Students Participate in Zombie Competition

Sunday, Jan. 13 marked the beginning of a campus wide, Human vs. Zombies competition with over 200 participants fighting to become the last human standing. The game, organized and run by the Youthful Alliance of Merrymaking (YAM) is designed to last 10 days, but could potentially end early if the humans do not “survive.”

The game will feature a series of high intensity missions that require escorts and protection of an important school official. The Humans vs. Zombies is the largest event to date that YAM has organized.

To start the game, one participant was designated the zombie, with the rest as humans. The goal of the zombie is to tag a human. If tagged, a human becomes a zombie. Tagged humans must also hand over their I.D. cards, made uniquely for the game, and zombies must register with YAM whom they have tagged to make the transition official.

To be protected against the zombies, humans carry Nerf guns, and if a zombie is hit, they must remain inactive for 30 minutes. To mark the difference between humans and their zombie counterparts, zombies wear red handkerchiefs around the neck, while humans don the handkerchief around the upper arm.

“Essentially the humans try and survive and complete missions designed to cure the diseased, while the zombies are trying to eat all the humans,” explained YAM president Luke Greenway  ’15.

This project is being funded by the Wonnacott Commons Council and MCAB social committee who have covered food and materials needed for the event, while YAM has the responsibility of organizing and advertizing to interested participants. A core group of five members that have been previously involved with YAM completed the majority of the planning to make the event possible. Greenway hopes that the hard work of these students will make the game part of future winter term activities.

“This is the first time we’ve done it, and if it’s really successful then we will be looking at making it an annual J-term thing,” continued Greenway. “It’s taken a lot of time and energy to organize, so J-term is the most feasible for that.”

YAM, a relatively new club, was created only two years ago. But in this short amount of time, the student organization has put on a few very successful events, including the building of the “The World’s Largest Block Fort” earlier this fall.

Greenway states that the club’s mission is about having fun.

“It’s about an attitude towards accepting that we are not too young for creative play,” explained Greenway.

“It’s not about not wanting to grow up and about continuing to play as we grow up and looking at our environment as a way to play.”