You won’t meet another person like Ken Baumgartner, an alumnus of Architecture as of this past Sunday. Equally silly as he is bright (he once hid mini Skittle bags in nooks and crannies of the Architecture Building for students to find – and no, it wasn’t Easter), Ken has brought the classic leisure sport of croquet to campus through the registered student organization, the Royal Order of Croquet Aficionados (ROCA). Starting out as just an outlet of relaxation after hours of work in the printing department and in “studio”, Ken formalized the group in to an RSO. Get a taste of Ken’s infectious sense of humor and charisma with this week’s Campus Celebrity interview that left me laughing out loud.
HC: What is your philosophy to juggling a challenging major, a job, and now presiding over a club?
I believe it was Matt – Matt Paul, a friend and fellow architecture graduate – who once told me, years ago, and he may have stolen the saying from somebody else, that maturity is to know when it is ok to be immature. I don’t see a job, a major, and a club as separate things. I just see friends and things to do.
HC: How did you guys get started playing croquet? Why croquet?
Technically, the story starts on a lazy spring afternoon last year, just after studio (a class which comprises the majority of an Architecture student’s time and effort- a MWF course fasting from 1-5pm). I was sitting there staring off into the void, as I often do, when (if I recall correctly) myself and Matt began a dialogue as to what to do with this fine spring weather. It had been a light year, academically, and we were already accustomed at that point to bringing in various paraphernalia to entertain our whims. We had a beach ball, children’s golf set, a few toy foam dart guns, some large paper airplanes remaining from when we had tried to see how far we could fly them from out our second story window, and a red truck about the size of laptop’s keyboard. I was in the mood for a leisurely outdoor activity and we began to spitball our options… Eventually, we came to croquet. I asked Matt if he would play a game with me, to which he responded something to the effect of ‘I’d be delighted to.’ Unfortunately, we had no croquet equipment at the time.
When I returned to my homestead off campus, deep in the suburbs of Chicago, I happened across my parent’s croquet set—deteriorating in the back of the garage, under a pile of grass bags. I thought to myself: ‘My parents only use this once a year anyway’ and snagged the balls and mallets. At the time they were mounted in a nice little traveling rack complete with wheels and cobwebs but that took up too much room in the car, so I threw the equipment into an old garage-door-opener box and brought it back to campus.
On another spring afternoon of the same year, after yet another long and tiresome day of studio, Matt and I picked up the equipment and headed out to explore our fine campus for locations to cro our quet. On the way, we jeered other architecture classmates to join our game. Time has stolen my memory of who exactly was there at our first game, but I do remember that I was there, and Matt, and Jamie, maybe Eli [Jamie Gay and Eli Dunbar are also friends of Ken’s and recent graduates of Architecture]… and that our first game took place in a cozy little stretch of grass next to the Education building, sheltered from hullabaloo by walls on all sides.
After the good old fashioned game of croquet, enriched by the leisurely game, friendly competition, fresh air, and refreshing sun, I do remember, as we began our stroll back to the architecture building in the fading evening light, that we all sort of turned to each other, with satisfied grins, and said ‘Yeah. I could do this again.’
HC: I understand the members of ROCA have adopted a unique naming system – how does it work?
Yes, well, the naming system never really got into full swing as only a few of the players elected to appropriate royal titles. However, the system we had put in place is that those ‘regular’ players would be given the option of a title that relates to croquet in some way that would serve for correspondence as well as engravings. We have been planning to engrave winners’ names into a plaque of some kind for some time now. My elected title is ‘Baron von Bisque’.
HC: Why did you decide to make your casual croquet crew an RSO?
We decided to make croquet an official RSO at the beginning of this year… I don’t really know why. It just seemed like the next logical step. I suppose it gave our weekly to daily gathering a bit more appeal, once we were an organization. Once we had rules and a hierarchy. It made it less of something you do with your friends and more of an… event. “It’s Wednesday. I must play croquet” is what my internal dialogue says. But I can only speak for myself- the decision to make it an RSO was unanimous amongst the players. We operate as a democratic tribunal in terms of establishing game policy, deciding upon ambiguous in-game rules, and regulations of the club.
HC: How has ROCA affected your life?
This isn’t a club that’s drastic enough to change your life or yourself. But if you want to make a few friends, kick back, find a few hidden gem secret gardens on campus, and have some pleasant conversation while forgetting your troubles, “where everybody knows your name” as the saying goes, croquet is great.
HC: I know ROCA plays croquet a little differently. What is your twist?
The big rule variations that we play with are as follows. The winner of the first place gains immediate rights to wear the top hat, as is his/her distinction until such time as, during the next official game, a new winner is to be determined. A game is not official unless there are four people playing; there are three places and we must always have a loser. The winner must play in the next official game. The winner, in addition to gaining the rights of bearing the top hat, also gains the choice of the location of the next official game. The person who is able to obtain second place decides upon the arrangement of the course of the next official game. That person who is able to obtain third place may ‘invent’ a rule, as it applies to the next official game, although said rule may not be able to conflict with established game rules and must apply uniformly to all players.