All event attendees are required to wear something that is at the very least an attempt at medieval or Renaissance clothing. Unlike "Renn. Faires", the SCA is participatory, and everyone is expected to help contribute to the atmosphere.

In addition, we assume period names to contribute to the atmosphere and serve as reminders that we are no longer in the modern world. Some of us develop full-fledged personae to go with the names, others merely come up with a few background details. These identities cannot be someone who actually did exist in period, but should be someone who could have existed. It is not required that all Event attendees have historical names, but it is strongly recommended that a participant choose a name as soon as possible so that others will get in the habit of using it instead of the participant's actual, mundane name.

The SCA is not only its Events though! Obviously much preparation and practice goes into our revels, not to mention sheer socializing, so we get together in formal and informal groups to study and practice all sorts of things. Here in the Barony of Carolingia, we have about 20 Guilds (special interest groups) and other organizations with regular meetings or practices, ranging from sword fighting to calligraphy to theater to archery to cooking to dancing to fencing to heraldry.... For a complete listing, please see the "Guild Sheet", available from the Magister.

In addition to the regular and official activities, spontaneous get-togethers, one-shot workshops, and special project are always popping up. If you have a particlar interest you don't see represented, ask around and you may discover others investigating that area.

Guild meetings and other practices are often on weeknights, and we wear street clothes to most of them. People who do any kind of combat, though, must wear armor at practices (of course!). Guilds meet from as frequently as twice a week (a few of the performance groups will have more than that right before a big show goes up), to as infrequently as once every couple of months - all depending on the Guild.

The Barony of Carolingia has seven boroughs. Besides us, there is Duncharloch (Harvard), Felding (Wellesley), Fenmere (Brandeis), Huntington Greene (Northeastern), Ivory Keep (Tufts), and Southe Banke (Boston U.). Through our close relations with the Barony, we get to meet and work with many members of these other boroughs.

Most of the activities we participate in are run by the Barony of Carolingia; it is a source of considerable pride for us that we host so many of the Barony's activities here on campus (thus making them much more accessible to our own members). We have a very close relationship with our Barony, and benefit greatly from it; we get to meet, work and socialize with people of all ages and backgrounds throughout the Boston area, and beyond. The SCA is not merely a college organization!

The leader of a Borough is call a Provost. The current Provost of Mitgaard is John Irongut (mundanely known as Andrew Twyman '98), who can be reached as kurgan@mit.edu, or at x5-6122. Other officers include the Treasurer (Maeva in rautha Steingrimsdottir, mka Jennifer Merritt '97, jsm@mit.edu) and Castellan, keeper of stuff (Federach mac Cian, mka Cyrus Eyster '98, cyruse@mit.edu), though any important decisions made in the borough are usually made more by general consensus than any sort of feudal leadership. The officers of Mitgaard can be contacted on Athena as mitgaard-officers@mit.edu. Questions about Mitgaard, or the SCA can be directed to a larger body of clueful Mitgaardi at sca@mit.edu.

We have no formal membership; Mitgaard is simply a participatory organization. You are welcome to attend any or all of our activities, Mitgaardi or Carolingian, and the extent to which you involve yourself is the extent to which you are a member. We will have a number of orientation meetings and workshops in the next few weeks to instruct and help with learning the ropes, making appropriate apparel, finding a name, and other such preparations for attending one's first SCA event. The first event of the season will be the Festival of Storytelling (a somewhat atypical event, at that), on Saturday, Sept. 21, so we will have much to accomplish in a short time.

Our meetings are from 5pm to 7pm on Wednesdays; we meet in PRD3, on the third floor of the Student Center (face the 24hr Coffee House, turn right, take the last door on the left). General administrative business is taken care of there, plus plans for activities and events, but largely it is a social meeting. The business part of the meeting tends to happen in the middle; feel free to join us for any part or all of the meeting. Tomorrow night's meeting will be different, as it will be specifically an orientation for newcomers; it will be particularly beneficial to stay the entire meeting on this ocassion.

The national organization, SCA Inc., does sell memberships which come with the kingdom newsletter and the Society journal, two fine publications, but membership in the corporate organization is not necessary to participate in any of our activities.

There are guild meetings and practices almost every night of the week and on weekends; there are events, on average once a month, and that's just counting the events in a hour's drive radius. In addition, there are plenty of personal projects to keep anyone in the SCA quite busy. You're almost certain to find something to your taste; when you find it, just join in.

* For those of you who come from other SCA groups, welcome! A "Borough" is an unofficial "College", which is not recognized by the SCA., Inc., but which is recognized by the Barony of Carolingia. This exempts us from ridiculous amounts of paperwork. This way of dealing with college groups is older than the SCA "College" system, so we got grandfathered.