Card game ban
While many are in the dark when it comes to the existing card game ban, rumors are circulating over a comprehensive and severe ban of all card games to be instituted in the next school year.
Librarian Diane Gagliani commented that she has not received any specific ruling on the card games ban. “I’m waiting for the powers at be to decide [the rules regarding card games at Aragon],” says Gaglianai. “There are no card games whatsoever during class time, but during lunch, I’ll let them play. The library’s a busy place, but we police it to the best of our ability.”
Gaglianai notes the lack of specificity when it comes to the ban on card games. She mentioned that this all may soon change, and that the regulation on card games may soon be becoming much stricter. “All there is to be said is that we don’t allow regular card games, but we do allow magic card games,” says Principal Patricia Kurtz.
Senior Eric Cura, the president of the school’s Trading Card Game Union, explains why his club is sanctioned. “We followed normal club procedures to create our club. You can play any card game except for actual playing cards,” says Cura.
“No playing cards [are allowed], like the type that you’d use for poker, or something like that,” says Vice Principal Joe Mahood.
“Playing cards are most commonly associated with gambling, and gambling is prohibited at school,” says senior Vincent Parsons. Parsons and Cura both went on to say that claims of gambling with strategy cards are completely false.
“Strategy cards games are allowed but playing cards are not allowed, because the history of the students is that they use those cards for gambling, and we can’t have gambling on campus,” explains Mr. Mahood. “The ban actually started with [former Aragon principal]Kirk Black. He banned them a long time ago.”
When made aware of the possibility that students were actually gambling with strategy cards, Mr. Mahood was interested, but not surprised. “Now [that I’ve heard of the gambling with all playing cards] I’m going to make a suggestion that next year we ban everything and there will be no cards,” says Mahood.
When asked about what he believes the ban will comprise of in the future, Mr. Mahood said “I don’t know exactly what it will be. It will have to go through administration, Mr. Valmonte, Ms. Kurtz, Mr. Coe; we’ll meet and decide what we need to do. Maybe we need a little stricter guidelines. The fact is, if students are going to do the wrong thing, then they’ve pushed my hand, and it’s something we need to ban. Which is unfortunate, because I think strategy games are a wonderful thing to play.”
While strategy games remain allowed for the time being, card enthusiasts have to wait and see if card games are indeed facing their last few hands at Aragon.
