There are few places at Harvard where the social contract deteriorates faster than an intramural sports field.

You arrive thinking you are about to play 40 minutes of deeply unserious basketball with your friends from your House, and then some washed high school JV player checks into the game wearing a shooting sleeve, calls for an iso, and starts barking “AND ONE” after making a layup over a poor sophomore who spent the whole afternoon writing a paper on medieval trade routes. This article is your reminder… you do not need to be that person.

Being nice at IMs is actually very simple. First off, remember that nobody is getting drafted. Not you, not the guy setting illegal screens, and definitely not the person arguing that the ball was “clearly on the line” with the emotional intensity of a high school debate champion. No scouts are in the corner taking notes, and the championship T-shirt is, by every available metric, not worth losing a friend from across campus over.

Second, congratulate people when they do something good. A “nice shot” costs nothing. So does helping someone up after you accidentally send them into the padded wall because you briefly forgot that IM Futsal is not the Champions League Final and that the person you just bodied is in the same section as you at noon. Treat others the way you’d like to be treated, or something like that.

Third, if you are winning by 25, maybe stop running the score up. I understand that you have finally discovered your calling as the defensive coordinator of Kirkland House B Basketball team, but mercy is also a virtue. There is no need to trap a sophomore named Ben at half court while his teammates visibly reconsider coming.

And finally, when the game ends, act like a normal human being. Do not continue litigating the referees on the walk back to the River, do not post the box score on your IG Story, and definitely do not say “we wanted it more.” You did not want it more. You were playing IMs at 9:30 p.m. in the QRAC on a Tuesday.

Be nice.