By Mike Rougeau
People in Boston this weekend may have been puzzled by the hundreds of college-age students grouped in matching shirts, frantically traveling around the city.
These students were participating in Northeastern’s third annual Husky Hunt, a city-wide 24-hour scavenger hunt sponsored by the Resident Student Association (RSA). Six hundred students took part in the event, making up 50 teams of 12 students each, competing for the grand prize of 12 roundtrip JetBlue tickets to anywhere in the United States.
The Hunt began Friday at 8 p.m., although the winner will not be announced until December, with teams assembled in the Krentzman Quadrangle. The teams’ captains met with RSA members in the Curry Student Center to discuss safety, go over the rules and receive food vouchers, said RSA Vice President of Programming Cat Armato, who organized the event. As soon as team captains arrived, the members of each team rushed in different directions, many to their headquarters.
The captains were given an envelope containing the first clue, which read, “By the place where reflections are clear, aside the twin edifice your list will appear.” Upon reading it, The Surgeon General’s Warning team immediately sent students on bikes to the reflecting pool at the Christian Science Center.
Led by sophomore business major Jake Parente, The Surgeon General’s Warning allowed The News into their headquarters, located in the basement of the Mugar Life Sciences building, for an inside look at their strategy. The room was equipped with large maps, hundreds of sticky notes, laptops and 24 hours worth of snacks.
“We got here at 6:30[p.m.], hung up the maps and plugged in the computers,” said Erin Bolen, a sophomore pharmacy major, as members of the group waited for their teammates to return from the reflecting pool.
They quickly returned with a list of more than 400 clues and riddles to solve during the next 24 hours. The answer to each clue pointed to a specific object or place in the city. The groups’ members had to go to the location and take a picture.
Within the first 30 minutes, the team received several additional hints and riddles via text message and e-mail, including one message stating that all members of the team must have their arms crossed in front of their chests for a picture to count.
Parente said the group’s strategy was to “find as many clues as possible so when we send people out, they know where to go.” For the first few hours, the team remained in the headquarters deciphering clues on their laptops.
That seemed to be the strategy for many teams.
“We split into three separate teams of four,” said Brian Kirouac, captain of The Unfrozen Cavemen Lawyers. “Once we got our instructions we plotted out our routes for about two hours, then sent out the groups.”
Alex Wurzel, a member of The Fascist Regime of Jared Shafran, said his team waited almost three hours to send groups into the city.
“In the beginning, we just tried to figure out as many of the clues as we possibly could, in order to get a large number of clues in certain districts,” said Wurzel, a sophomore psychology major.
Armato said RSA took many precautions to ensure students’ safety as they ventured to the far ends of Boston during the wee hours of the morning.
“We required them to travel with at least three people at all times, so that way nobody was ever alone,” she said. “In creating the list, we tried to stay out of any areas that we thought weren’t as safe.”
She also said each team was given a sheet with phone numbers for the Boston Police Department, the Northeastern University Division of Public Safety, various RSA members and a car that could come pick them up if they were stranded. Each team was also instructed to use common sense.
“If there is anything that is a little less safe, go there during the day,” she said.
Kirouac, a sophomore communication studies major, said the Hunt gave him an opportunity to see a new side of Boston.
“There was the guy without pants that walked literally from Harvard Square to Allston,” he said.
His team members encountered the pants-less man, who was not a part of the Hunt, at several points throughout the night, and at multiple far-apart locations in the city.
Members of the Surgeon General’s Warning also had some interesting experiences. Dave Ledoux, a middler chemical engineering major on the team, said his team members ran into difficulty when they had to take a picture in front of a boat.
“We had to dodge security officers,” he said.
One of the team’s members was even slapped in the face by a stranger who called the team “punks” when they tried to ride their bikes through an area crowded with pedestrians, Ledoux said.
The most unusual challenges for The Fascist Regime of Jared Shafran team came in the form of the bonus challenges, which were usually delivered via text message minutes before they were to be completed, Wurzel said. He described one bonus challenge that required participants to travel to the North End to uncover a hidden message that could only be seen using a black light.
“The message said that we had to get grape hi-chews and bring it to Stetson West,” he said. “We had to run to Chinatown to get it.”
Danny Klosowski, a sophomore chemistry major and member of The Fascist Regime of Jared Shafran, said the final challenge involved traveling to Revere Beach, at the end of the blue T line, and digging through the sand for a treasure chest that was buried a foot deep. He said the challenge took a few hours to complete, but was worth 600 points for the team that found the chest.
Other interesting clues included “Wes Craven had his nightmare here,” “Marky Mark’s stop on a lonely night,” “OUCH on Charles” and “Sculpture with a D.”
The Hunt ended at 8 p.m. Saturday. Each team brought its collected items and a CD full of its pictures to the Curry Student Center. One roundtrip JetBlue ticket was raffled off to a participating student, and the members of each team gathered for an official group photo before departing.
Armato said this year’s hunt went much smoother than last year’s, which was marred by the remnants of Hurricane Noel and problems with bike rentals.
“This was my second year doing it. Having that year of experience made it a lot easier for me to know what went wrong, and how we could change things for the better,” she said.
