Simpson College has zombies on campus!

If you were to walk around Simpson within the past week, you may notice people wearing orange or green armbands. These armbands represent who the “people” are, and who have been turned into zombies.  An orange bandana represents a human, and green signifies the  zombies.

Once a regular tradition on campus, this is the first year the game has been held since 2019, making its return after COVID-19.

Nick Proctor, professor of history, who oversees the game, explained how it works.

“It is a long persistent game of tag that runs for 5 days, 24 hours a day, with the play area being outside,” Proctor said. 

He references the book, “The Palaces for the People” which the Foundations 1 classes are reading, tying the topic of the book to the game.

“The book is about what the author calls ‘social infrastructure,’ which is basically ways for people who are different from one another to have a reason to talk to each other. There are a lot of ways to build social infrastructure on campus but playing HVZ is one of the most fun ways to do it,” Proctor said. 

An argument in the book is that the superficial connections that people have to one another are sometimes important to creating a community, which the game focused on.

“My role in the game has been a lot like an admin. I have been helping with a lot of the games that the class has taken part in,” Sophomore Kristen Roe said. “The community building that the game provides definitely did its [job] with us having 140 people signed up to play the game, so I think it was good for meeting people you would not have met otherwise.”

First-year Bryson Gibson was the first person to be turned into a zombie to start the game. 

“Being the first zombie was fun for the first couple of days until it got tiring chasing people around,” Gibson said. “I had some difficulties with there being a lot of humans. It’s hard to chase people with a backpack and if they would see me, they would just run back inside.”

“If I were to do the game differently, I would have hidden around campus more, when I hid by Kent, I was able to catch people off guard. I think it would have helped the game more if it started off with more zombies and less humans,” Gibson said.

One human-turned-zombie, first-year Jacob Carlson, gave his thoughts on the educational aspects that go into recruiting for the event.

“I felt like drawing people into the game was important, so I helped by using some marketing tips I learned to get more involvement for the game,” Carlson said.

The game ended on Friday, Sept. 15, when the zombies ate President Byers in the final mission, so no need to worry about any more zombies roaming around.