The box fort project] is a pretty deep dive into the recycle/reuse dynamic here and I am sure it is a great learning experience,” wrote Byrne in an e-mail.
From the beginning, the entire process was a bit of a guessing game; storage areas around campus held several hundred boxes, but the club leaders had little confidence.
“I don’t think that we’re going to be able to break the record,” Greenway said prior to building day. “We haven’t had the man power; not enough people have been volunteering.”
“Even if we don’t break the record it’s going to be a lot of fun,” Greenway added.
The morning started with the dispatching of the fort-builders to the several storage sights and deployed on missions to the dining halls’ cardboard-only dumpsters. En-route to and from Battell Beach—the construction site—YAM members with armfuls of boxes were bombarded with questions from other students wondering what they were doing with hundreds of boxes on a cold, wet Saturday morning.
Yet, the club members did not let naysayers interfere with their main goal: fun. Some members even ventured into town of to collect boxes.
“We wouldn’t have been able to do it without last minute box collecting from Angel Santee [’13] and Thomas Kivney [’13],” said Greenway of these especially dedicated fort-builders.
Around 2 pm, once all the boxes had been collected and reconstructed, the designing began — walls for protection, drawbridges, lookout towers, igloos and mazes were among the ideas thrown around, though several were declared unfeasible. After much deliberation, the crew decided on a rectangular shape with an inner wall and an archway.
The strong winds proved YAM’s most formidable opponent. “I think the weather affected the turnout and the structural integrity of the fort,” said Abbie Wells ’16, who spent 4 and 1/2 hours on the Beach. She added that Adirondack chairs were helpful tools in supporting the structure.
By 4:45 p.m. the fort stood 47’ 6” wide by 48’ 4” long in the middle of Battell Beach. With boxes ranging from a 70” LED television box to a travel-sized Colgate toothpaste box, the fort was a site to be seen with all the different colors and sizes it employed. More importantly, the fort was a world record with 1,130 boxes.
After a long day of scavenging and building, the participants enjoyed a mere 15 minutes in their creation, before charging across the Beach to knock it over.
The record-breakers were all smiles as they reflattened the boxes and reduced their fort to a pile of cardboard once again.
“I think YAM should try to break a world record every year,” said a jubilant Sydney Haltom ’14.
Middlebury has now officially beat Harvard’s box fort record, yet the project was more than just a collegiate rivalry.
Byrne raised the idea that people affected by poverty, natural disasters or conflict often rely on cardboard for shelter.
“Perhaps this project will help remind us that our choices as consumers have consequences that go well beyond our normal perspectives and help us see how we could use [or] not use resources more wisely and humanely,” he wrote in an email.
YAM Trumps Harvard Box Fort World Record
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