St. Patrick’s Day is almost here, and that means three things at Cornell: green vomit, pretending to have an Irish ancestor and Dragon Day. That’s right — Dragon Day is this Friday, March 13.

For those of you who get “thinking headaches,” Dragon Day is the one day of the year that architecture students put down their cigarettes and poke their heads out of Rand Hall. If they don’t see their shadow, they build an enormous dragon and set fire to it on the Arts Quad, a “How’s your mother?” of sorts to the Engineering students. The Engineers may retaliate by building a large phoenix, but they’re usually too busy failing a prelim or adding bust size to their virtual girlfriends in Second Life to be bothered. If the Architects do see their shadow, however, they retreat back into Rand and have an extra year of being an undergraduate.

This is one of the most pointless rivalries since smooth versus crunchy peanut butter. Side note: crunchy is undoubtedly the better spread, and I’m tired of being persecuted for my beliefs. Don’t even get me started about ketchup on eggs. End side note. No one cares which group of pretentious assholes does more work. With the exception of civil engineers, engineering and architecture students have almost no interaction and learn about entirely different things. Plus, their buildings are on opposite sides of the campus.

That’s why I propose that from now on Hotelies and ILRies declare open war on each other. Now this is an irrational hatred I can get excited about! I don’t want only one day of bad blood per year; rather, everyday should begin with trident fights in the street. After all, good things always come out of wars, like microwave ovens, America and Star Wars.

The Hotel Way of Life and the ILR Path to Enlightenment are inherently incompatible and must be resolved through violence. Hotelies nest in Statler High where they learn to fold napkins and fellate the egos of other future leaders of the industry. They subsist mainly on a diet of Terrace salads and spend their days complaining about group projects and dressing up for Hotelie Prom. The nerve center of the Statler is the Nestlé Library, which I swear contains two books: a cookbook and a coloring book.

Just next door is Ives State Penitentiary. Some of Long Island’s most hardened criminals are locked away for the protection of society behind that weird circular window thing. The School of Industrial and Labor Relations is sometimes known as the dark horse of Cornell women, because their beauty is one of Ithaca’s best kept secrets. The two species have been known to interbreed, but it is generally awkward and mutually unsatisfying.

Casual sex aside, both groups of students have one irreconcilable difference that will ensure discord for the rest of the foreseeable eternity. The Hotelies are the sworn enemy of what the ILRies hold most dear to their hearts: labor unions.

The animosity extends beyond the budding robber barons and union organizers. It is instilled in the students by the faculty themselves. ILR professors teach that the best way to protect the rights of workers is to unionize, and I’m pretty sure the course title of HADM: 2211 is Labor Unions are Evil. Having two colleges in one university champion two diametrically opposite positions to one argument is like having the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences Biology Department teach intelligent design while Arts and Sciences teaches evolution.

Of critical importance to both Hotel and ILR is President Obama’s recent signing of the Employee Free Choice Act. This legislation aims to make it easier for unions to enlist workers because it would let them join unions by openly singing cards rather than through the traditional secret-ballot election system in which companies can campaign against the union. Needless to say, the Hotelies are pissed, while most ILRies need a change of pants due to happiness.

Sorry Eddie, but I think the guys with the pineapple on their flag have this one right. Open elections, where one votes in public, have traditionally been restricted to such exemplars of democracy as Iran and pre-war Iraq. During American political elections, however, citizens vote in private voting booths to prevent party officials from using coercion to influence an election. Because the EFCA removes secret ballots from the equation, the voting rights of workers are at stake.

Further, the presence of unions in the hospitality industry may actually harm workers rather than help them, especially because this industry was hit particularly hard by the market crash. When a company employs unionized workers, its profit margins generally go down. As a result, companies must fire employees or reduce employees’ workable hours. Further, employees must spend part of their paychecks on steep union dues, which may or may not effect positive change in their working conditions.

While the Hotel-ILR Wars may be just a dream, Dragon Day is very real. So get out there and enjoy the combustion.