On August 31st, during Stockton’s Freshmen Welcome Week, the Stockton Entertainment Team (SET) hosted a nighttime event called the Amazing Race Treasure Hunt. Upon arrival, teams of four signed in at a table and received a closed envelope with the team’s name on the outside. All the teams filtered into the Campus Center Event Room to await further instruction. Once everyone arrived, a SET member gave us the basic rules of the game: solve the riddles to find the next location, find the most locations within the hour-an-fifteen-minute time frame, and don’t run. The prizes at stake for the first place team were individual tickets to Six Flags Great Adventure and Hurricane Harbor, which were pretty enticing to my team, Team Yik Yak.
Immediately after the instructions were given, all the teams solved their first clue and walked speedily towards their first location. Since each team’s clue order was scrambled, no two teams were headed to the same locations in the same order. My team benefited from the fact that one of our members attended the Educational Opportunity Fund this summer; thus, she was able to guide us to many of the locations around campus that were involved in the Amazing Race. As time drew to a close, Team Yik Yak headed back to the Campus Center to arrive before the 9:45pm deadline. Originally, we thought solving 22 out of the 38 clues would have awarded us at least third place. Once we started talking to other teams, we realized we would have needed all 38 locations to win. The only reasonable conclusion as to how the winning team made it to all 38 locations: they ran.
Overall, the Amazing Race was a great Welcome Week event that allowed students to become more familiar with the campus in an entertaining way. It also helped students to bond with new people by exchanging clue answers and working together to achieve a common goal.