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Between the two rival pairs, both formed on the fourth floor of Dupre freshman year, Phoebe Marcus, Allie Dautrich, Adam Sirvinskas and David Rao have crossed international borders, bound themselves in holy matrimony (almost) and made themselves known as package deals across campus. Now in this battle of the bonds, the question of who the real Class of 2014 super-friends are may finally be answered.

Tell me the story of you. Together.

Allie Dautrich: We met on Macward Bound—

Phoebe Marcus: We did not like each other on the first day.

AD: We had very bad first impressions.

PM: But then second day we became best friends.

AD: We bonded over the fact that we were incapable of doing anything on Macward Bound. We couldn’t make fires, we couldn’t pitch tents, we couldn’t hike…

Were you guys in the same group?

AD: Yeah, we shared a tent. They made us do the bear hang and cook dessert one night and we couldn’t do the bear hang and we dropped half the dessert—

PM: —in the dirt. But didn’t tell anybody and it was an Oreo dessert, and we were like, “This must never be spoken of.”

AD: Sorry Macward Bound.

PM: Yeah, your Oreo cake was half dirt. So the two of us bonded over the fact that we were terrible at everything.

AD: And we’ve been inseparable ever since.

Have you lived together every year?

PM: Since sophomore year. Now we live in a two-bedroom apartment, and that was sad.

AD: It was hard for us to not be in the same room.

PM: But we’re doing better. Sometimes.

Why does it make sense that you two are alongside Adam and David for this week’s senior spotlight?

AD: We have a long history with Adam and David in best friend competitions, which we won the first time.

PM: This will cause a fight, because they will say that they won the first, but we won the first competition, and it ended in a fight between Adam and I.

A physical fight?

PM: Debatable. After that we weren’t allowed to do any more formal friend competitions.

AD: We always competed with Adam and David—they lived on Phoebe’s floor as actual roommates first year and they thought they had the upper hand.

PM: But then we won the roommate competition when we weren’t roommates yet.

AD: But they’ve been to however many countries they claim they’ve been to.

PM: And we’ve been to more states than them, together.

AD: It goes on and on.

PM: It’s back and forth. I think it’s pretty appropriate that we’re competing against them for the cutest best friends [in the Senior Spotlight].

What’s one of the more ridiculous ways you’ve tried to measure whose friendship is better?

AD: Well, we played the newlywed game in freshman year. Brad [Buse ’14] ran it for us.

PM: One partner would go outside and the person in the room would be asked a question.

AD: Like, “What’s their favorite font?”

PM: Or least favorite vegetable, or favorite rapper.

AD: We killed it!

PM: We would answer questions word for word. Like, for “What’s your favorite font?” I was like, “I don’t know names of fonts, not Times New Roman because it makes your paper shorter.”

AD: And then I came in and was like, “The Mac one, because it makes your papers longer.”

PM: We measured it like that.

AD: Then the finale — this is where the argument came — there were piles of things, and you had to pick which pile your roommate would pick, and then you had to pick which item within that pile your roommate would pick.

PM: And that’s where there was a dispute.

If you had one sentence to describe how good of friends you are…

PM: Oh, Phallie Darcus. We have a wedding registry.

AD: On Target.com.

PM: We have a combined alter ego. We write notes to people as Phallie Darcus. We have at least 20 matching outfits, no doubt.

AD: We’re currently still living together.

PM: People didn’t know the difference between us. They knew that one of us was Phoebe and one of us was Allie, but they couldn’t figure out which was which because we were never apart.

AD: I think we win.

PM: I think it’s pretty clear.

You used to freestyle in the room freshman year pretty frequently, and I remember one time you made a rap specifically about Phoebe. I remember this one line…

Adam Sirvinskas: I don’t remember what it was but I remember that it just didn’t rhyme and that’s why it was funny.

I think it was: “What’s the difference between me and Phoebe? Nothing! We’re best friends!”

AS: Oh yeah, because it was the “What’s the Difference” instrumental.

David Rao: That was when we had the mattress in the room, and Phoebe was laying on it. You were insulting her for a while and then you said you were best friends because she was getting mad at you. Then of course we had the Roommate Olympics.

This was just a Dupre 4 thing right?

DR: It was like a one-night, me and Adam and Allie and Phoebe thing.

So at this point you’ve met up in three countries outside of the United States?

AS: That’s probably more than one other pair of “friends” on this campus.

DS: So-called “roommates.”

You went to Cambodia together in the winter of sophomore year. Do you have any notable stories of that trip?

DR: We went to this hotel, and we’re in this room that’s very clearly meant for couples on their honeymoon.

AS: They had this big shower. It’s on this platform, and it’s over this pond—

Like a moat?

DR: Like a moat, in the room. There was the most sheer of little shower linings.

AS: Even if the curtain was wide enough to cover you, it was see-through.

DR: And the water just trickled down, and there were lilies in the pond. It was just the funniest shit.

Besides Cambodia, what else happened sophomore year?

DR: What we used to do sophomore year was after dinner every night, or at least four times a week, we would play billiards. We had a running count of who was ahead, and we played about 200 games.

AS: No, it was almost 400.

DR: We played almost 400 games of billiards in one semester. That wasn’t 400 separate occasions. We’d go down and play like four games and we did that 100 times. Which is insane to think about now.

Are you guys good now?

AS: We’re better than Phoebe and Allie, that’s for sure.

DR: Yes, bringing it back to the core point, we’re better than Phoebe and Allie.

How did study abroad go for you guys?

DR: I was in Chicago, which is where Adam’s from (Park Ridge, right outside of Chicago). I have these friends, who will not be named, but they’re douchebags who were supposed to visit me for Thanksgiving and they cancelled literally like the day before, like “ah, we have too much work.” Whatever. So I was freaking out, like “shit I can’t just be alone on Thanksgiving, that sucks” and all my roommates had left. So I called Adam’s mom, who had reached out to me earlier, and asked “can I still come over to your house?” And they said “Sure, we’d love to have you.” So I had Thanksgiving with Adam’s family while Adam was in Chile.

AS: I’m sure I had, like, some hotdogs for Thanksgiving when I was there.

DR: What did you do?

AS: It wasn’t that memorable since I have no idea what I did.

You went to Portugal and Spain this summer and went to a soccer game in Portugal.

DR: That was really good.

AS: We went to a Benfica soccer game. They were losing to a pretty crappy Portuguese team in the second half. It went into stoppage time and Benfica scored two goals within a minute.

DR: It was definitely the most insane sporting event I’ve ever been at. By that time a few people started to leave, but the people who were left in the stadium started going fucking apeshit.

What do you guys do now that you don’t live together anymore for the first time?

DR: We play ball sometimes. We play one-on-one.

AS: And whoever scores more points wins the game.

DR: Three points, two points, one point.

AS: Shoot the hoop.

DR: Oh, another thing we did was sophomore year we made these signs for the women’s basketball team. One of them was “shoot the hoop” another one was “dribble.”

AS: “Do that move I taught you,” “run the play coach” and then “try a bounce pass.”

DR: Easily the best was “try a bounce pass.”

AS: The most applicable too, because every turnover it was like, “why didn’t you try a bounce pass?” (laughs)

Any last words?

AS: My closing arguments would be that I love Dave.

DR: I concur.