Amanda Romeiser

This March over spring break, I will be traveling in Europe, studying the World Wars and the Holocaust with the Study Tour Faculty Led Program to the Netherlands and France. We will be departing from the Philadelphia International Airport on Wednesday, March 8, and returning on Sunday, March 19. This study tour will be accompanied by a course during the spring semester of 2017, which will be taught and the tour will be led by Dr. Michael Hayse, director of the M.A. Program in Holocaust and Genocide Studies and Associate Professor of History, Mrs. Gail Rosenthal, director of the Sara and Sam Schoffer Holocaust Resource Center, and Dr. Mary Johnson of Facing History and Ourselves. The goal of the course is to broaden our understanding of the Holocaust, including the essential background information of the World Wars in order to prepare us for the experiential core of the course, which is the study tour components.

The amazing opportunity that this study tour provides the students, and the part that I am most excited about, is the ability to travel with three Holocaust survivors, who were “hidden children” during the war. When I heard about this incredible opportunity, I knew it was something I wanted to be a part of. The survivors, Leo Ullman, Maud Dahme, and Dan Kochavi, will be accompanying us, and we will be visiting sites relevant to their personal stories. Additionally, we will also be tracing the life stories that connect with two of the Stockton student participants, Tyler Eden and Jennie Meltzer. We will be touring the Anne Frank House, the Portuguese Synagogue, the “Hidden Village,” the D-Day landing sites, the Shoah Memorial Museum, and the Drancy concentration camp, to name a few a few of the sites.

Following our return, the student participants will be working on individual projects related to the World Wars or the Holocaust and how the historical sites we visited relate to our personal projects. Unlike some other students going on the Holocaust Study Tour, I am not a history major, pursuing a minor in the Holocaust and Genocide Studies, nor does my family have direct connections to the horrors of the Holocaust. My interest is very personal. I have always been very moved by the events of World War II, and the more I have learned regarding the Holocaust, the more I am made aware of the extreme psychological torture inflicted on the victims and the more I realized the connections the Holocaust has to my future career as a law enforcement officer and forensic psychologist. This is what I want the focus of my project to be. I am very excited about this opportunity, and I am counting down the days until we leave.

By: Amanda Romeiser

On Monday, October 17, 2016, I became a member of the walking dead, or rather the limping dead. My transformation came about during an event known as Humans vs. Zombies (HvZ), which is hosted by Stockton’s Live Action Games, or L.A.G., Club. This 24-hour week long game of tag is one of many HvZ games that is played at different schools, camps, neighborhoods, libraries, and conventions around the world. All players begin as humans, except for one player who is chosen to be the “Original Zombie” (OZ). The identity of the OZ remains a mystery until he or she tags a human for the first time, turning that human into a zombie. When humans are turned into zombies, humans must place the green bands that were originally around their arms around their heads. A human’s only defense against the zombies are socks, marshmallow shooters, or Nerf guns, which stun zombies for 2 minutes, giving the human a chance to run away. Luckily for the humans, there are safe zones around campus, like the buildings and staircases, where they cannot be attacked by zombies.

Stockton’s HvZ game began on the night of Sunday, October 16, following the kick-off meeting. When I originally signed up to play, I had two fully healthy knees. Unfortunately, I sprained my MCL and bruised my bone during a Quidditch tournament on Saturday, October 8. Due to this injury, I knew going into the meeting on Sunday night that I was not going to survive very long. My goal was to make it past Monday night.

In addition to the game play that occurs around campus during the day, the moderators, who are the members of the L.A.G. Club who run the game, created missions each night to bring the humans and the zombies together. These missions began at eight o’clock, and their theme involved a nutty professor and chicken nuggets. It was during Monday night’s mission that I joined the undead. I already had the iconic limping zombie walk mastered, so my transformation was effortless.

As in all games, there are winners and losers of HvZ. The zombies win if all human players are tagged and turned into zombies, while the humans win if the last zombie starves to death, meaning that the zombie did not tag anyone within 48 hours. This was my fate, but overall the zombies won this semester’s HvZ game. I thoroughly enjoyed my first experience playing Humans vs. Zombies, and I look forward to my next, during which I will hopefully be fully capable of running for my life.

Amanda Romeiser

One quaffle, three chasers, two bludgers, two beaters, one keeper, one snitch, one seeker, and most importantly seven brooms, also known as PVC pipes to Muggles, are the necessary positions and equipment to field a Quidditch team. Muggle Quidditch is a co-ed full contact sport, which has its origins in J.K. Rowling’s thrilling Harry Potter series, that uniquely combines rugby, dodgeball, and tag into one magical game. Here at Stockton the Ospreys embrace the “Three Cs” of Quidditch: competition, creativity, and community, which were all evident during their first official United States Quidditch tournament of the season and first annual Pumpkin Spice Cup, held on Sunday, October 25, 2016. This tournament successfully brought together the local community and families into one entertaining event replete with crowd-pleasing games.

I experienced this event as both a player and an observer. As a first year Quidditch player on the Stockton team I am still very new to the sport. This tournament gave me the opportunity to both compete against and observe teams, like the Warriors and the Honey Badgers, that ranked within the top 50 teams in the nation in the 2015- 2016 season. There was no shortage of competition at this tournament. From full contact tackling to complete shutouts this tournament saw it all. Just as in any other sport Quidditch requires a sense of creativity to achieve success. After each of our four games our captains discussed news ways to handle different situations throughout the games. Although, we were not successful in the traditional sense in this tournament, meaning we did not win, each challenge we faced led us to improvement.

In accordance with the overall atmosphere that Quidditch presents, the Pumpkin Spice Cup had a very strong sense of community. I received an overwhelming amount of support from not only my teammates but from other players and referees, who enabled this tournament to be an incredible learning experience for myself. As a player and an observer the chants were my favorite part of the tournament and are an excellent representation of the Quidditch community. Each team has a unique chant that is performed before each of their games that not only successfully heightens the energy of the team but the crowd as well, drawing them into the magical game.

We as the Stockton Ospreys have a long road of improvement ahead of us. The journey is not going to be easy, but with our brooms in hand we have hope for the rest of the 2016-2017 season.