This week’s featured campus celebrity is one Margaret E. Gagel, a sophomore general business management major here at IUP with perhaps the most outrageous combination of campus activities ever. Some nights, you can find Margaret at a Campus Crusade for Christ meeting or small group ministering to her fellow students on campus, but others, you’ll find her wielding foam battle axes with ROTC kids and big, burly men while Live Action Role Playing. Christianity has been a part of Margaret’s life since childhood and, coming to college, she wanted to maintain and deepen her strong relationship with God. Her church at home connected her with Campus Crusade for Christ (called Cru for short), so she and her best friend Alex decided to give it a whirl during their first semester at IUP. Instantly, the girls were sucked in by the warm atmosphere and down-to-earth, practical discussions of Christianity in the 21st century. On Thursdays, the girls attend the big coed event in the Delaware room of the HUB, but Monday nights, they attend an intimate small group just for women. In such a small, trusting setting, Margaret and her friends delve deep into what being a Christian woman in 2013 means in terms of friendships, sexuality, responsibility, and being an active witness daily. By expressing their fears, concerns, and discoveries with each other, Margaret, Alex, and the other women in the group help each other grow into stronger people who are more at peace with themselves, God, and the world around them. Additionally, Margaret and her friend Edgar have begun yet another bible study. This one, a coed program that currently meets in Cogswell, discusses the bible in a more “academic” way, approaching it as a work of philosophy and a product of a political, economic environment, and what that means to us today. On the flip side, Margaret recently discovered a passion for Dagorhir, known to most as LARPing (Live Action Role Playing), although the two are slightly different. Weighing in at a solid 98 pounds and attending three separate bible studies, Margaret is not the kind of person one would expect to participate in a violent full-contact sport. As she describes it, Dagorhir is a nationwide sport that requires its participants (all slight geeks, mostly men) to develop “battle” techniques either alone or as a unit. Weapons at their disposal usually include swords made of fiberglass or wooden cores covered in foam padding and, to defend themselves, fighters carry shields made of plywood, plastic, or foam. Everything they use has to be safe in order to avoid injuries and most of it is handmade. The scoring system is technical and complex to say the least, but the end goal of the game is to make it out of “battle” alive and with as many limbs intact as possible and to have fun, which Margaret does to the fullest extent. Units learn to work together and develop tactics and plans for defeating opposing units. “It may look violent, but really, all the guys are big teddy bears and we’re all one giant happy family,” Margaret remarked. Urged by her friend Hamish, Margaret took up the sport this past fall and has not regretted one moment. “My body feels healthier and I’ve learned new ways of thinking and strategizing,” she said. The physical outlet, combined with the sheer nerdiness of the activity, has made it the perfect addition to Margaret’s weekly routine. There are few, if any, people on campus whose favorite pastimes include a meeting as soul-enhancing and introspective as Campus Crusade for Christ, as well as a sport as nerdy, violent, and ferocious as Dagorhir. For this week’s campus celebrity, it is all about trying new things and finding what fulfills you as a person. Margaret certainly isn’t ashamed of her time in the slightest and encourages everyone to try something ridiculous every so often. You never know what you’ll find in your community or in yourself.
This article is written by a student writer from the Her Campus at IUP chapter and does not reflect the views of Her Campus.