A change came to Point Park over the summer, and it’s not a change for the better. No, this change is insidious, it is dangerous and it is woven into the very fabric of our campus.

I am referring, of course, to the Pokemon Gym located at the water wall in Village Park.

Putting our campus on the front lines of the storied Pokemon Battles is a disgrace. We college students should be battling our ideas, not our terrifying, toothy monsters. We should be facilitating discussions, not sending upsettingly humanoid creatures out to fight until they return, defeated and unconscious.

When I’ve raised this argument before, with friends, they’ve told me that it’s possible to have fun with a video game and also take an active part in intellectual debate. To this, I’ve replied, “Video game?”

Because here’s the thing: these monsters are in our city. They’re on our campus. I’ve seen them on my phone screen. It’s like I’m taking a picture of my surroundings, and a Pokemon is right there, lurking. I can’t see it with my eyes, but I can see it with my phone, and what is a phone but a more powerful set of eyes that can also text people?

While some of them look friendly enough, others have clearly been engineered by a god who seeks only to punish them. A pile of purple slime named Grimer, trapped in an eternal grimace? A duck-billed, perpetually aflame Magmar, with knives for fingers and twin tumors above its eyes? A dead-eyed Magikarp, flopping its hours away with no reprieve to its agony in sight? These creatures have been condemned to a life of pain since the moment they entered this world.

And yet, we as humans seek only to brutalize them more, even though their very existences are marked by unnatural pain. They are body-slammed, water-gunned, signal beamed, confused, slashed, mud-slapped, tackled, frost-breathed and fire-blasted.

What causes them this pain? Other Pokemon, their own kind, locked in battle not because they wish to be but because they are compelled to be by humans.

These humans, they’re not fighting for ideas. They have no religious imperative, no government commanding them, no righteous cause. They win control of a small piece of land (say, a water wall) for a short period of time.

They crave only the power. Power over their own living Pokemon, power over the dead Pokemon they’ve left in their wake, power over their own shockingly fragile mortality. You say you belong to a color-coded team, you Pokemon trainers, but you don’t fool me. Your team is yourself, your team is your desperate desire not to die, your team is your need to own something and make it remember you even when it’s dead.