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Apr 18, 2008, 10:40AM
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DISCUSSION
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If the parents of these kids spend the money to send them to a glorified day care center (albeit with a slightly more complicated vocabulary), maybe they should take the blame. Or the administrators that sell parents glossy terms like "enrichment" and "personal growth" for thousands of dollars. After all, in a way they're just taking advantage of what the system allows. Somebody pays for your every need, you get to run around and pretend you're in Dawn of the Dead, and you can read some good books if you feel like it. I don't know if it's their fault for deciding to do that.
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Humans vs. Zombies is a legitimate game theoretical situation which was examined in two separate classes (Economics and Political Science) that I took in college. It is a way to examine the effects of a panic on the population and how it spreads to different areas. Here's a nice link: http://zombies.insertdisc.com/mattcordes/ If this game were an experiment in political theory, I'd say that these kids were doing a great job of applying their education. Instead, since they haven't made that argument to the administration, I'm going to guess that they have no idea of the implications of their game and that all of the criticism they've gotten so far is well deserved.
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I think this transcends just what a liberal arts education has turned into. We are living in the day were everyone (espicially politicians vying for president) think that 'no child should be left behind.' IE, everyone should go to college. Guess what, COLLEGE IS NOT AND SHOULD NOT BE FOR EVERYONE!!!!! The problem we have these days is we are holding onto this fading image of obtaining a bachelor's degree requiring a certain pursuit of knowledge. Now, the BA is the new high school diploma. Our society is starting to take this as a standard, thus the whole experience has been devauled.
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Also, there is the new phenomenon of the '20' something. You know, that ass-hole 23 year old making 50k a year at some entry level job in DC. Hardwood floors, a record collection, and thinks a 8-5 workday is tough. Today, we are expected to be grown up by 30, not 22. Back when all our preconceptions of college we founded, undergraduates were expected to be married and have a kid coming out of the chute. Such events are sobering, maturing experiences. I bet if you were a Dad during undergrad, you would have LOATHED this H&Z game.
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It's not so much the weird games of "H v. Z" that bother me, but rather the infatuation with drinking games as a way to pass time. I just don't get it. But yes, I think this article has a legitimate article. It's a little harsh, but as a student at a small, midwest liberal arts school myself, I'd have to agree with the majority of your observations.
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Having beared through this entire article, I feel it safe to say that one has to experience walking through Goucher's campus while a game is going on to really understand the nature of it. I'm from Goucher, and I've never played, but I've always been a huge supporter of the game because it is something that brings people together, and its just a hell of a lot of fun, which, by the way, many people consider an important part of their education, as well as their life. I should also like to mention that many of us found the Washington Post's portrayal of the game as hysterically over-dramatized, particularly the sections describing Max Temkin, considering many of us know him. He happens to be one of the more involved students on campus, with a passion for student rights and supporting student efforts in social and political issues. In fact, now that I think about it, he's running for SGA VP for Student Action next year. He's been Parliamentarian this year, and he does take his education very seriously, as do many of the players in the game. The truth is, if you work hard, playing hard is just as important for staying sane. I don't know what kind of experience you had at your liberal arts college, but mine at Goucher has been nothing but educational on academic, social, experience, and community levels. Email me if you'd like to ask me more to better understand some of the initiatives of the game.
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I am a student at Goucher College, and I went to public school in NYC, among people who did not enjoy such privileges during K-12. I am not a privileged white kid, as was implied in this article and in the comments, and I take my education very seriously. With that said, I'd like to echo Margaret's sentiment: if you work hard, you should play hard. I'd rather add an element of folly to my life along with my education and my future career (public school, inner city teacher) otherwise it would mean a disheartening existence. I was also profiled in the article and I have to say that it has connected me to the community as a whole. We have had community discussions at length about the game, and among ourselves. Many of us are aware of what the game implies or how it can be interpreted. However, we choose to view it through innocent eyes of just trying to have fun. Any other approach is just too jaded.
