At the start of my freshman year, the Biola egg made an appearance during convocation. It was brought out Ark of the Covenant style, held high by members of some proud dorm — torchbearers and participants in a decades-old tradition. President Barry Corey, who I highly doubt was aware of the egg’s impending intrusion, claimed it was one of the few times he had seen it during his Biola career.

VAGUE AND VARIED

Needless to say, I nearly lost my mind when I helped some upper-classmen wheel it down the Hart hallway the next week. The stories are still vague and varied, but the ordeal allegedly involved upperclassmen breaking into an RA office, passing the egg through a window, and rushing the dolly carrying it through lower campus. I was only there for the last part, where they got the egg to the end of the hallway, and up a flight of stairs — and it definitely weighs more than you would think.

After a fresh coat of orange paint, it returned to the playing field. I have had the honor and privilege of holding the egg several times since, which I owe entirely to the absolutely fanatical dorm in which I live. After four years in Hart, I have seen more successful egg-recovery operations than I could count, and it is always a special occasion when the egg returns. The look on people’s faces when they see the egg for the first time is a rare and precious sight.  

WORKING AGAINST TRADITION

Unfortunately, the new rules surrounding the Biola egg work against the age-old tradition. At the start of the 2015-2016 school year, SPA unveiled the new standards for the hunt, which include several rules supposedly aimed at leveling the playing field. The new guidelines include 50 percent of the egg must be showing at all times, any delay past 48 hours in the hiding of the egg will result in spirit point deduction, and tweets from SPA will now reveal the general location of the egg after two months. Adam Washington, the special events coordinator of SPA, further clarified the rule change.

“From the consensus of students, students were just like ‘I’ve never seen the egg’ and ‘One dorm always has the egg’ so I’m like ‘maybe if we like gave out more hints it would give it more even access to everybody,’” Washington said. “People have come and said that it’s been really hard for them, they’ve looked all over campus and they haven’t found it, so we just wanted to make it easier.”

The issue with this kind of thinking connects to the idea that the egg hunt has never been fair — and it should stay this way. It has always been a question of who has the most drive and determination to seek it out. The Biola Egg mythos is almost always connected to the dorm with the most drive. It is no accident that dorms like Hart Hall and Sigma have a reputation of being frequent keepers of the egg, as they tend to be unabashedly obsessed with taking an active role in this tradition.

THE WONDER OF THE EGG

The wonder surrounding the egg goes back decades, and the rumor mill is what keeps this tradition alive. In my time at Biola, I have heard the egg is at the bottom of the ocean, locked in some off-campus basement and even that it had left the country and returned. Only one of those turned out to be true, but regardless these new rules are set to make those sort of legends null and void.

With these in place, the egg will become nothing more than a first-month-of-school hobby. The egg’s constant reappearance due to the new 50 percent rule, and the location-revealing tweets will make it commonplace. It will no longer drive dorms to spend months tracking the same egg that even our President does not come across often.

Although potentially, none of this matters. According to Washington, the egg has been missing from its last known location for several weeks, with no report made to SPA of its whereabouts. It seems to me the current keepers of the egg do not plan on playing by the rules anytime soon, and I just cannot help but smile. Maybe some time off is a good thing. Maybe that will make the egg’s return that much sweeter.