Walking around campus over the course of the year, it's almost impossible to miss spotting a rather unique group of students battling each other with large, improbable-looking weapons. These "boffers," as they call themselves, have elicited more than just a few curious comments as they charged and lunged on the grass between Pratt and Morrow dormitories last year and behind Keefe Campus Center this year.

Although not an official AAS-recognized club or organization, this group of students has approximately 15 members and even has an unofficial name: the Serendipitous Order of Destruction (SOD).

So what exactly is boffing? As Nathaniel Reden '05, the unofficial organizer of the boffing group, put it, boffing is "the fine art of hitting people with foam-covered weapons." Wing Mui '05, a steady participant, clarified, "Boffing is a 'sport'-if you wish to call it that-in which we try to emulate medieval sword fighting and general weapon fighting without hurting ourselves."

Boffing first showed its face at the College in the fall of 2002 after Reden and Peter Bulmer '04 were inspired by a science fiction, fantasy and gaming convention at Smith College the previous spring. There they encountered the League of Shining Tape (LOST) Knights, Smith's approximately 30-strong boffing organization, and joined in. "It was a lot of fun, and so over the summer while I was bored at home I got out to Home Depot and built a few weapons," remembered Reden. "When the summer ended, I took the weapons back to Amherst and asked around for interest, of which there was quite a bit."

SOD has expanded quickly since this first initial poll of interest. They now hold regular weekly practices and organize larger-scale fights at least once a semester. Last April, SOD organized a match against Smith's LOST Knights, which they fought even though snow still covered the ground.

Boffing fighting styles range from "the charge-and-whack-repeatedly method," as Mui calls it, to actual fencing and various types of martial arts. Group members take it upon themselves to offer advice and tips in Renaissance fencing and other styles of fighting to new members, helping newbies to develop a personal boffing style.

The fights themselves also vary from one-on-one combat to full team battles, always with the objective of "killing," defined here as a hit in any vital area (i.e. chest, stomach). "Another popular variation is 'kill your killer,' where you get killed, you drop your weapon and go to the sidelines until the person who killed you dies, at which point you come back to life and try to pick up a weapon before someone else offs you," said Reden.

Both Reden and Mui strongly stressed injuring an opponent is not the objective of boffing. "The most important rule is 'lightest touch,' which means that a strike should be made with as little strength as possible," explained Reden.

Boffing is possibly the only on-campus activity in which participants fully design and build their own gear from start to finish. Constructed almost entirely of duct tape, PVC pipes and foam, the weapons take anywhere from 10 minutes to hours to complete depending upon the complexity of the design. The simplest design is a stick, which consists of a PVC pipe wrapped with insulating foam and taped together with multiple layers of duct tape. Other weapons include models of swords, axes and maces, among others.

Upon being asked why he boffed, Alex Gomez-Del-Moral '03, the current Kermes Fellow with the IT department, answered, "I boff because it's fun. Because boffing isn't about smacking someone with a PVC pipe. It's about taking what you can do, and expanding it. About getting better, about pushing yourself to be faster, stronger, better at picking apart your opponent's style and defense. And, if you let yourself get into it, the rush of the direct competition is amazing."