Students rejoiced outside the student center after barely having survived a zombie outbreak on March 1.
Last Friday, Student Activities hosted a free escape room event in the James V. Carmichael Student Center on the Kennesaw Campus.
“We did [an escape room] as a staff team-builder,” Event Coordinator and Assistant Director of Student Activities Matthew Mitchell said. “I said this was fun for us, so I thought we should bring it to the students rather than the students go to it.”
In an escape room, players must use clues around them to solve a puzzle, which then allows them to escape the room.
Attendees were given 30 minutes to solve a series of puzzles to escape the room and win. There were two escape rooms in total, and the one that opened the event was a horror and zombie-themed room. The following escape experience was wizard-themed.
A character dressed as a doctor in a bloody lab coat greeted players and gave a brief synopsis of the story and the roles of the players before attendees entered the room.
Players in the first experience took the role of nanotechnology students who were tasked with the goal of disabling a computer to prevent a zombie outbreak. Players needed to find several cords and plug them into the computer in order to disable it.
The room was dimly lit and players were given small flashlights to look around for hints lurking under tables or inside various props that either served as decoys or actual clues.
Players who opted for the second experience pretended to be students at a wizarding school, with the final goal being to earn their diploma and escape the room. The wizards found themselves in a room with rotating neon lights, skulls, wizard hats and candles and had to find clues to unlock several bags to eventually get to the diploma.
Attendees described the experience as “challenging” and “fun.”
The first group to go through the zombie experience won, and upon completing the room, players were taken to a separate room for a group picture.
The first group consisted of nine attendees, and the event had 100 reservations, meaning all the spots were filled.
The third-party agency Neon Entertainment designed the escape rooms. Even though the Cultural and Communications Center hosted a similar event in February, this is the first escape room to be conducted on campus by an outside company.
“The reason we do these sorts of programs is to bring events to students that they may not be able to experience themselves off campus, whether it be [because of] lack of knowledge that these things exist, monetary reasons or transportation,” Mitchell said. “It’s really about being able to provide a space for students to grow and learn among each other. Anything we do is to provide real-world experience to what students learn in the classroom.”
Mitchell said Student Activities plans to partner with the KSU Explore program in late April for its next adventure, during which students will tour the Georgia Aquarium, the World of Coke and the College Football Hall of Fame.
To find out more about Student Activities visit studentactivities.kennesaw.edu.