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Talking beyond college, what is the whole cultural fascination with Zombies these days anyway? Just last weekend I was invited to a Zombie Prom for someone's 30th! birthday. I constantly read about public events in NYC where normal people dress as ghouls and show up at Circuit City or something. What is this infection that has us in it's grip?
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At Virginia Tech., unsuspecting nerdy students were shot dead, for real, by someone insane. In this article, YOU have attacked unsuspecting, nerdy students (pinpointing my son, Jonathan Suss, who has already declared a Chemistry major), disparaging them in front of the world for participating in an imaginative, cooperative, and nonviolent game of tag. I am proud of Jonathan's participation in the game. He showed dedication and team spirit, and had a hell of a good time making new friends (who supplied him with food while he waited in ambush). In your opinion, it would seem that all competitions and strategy "games" are evil wastes of time -- I suppose that includes games of chess as well as battles in the laboratory against "innocent" diseases. Good for you, focusing anger and attention on such a non-topic! -Randi Suss, Maryland
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I remember this article for its rightful lampooning of college students wasting time. And it makes me wonder about David Mekelburg's current article suggesting that American college students are more "grown up" than their counterparts in other countries. I'd say this piece is a good refutation of Mekelburg's main point.
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First off, Billy, that is not cool at all. No one want s to hear stuff like that. Second, I actually went to a non-liberal arts college that was located in the city and was full of commuters; extremely boring. Yes, I was getting a great education, and competing in sports at the same time, but I was not interacting on a level that these students are. My brother went to a liberal arts school and I could only wish I was able to take the kinds of classes he took AND participate in on campus stuff. Some people's comments make it sound like college is supposed to be this glorious institution where you go to school, organize a worthy protest, and prepare for your future. College is a business, nothing more. And now the students realize that and, in depressing times such as the present, decide, "You know what, while I am here, I am going to enjoy myself and have some fun." Are they dropping out of school? No. Are they failing there classes? No. Praises to Goucher for looking at their students as human beings with potential instead of a number and a check.
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While I applaud the author for sounding like a down-to-earth, no-nonsense guy, it appears as though he never learned that stress is worse for your grades than any club activity. I play HvZ actively on my UMD campus, and it helps a lot with de-stressing during and after exams. The game also helped me make my first group of friends during freshman year--I love being on-campus now, and wouldn't be anywhere else (unless they had an HvZ game too). A lot of professors have even been known to play with us, and we have graduate students and commuters and part-timers too. In my opinion, people who complain about HvZ as being a waste of time don't really seem to know what they're talking about. I'd also like to point out that those of us who play HvZ tend to be in better shape than a majority of non-playing college students. Being fit is a key part to 'surviving' the game, and I think that playing this "glorified game of tag" is a great way to start a lifetime habit of exercising. Oh, and, just for the record, a large majority of our players are science majors. They do not 'do the minimum required to get by'; in fact, a lot of the science/math/etc majors are some of the most hardcore players I've seen. I challenge anyone who claims this game is a waste of time to find a campus near them that has the game running, and play for even a few days. Just try it.
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As someone who didn't finish college because I couldn't afford it, I may have a chip on my shoulder. But it still burns me to see kids who have advantage of being able to spend four years reading classic and contemporary books, talking to learned professors and not worrying about make ends met, spend time on games like this. I'm sure plenty of those students who play are keeping up with their studies, but a lot are wasting an opportunity--and a lot of money.
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I have to say, in my 4 years I learned far more out of class than in. During my sophmore year I probably skipped classes 2 or 3 days a week to watch old movies or go off into Baltimore. I failed my study abroad semester (2nd semester, junior year) to get drunk and bum around. And I still graduated Cum Laude. What's that say about our fucked up Higher Education system?
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Society pampers kids, whether in college or not, and the idea that 20-year-old college students are under a lot of stress (compared to people trying to make ends meet, providing for their families, etc.) is a little strange. On the other hand, what's so bad about these students having some fun? The author, and some of those who commented, are too harsh, in my opinion.
