The Hunt comes back with a bang

Last year, when The Hunt failed to generate enough enthusiasm from students to be carried out, The Campus wrote that it would take “some strong-willed, resourceful, inventive underclassmen to get the ball rolling again.” But when the time came this January to boost interest and organize the Hunt, it was seniors — Ben Wessel ’11 and Taryn Tilton ’11 — who stepped up to the plate.

“No one else wanted to sit in a room and grade a bunch of art projects and YouTube videos for seven straight hours,” said Tilton. “No but seriously: we asked Liz Robinson, the director of the Old Stone Mill, what had happened to The Hunt and she said there was no leadership for it last year. Then she offered it to us, and we accepted. How could we turn that down?”

The Hunt is a Winter Term scavenger hunt that was created in 2008. Students form teams and have a week to complete as many of a set of tasks as they can. The teams garner points for completion of the tasks, for which they must submit photographic proof as well as be original and creative. At the end of the week, the team with the most points is declared the winner of the Hunt and receives $1,000.

Director of Project on Creativity and Innovation in the Liberal Arts Elizabeth Robinson’s organization sponsors The Hunt. The project is organized through the Old Stone Mill and is intended to foster “the ability to take intellectual risks, to think creatively and to create new knowledge and thought.” While the monetary reward can be an incentive for students to participate, the Hunt offers much more to its contestants in terms of creative fun and pure, unadulterated absurdity.

“The Hunt was started as a way to bring people together to do crazy things, to give people an excuse to set time aside for going on adventures,” said Tilton. “It’s just fun. I know Ben made a lot of his good friends through doing the Hunt freshman year, and in a term that can be centered so much around partying, it’s a great non-drinking option.”

“It’s such the quintessential Middlebury activity — going all out and getting really pumped over something that’s not necessarily earth-shattering, but it is always the most fun you could have,” said Wessel.

As leaders in organizing the Hunt, Wessel and Tilton not only acted as judges, but also came up with the item list. Some items were more on the serious side, such as “What risks has Middlebury taken as an institution?” or “Interview a trustee.” Others bordered on the more ridiculous, like “Turn a room upside down.” Tilton was surprised and pleased with the way teams approached the items on the list, especially the more confusing ones.

“To be honest, I know that some of mine were written when I was a little tipsy at home after Thanksgiving dinner, like — ‘If you choose to turn back and help the clown back, go to page 23’ — like, what is that?” said Tilton. “But it doesn’t really matter, because the teams could interpret the questions any way they wanted. In some cases, they actually interpreted the item in ways that were more creative than we had initially anticipated.”

Tilton and Wessel, taking advantage of their position as judges, went to new lengths to make the Hunt more interesting.

“We wanted people to feel like the Hunt was invading every part of their lives, in a way,” Tilton said. “So for instance, there were all the flash mobs and the asking of people on dates and unbirthday parties … but we also mailed them an extra item through intercampus mail, posted an item in The Campus, and [had them] turn in their phones to us for a day. That one was definitely a strategic one, just because it affected the team’s ability to communicate so much. I know Ben had [the phones] the next morning and like, seven alarms went off.”

The two judges set a suggested amount of points with the items and then when they received the submissions would decide, based on how thoroughly or creatively the task was done, how many points to give.

“We’d refer to [the suggested amount of points] and give full points if it was a job well-done or only a few if it looked kind of thrown together,” Tilton said. “We also awarded extra points for going above and beyond.”

“I’m the softie and Taryn’s the hard ass of the bunch,” said Wessel. “I’m going to want to give full points for most people and Taryn will have to be the tough love, discerning one.”

As a whole, the teams rose to the challenge of making this hunt an exciting one. With all of the videos and photo evidence, even students not participating were able to take a few minutes to enjoy creativity at its finest. While the final winner of the Hunt was Team “To Catch a Predator” all teams contributed to the madness. According to Tilton the “stand-out” in the contest came from Team Slow Motion Maniac’s Amy Scanes-Wolf who completed item “Do something stupid in a Canadian Tuxedo” by getting “a little tattoo on the back of her head dressed head-to-toe in denim,” said Tilton.

“People should be making time to do silly things like this more often,” said Tilton. “This is what college is supposed to be like — well, and for me, I think it’s this way even beyond college — but make everything into an art project and put time aside to hang out with your friends and do stupid things. Don’t take yourself too seriously. Everything is so much better that way.”