I had the privilege of wandering around the Mahler a little bit during the Alpha Sigma Omega induction the other day. It is clear to me that the Mahler building is being misused. Ok, the official functions, Alpha Sigma Omega, deacons’ banquets, trustees’ gathering place, rich old widows’ gathering place, etc., are all well and good, but it is clear to me that a building so nice on the inside was intended for violence.

I mean, you know how Bond movies are set up. Somewhere in the second quarter of the film Bond goes to some really nice building, meets the enemies, delivers his “Bond, James Bond” catch phrase (pretending to be a mild-mannered international businessman), does some spy stuff, gets spotted by a bunch of obnoxious armed guards, runs into the chick (who it seems is also spying on the supervillain, either an ally from America or a Russian opponent with common interests in maintaining the balance of power while forming short-term relationships with British agents), shoots a few people, and gets away with proof that the supervillain really is building his doomsday device.

The Mahler Student Center is just such a location. Bond would either enter from above, parachuting into the Bell Tower and sneaking around dressed in spy-black; or from ground-level, garbed in international banker-black, acting like a boring businessman. He’d exchange a glance with the sexy spy who’s pretending to be a lowly student-center monitor, disappear into the President’s Dining Room, remove a picture of some ancient Baptist, take some secret spy stuff out of a safe, and try to get away. But armed guards would appear from the various balconies inside the building and start shooting at him.

Then for some reason he joins up with the student-center monitor who’s secretly a Russian spy, and they escape to the Patriot Café. Here, Bond and female-spy-friend dodge behind expensive vases. The enemy shoots at them with all kinds of weapons, and the vases are shattered; Bond shoots back with a tiny pistol, and every one of the armed guargs dies with a single shot. Then they escape to the balcony behind the Mahler, from whence they escape again with parachutes (the wind is so good in these cities on a hill) and land on some allied British navy boat that just happens to be hanging around on Mountain Creek Lake.

That’s what the Mahler is for: violence. No buildings are destroyed even in the most violent of the scenes in the second quarter of the Bond films, so it wouldn’t be very expensive to do this once in a while. Whoever donated the expensive vases would probably be delighted to have them shatter while deflecting bullets from the defender of the free world.

And that’s why gunfights should be allowed in the Mahler. Maybe only on the evenings and weekends, so important rich people don’t get hurt. At least paintball should be allowed indoors. No one would even get hurt with paintball. We could even sign those dorky forms that say we won’t sue anyone if we get hurt. There's no risk when there's no risk of lawsuit.

And until violence is allowed in the Mahler, it won’t be living up to its true purpose. What is the chief end of the Mahler? To hold student firefights. What is the nature of this building? It is a building in which college students must shoot each other. The administration has to allow violence in the Mahler; it’s the right thing to do. Be sure and contact your SGA representative with this request, and maybe they'll be able to schedule a few wars in the Fall semester.