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October brings with it leaves of yellow, orange, and red. Red leaves, red cheeks, red scarves and… red rocks?
Every year each RA staff is expected to organize an all campus program, like Hullapalooza.
The Complex’s staff was scheduled to have an event fall term. Pat Gordon, area sirector for Severance, Burton and Davis Halls noted in an interview that he and his staff were finding it difficult to plan an event so early in the school year, when there was so much else going on.
With these constraints in mind, Gordon remembered Red Rocktober, an event put on by his previous school, Marian University of Indianapolis.
During Red Rocktober, Gordon envisioned red painted rocks numbered 1-50 hidden all around campus. When a student found a rock, they would bring it to Pat’s Office in Davis in exchange for a prize. Rocks are either
worth small, medium or large prizes. At the end of the event, all participants names will be entered intro a raffle for a Kindle Fire HD.
“We thought it would be a really good program in the fall because we wanted to get everybody to explore campus—parts of campus they’d never seen before, and also meet people they’d never met before,” said Gordon.
Senior RAs Ella Fox , Russel Peterson, and Natalie Reinhart, part of the Complex staff, divided the campus into five equal areas and assigned three RA’s to each area, each with ten rocks to hide. The RAs mapped each rock’s location so that they could keep track of which rocks had and had not been found.
Red Rocktober has been fairly successful, and gained popularity through advertisements and social media.
Students seem to be engaged and excited about it, as 30 rocks have been returned. Gordon suspects that all of the rocks may have been found, but have not yet been brought to his office.
The Red Rocktober twitter feed, which has 65 followers, has tweeted two hints so far. One, a special “late night hint” said “#50 had always wanted to fly, so it went to this house on campus. Instead, it ended up making summer plans.”
Michelle Irukera ’16 saw the tweet and immediately ran to Bird House, where she suspected the rock was hidden. She said, “I felt really triumphant when I found the rock.”
Peterson said, “I think Red Rocktober provides a much needed distraction from all the things we Carls get so concerned about. Instead of worrying about that paper or getting anxious about winter break plans, we can allow ourselves to have fun with a couple of friends and go on a scavenger hunt!”
Sophomores Maddy Cosgriff and Claudia Sloves heard about the event and subscribed to the mobile updates. Cosgriff said, “we are very competitive people, so this kind of thing is right up our alley. I knew that even if I didn’t actively participate, I’d be walking down the street and think, ‘I bet that’s a good place to hide a rock’ and wouldn’t be able to resist checking.”
After receiving a mobile hint stating, “rocking around the clock ‘til broad daylight”, Cosgriff and Sloves scoped out the area around Willis, with hopes of finding a rock. After almost giving up, Sloves found rock 24 in a bush near Scoville. They took a selfie with their newly christened rock, “Barock”. Cosgriff is still on the hunt to claim a rock for in her words, “ my own personal glory.”
Hansen Li ’17 found a rock in the Hill of Three Oaks fire pit. He says, “I’m not so sure rock hunting is still on my high priority list.”
Nevertheless, Li has created a map of the rock locations found so far in order to help his friends find rocks of their own.
He is not certain whether his map is up-to-date because he, like Gordon, suspect many rocks may have been found but not yet turned in.
Gordon hopes that all rocks will be returned by the end of the month so that the Kindle Fire HD can be raffled.
