Human bowling, a brain-teasing scavenger hunt, a Crazy
Cart Race and heaping portions of school spirit will be on
tap for the university's inaugural Fall Festival, a
three-day, all-free celebratory event on the Homewood
campus to which the entire Johns Hopkins community is
invited.
The festival will kick off on Friday, Oct. 1, with an
afternoon cookout and pep rally on the Beach and culminate
on Sunday, Oct. 3, with a large breakfast beginning at 2
a.m. in the Glass Pavilion of Levering Hall.
The jam-packed weekend is intended to acquaint
participants with the campus, community and each other. The
scavenger hunt, for example, will pit teams of students,
faculty and staff against one another to solve a series of
more than 20 challenging riddles that lead them around the
campus and surrounding community. Modeled after similar
scavenger hunts at Stanford and Princeton, the JHU
Runaround is advertised as an "hours-long, social-bonding,
team-building, community adventure that offers an
intellectual and physical workout." Those not participating
in the Runaround will be able to track a team's progress on
a tote board set up outside the Milton S. Eisenhower
Library.
Ralph Johnson, associate dean of student life and
chair of the event's steering committee, said that the
concept of the festival was to create an occasion that
would celebrate campus community, encourage school spirit
and become a memorable tradition.
"We decided from the onset that we wanted to have very
participatory, active and engaging activities to try to
bring together students, faculty and staff," he said. "We
wanted to debunk the myth that there is no community at
Johns Hopkins, and to really encourage spirit and pride
about being a Blue Jay, about being a student, about being
a faculty member and about working here at Hopkins. We
deliberately stayed away from big events that were to some
degree passive, like just sitting at a concert. We wanted
to give people things where they can really get
involved."
The opening-day cookout will begin at 3 p.m. and will
feature a DJ, an open volleyball game and oodles of
edibles, including beef and vegetarian burgers, hot dogs,
side dishes and desserts. The cookout will end with a rally
fronted by Hopkins cheerleaders, a pep band and
representatives from various varsity sports teams who will
lead the crowd from the Beach to Homewood Field, the site
of the football game between the undefeated Blue Jays and
Dickinson College.
The football game begins at 7 p.m., the same time the
Video Shootout gets under way. Participants in the Video
Shootout will have 24 hours to write, shoot and edit a
five-minute video about student life or school spirit at
JHU. Teams will have extended access to the video editing
equipment in the Digital Media Center. The videos will be
played at 10 p.m. Saturday on a large movie screen outside
Levering Hall, where the audience will cheer, Showtime at
the Apollo-style, to choose the winner.
The Saturday slate of events begins with more athletic
events at noon, followed by the Crazy Cart Race at 4 p.m.
Not just your typical push-and-steer go-cart race, the
Hopkins-ized event will require each blindfolded team to
communicate in a unique way. Students and faculty from the
Writing Seminars, for example, could opt to give their
directions in verse, while a team of mathematicians might
concoct formulas. Each team is required to have a
cheerleader, a heckler, a cart rider and another person to
push along a tennis ball with a lacrosse stick.
The epicenter for Saturday will be the Levering Union
and Plaza, the site of student-run activity booths from 4
p.m. to midnight, student group performances, the Video
Shootout viewings and novelty events, including human
bowling and foosball.
A Student and Faculty/Staff Variety Show will take
place at 7 p.m. on Saturday in Shriver Hall. The headline
act for the evening will be a piano duet by President
William R. Brody and Peabody Institute Director Robert
Sirota.
Other Fall Festival events include Casino Night,
varsity sports games by the men's and women's soccer teams
and the men's water polo team, and performances by the
Witness Theater, a student drama group.
Johnson said the festival committee, comprised of
staff and students, tried to cater to a variety of tastes
and to give people choices.
"People will be able to take part in most of the
events, and we hope they go from one event to another," he
said. "In the end, if attendees have met some new people,
had some fun and engaged in one or two activities, then we
feel we'll have been successful."
Attendees are asked to bring their J-cards to the
cookout and breakfast to help organizers track numbers.
For an updated Fall Festival calendar and to register
for an event, go to
fallfestival.jhu.edu.