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They're All Zombies
A recent article puts the national spotlight on “Humans vs. Zombies,” where students all but prove the lack of seriousness at liberal arts colleges.
Photo copyright the Washington Post.
The Washington Post devoted 4300 words of its April 13 magazine to an article about “Humans vs. Zombies,” a small phenomenon that started at Baltimore’s Goucher College and has since spread to larger universities like Penn State and Cornell. (Read the article here.) The game is essentially a glorified version of tag—one player starts as the “Original Zombie” and the rest start as “humans” that get tagged and converted to the mock undead. The ranks of either side grow based on strategy and planning until one is declared a winner. Most people probably passed time in a similar way throughout their childhood.
But “H v. Z,” as it’s commonly abbreviated, isn’t meant as a pleasant way to spend a spring day. At Goucher, where the Post profile was set, the game includes 200 students, frequently lasts a week or more, and requires plenty of firepower in the form of Nerf guns. Max Temkin, a ringleader of Goucher’s human division and the main subject of the Post piece, was more than happy to exhibit all of his 10 Nerf weapons to reporter Laura Wexler. He pontificates about his “inner child” and the “weird kid” camaraderie that H v. Z promotes, unmoved by anyone who might feel threatened by roving packs of gun-toting students prowling their campus (wearing, in his own case, “steel-toed ‘zombie-stomping boots’”). He also never makes it clear why, of all days, Goucher students chose to start the spring 2008 H v. Z game on April 16, the one-year anniversary of the Virginia Tech shootings perpetrated by Seung Hui Cho, another nerd with a penchant for artillery.
No, Temkin didn’t address such things because a school shooting is a serious matter, and nerds of this intensity are incapable of confronting serious issues head-on. In the May 8, 2007 edition of The Quindecim, Goucher’s school paper, Temkin called H v. Z “a peculiarity that exists at Goucher that you couldn’t find at any other school.” Now that the game has been embraced by students at a dozen-odd other colleges, we can see its proponents for what they really are: kids who view college as a four-year playground.
These students exists at any school—hence the popularity of H v. Z at bigger campuses like the University of Maryland and Bowling Green State—but it’s telling that this game originated on a 1350-person campus like Goucher’s; something about the self-contained small communities of liberal arts colleges enables students to waste their time in such needlessly complicated ways. As a recent alumnus of such a school, I’ve seen that most undergraduate humanities majors were able obtain a GPA in the B range while doing barely any work. (The same can’t be said for science majors, it should be noted.) I have no idea what kind of work ethic Temkin and his cohorts have, nor do I know the average grades of H v. Z players, but they are familiar types insofar as the Post portrays them.
Their confidence suddenly boosted after leaving high school (and home), these proudly “weird” kids find themselves with a dearth of necessary schoolwork and a whole new audience to impress with their superficial quirks. Maybe they wear a funky hat or cut their hair into a Mohawk. Maybe they stop wearing shoes around campus or start throwing a Frisbee in obviously inappropriate spots. Or maybe they buy 10 Nerf guns and stop going to class, the better to focus on their 24-hour-a-day zombie fantasy. “[A] player’s life can be entirely consumed by the game” during H v. Z, writes Quindecim interviewer Asa Eisenhardt. The Post article abounds with descriptions of the participants’ months-long preparation, the time-consuming strategy involved, and, of course, the necessary hours spent convincing the administration that H v. Z is a legitimate way to spend time.
It’s not, and that’s what makes the participants “nerds” as opposed to plain-old dedicated students. Young people who attend to their classes and reading, or who campaign on campus for a social issue—these are examples of students who appreciate college for what is: four years with relatively little responsibility and commitment, where free time is yours to fill in productive ways. Alternatively, you can become Jonathan Suss, a Goucher freshman in the Post profile who tagged a key human by “waiting in the shower stall in the bathroom for eight hours.” Clearly the Goucher administration have this image in mind when they claim in their marketing materials that their students “engage the world as true global citizens.”
