The 30th University of Chicago Scavenger Hunt kicked off at midnight. Parents, nought-years, and prospective applicants may enjoy reading this year’s list (and, if you get really interested, studying past lists at scavhunt.uchicago.edu).
http://scavhunt.uchicago.edu/lists/list2017.pdf
Not everyone at Chicago loves Scav Hunt. In fact, my guess is that a majority of students don’t. Still, lots of people do love it, including a substantial graduate student and alumni team that includes people who have been scavving for 15+ consecutive years. (A couple of years ago, a pair of 30-something Scavvies had their actual wedding as the centerpiece of a Scav event. A few years before that, a Scav list awarded points for team members – one pair per team – who got legally married during Scav, although in that case a prompt annulment was expected.)
The list is not the easiest thing in the world to read. There are lots of inside jokes – inside UChicago, inside youth culture, inside Scav. Scav is legitimately its own vital, dynamic folk tradition, and like most culture, it is highly self-referential. If you have never seen a Scav list before, you will not necessarily pick up on what is strictly traditional and what is innovative. The list has gotten a little more comprehensible this year by isolating all road trip-related prompts in one place, and putting them into an approximately rational order. The former convention was to scatter the road trip prompts in random order among the other prompts, so that the first task of each team’s road trip crew was to extract their tasks and theme from the larger list, then figuring out what their route was supposed to be.
It’s very inventive. Some of the jokes are good, others bad, but there are lots of points of contact with lots of different skills and intellectual traditions. I also admire that over the years Scav has acquired a pretty good gender balance in its nerdiness.