After week of ferocious battle, Zombies & Humans get their groove on
April 16th, 2011 Posted in Arts and LifeStory & Photos by Jess Allen
LOGAN—Brains. You could all most hear that collective thought as the zombie crowd, many covered in fake blood and dirt, jumped and swayed to the music pulsing from the speakers.
It was Utah State University Housing Department’s shindig for on-campus residents, and this year the number of participants quadrupled over previous years, said Tiffany Jakeman, Housing’s education peer mentor.
Why? Because of the walking dead.
“It’s been really good,” Jakeman said, standing outside the Hub in the Taggart Student Center Friday night. “We were a little worried but it’s been really good.”
Jakeman said ResLife, the department that plans the activities for on-campus students, decided to go with a Zombie Prom theme this year, and the dead rose in response.
Housing offers a shindig every year for on-campus residents to give them the opportunity to meet and mingle, Jakeman said.
• Click here for Zombie shindig video.
The morbid prom was a social endpoint to the Humans vs. Zombies game that took place over several days, as teams of humans and zombies battled across campus to the, er, death, coordinated by Brice Colby.
Some 822 USU students hurtled around campus in wary packs during this edition of the week-long Zombie-Human contest, battling with Nerf guns, said Housing staffer Alli Windley.
The game generated such enthusiasm that the organizers threw a Zombie prom, encouraging students to dress up for prizes.
About 300 students, living or undead, played games at the dance and received raffle tickets for prize drawings, said Windley, but if they wanted to play the games more than once they had to pay $1, with the proceeds going to benefit Japan tsunami relief.
“It’s not really your typical school dance,” said Ryan Scott, a senior studying math and physics.
Scott doesn’t live on campus, but had been invited to the dance through an email to all those who had been playing Humans vs. Zombies.
Most, but not everyone was in costume—some in the minority walked around looking weirdly normal in the sea of matted hair and dirty clothes.
“Dressing up isn’t exactly my thing,” Elliot Lof said, “but I’ve had fun with it.”
Lof said he had heard about the dance from his girlfriend, Jakeman, and let her go all out with coming up with their zombie get-up.
Like many students with mutilated clothes, Lof said his girlfriend and some of her friends went to the DI to find suitable zombie attire, which they tore up rolled in mud.
Jakeman said it cost her $6 to put the whole outfit together. She was relieved that the dance was not a flop like last year’s. But you can count on the undead to turn out.
“We have a theme every year,” Windley said. “This time it was zombies and it seemed to work out really well.”
TP
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