Of course, it’s the liberal arts academic mentality that allows this type of student to float by undeterred. Throughout my own experience, seminar instructors hardly ever told students they were wrong, and they instead opted for gentler retorts like, “Well, can you find any examples in the text?” The result is a nationwide army of students who know a few academic buzzwords and talking points, but who lack any kind of true intellectual seriousness. By and large, these students grew up expecting to go to college, viewing it more as a rite of passage than a privilege. When they show up and a thesis on Dave Eggers or Chuck Palahniuk is valued the same as one on Adam Smith or Aristotle, what could seem more mundane? This type of academia merely reinforces and bolsters a student’s existing personality by piling on jargon; I’m reminded of the time I sat in the cafeteria and heard a junior philosophy major unironically describe his squalid campus bedroom as “a Hobbesian state of nature.” Three years of philosophy classes and no one had sufficiently emphasized that Hobbes was concerned with man’s natural proclivity to conflict and war, not a bongwater stain on the carpet.
Put yourself in the position of such a young person: You arrive to college after years of being told you’ll be there, and you find that the student body isn’t much bigger (probably even smaller) than your high school, and much more socially forgiving. The institution “prides itself on encouraging students to be individuals” (Wexler’s description of Goucher), which in actuality means no one will ever tell you you’re wrong, even if you run around campus with fake firearms on the anniversary of a school shooting. You soon find a group of like-minded “individuals” and all realize that the barest minimum of academic work will secure you a B or C average. Possessing a small vocabulary’s worth of academic jargon, and with no impetus to interact with life outside a self-contained campus, you’re free to pass the time however your zombie-loving heart pleases. Suddenly you end up being profiled by The Washington Post, agreeing that your preposterously complicated version of tag provokes questions about “the balance of security and freedom.”
Again, this kind of attention-getting “quirkiness” no doubt happens in bigger schools, but it’s harder to get noticed in an environment like Bowling Green (undergraduate population: 29,000). Hence the events of April 8 at Alfred University (total student population: 2300), where an H v. Z participant was seen walking around campus with a large gun peeking out of his shirt. A frightened student justifiably called the college police, who instituted a campus-wide lockdown for over two hours. All this so a guy could take out a “zombie” with maximum efficiency.
“How has the Virginia Tech shooting affected me personally?” Temkin rhetorically asks Wexler. “It’s reduced my individual liberty as a student because of the reaction to it. I obviously think school shootings are a tragedy… But I just don’t see how they connect to our game of tag.” In other words, he sees no connection between gun-related violence on campuses and a weeks-long game that requires participants to carry realistic-looking toy guns, with some players dressed “all in black, wearing leg and shoulder holsters,” as Goucher student Sutton Ashby is described in the Post. And why would he see such a connection, when the administration refuses to call a fool a fool? Wexler quotes Goucher president Sanford Ungar’s comments from the recent alumni quarterly: “We will not seek to label as ‘dangerous’ every student who is merely different… We must make our decision with an eye toward striking a delicate balance between security and personal freedom.”
These students aren’t so “different,” though, as proven by the participation of 200 Goucher undergraduates in the game, far more than any official campus club. They’re just kids who don’t appreciate the opportunity they have to attend college, so they’ve turned it into a 287-acre playpen in which to act out adolescent games. Are they aware that only 35% of Americans get to attend college in the first place, or that the average total cost of a private institution is $25,200 a year? Tuitions keep rising so colleges can provide students with more opportunities and more luxurious campus settings, but too few people are asking whether or not it’s a good deal to pay thousands upon thousands of dollars so your kid can spend his time “killing zombies” for four years. In preparation for the recent games, Temkin claims to have read The Art of War. He must have skipped over one well-known piece of Sun Tzu’s advice: “Opportunities multiply as they are seized.”
