Unauthorized | OSA Premiere Event 10.22.2021
On a brisk Friday evening, students congregated in the Dining Complex (DC) as OSA finished their preparations for the Premiere Event of the semester – an action-packed spy game titled Unauthorized, developed in the style of well-known games such as Cops and Robbers and Underground Church. The students were divided by dorm and the dorms were sorted into five teams, each consisting of one guys’ dorm and one girls’ dorm. Many of the visitors on campus for the Experience MBU Weekend participated as well.
The Game Play
Each team was given a color and each member a title: Smuggler. Each smuggler was given a piece of paper of their color with a book of the Bible printed on it: Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, or Romans. These were their Bibles, and their mission was to deliver their Bible to its designated location somewhere on campus. When a Bible was deposited, the smuggler would return to the DC for another, and this would continue until each Bible was gone or until time ran out. The team with the most Bibles delivered in an hour would win.
But danger lurked in the shadows, and few things are more dangerous than an upperclassman wearing a hockey mask given the opportunity to hide in the bushes outside Old Main and scare people out of their wits. Several students were assigned the task of capturing smugglers and delivering them to the prison, where their Bible would be confiscated, and they would be stuck for two minutes. However, the prison had snacks, so it wasn’t a total loss.
These “cops” stationed themselves around campus and arrayed themselves in various costumes; one smuggler testified that, at one point in the game, he found himself cornered by a sumo wrestler and the Phantom of the Opera!
The Playing Field
At the beginning of the game, the Matthew drop-off station was located by the Modular Classrooms next to Century House. Although this station was quickly discovered, it proved to be a danger zone as many cops hid under the shadowy eaves of the little buildings. This would become the familiar haunt of a cop dressed as Spiderman; he took pleasure in jumping out at unsuspecting smugglers who had made the incorrect assumption that all potential threats were behind them.
Mark and John were a little farther, situated on the second floor and basement of Old Main respectively. Smugglers who braved the circle between the DC, Old Main, and the foyer, where various cops lingered, found themselves confronted with the prospect of moving as silently as possible up or down the stairs. However, many smugglers found a secret entrance and snuck through a service door at the side of Old Main, bypassing many cops and saving themselves a trip to prison.
Luke, on the other hand, proved elusive for much of the night. Located across the Upper and Lower Quads at the fire pit near the Costume Cottage, few teams thought to search so far from the circle until late in the game. Upon its discovery, many lone smugglers made the silent, harrowing trek across the dark Upper Quad and slid down the incline to the nearly pitch-black Lower Quad, hoping with all their might to avoid detection by the pair of hockey-masked cops terrorizing the fields.
A common question heard across campus that night was “Do you know where Luke is?” This caused no little confusion, especially if someone was looking for Luke DeWald, Director of OSA, and was directed all the way out to the fire pit instead!
The most terrifying prospect of the night was the journey from the DC to the location of Romans. Stationed on the balcony of the Fitness Center Gym (FCG), it was one of the first sites discovered at the very beginning of the game, and it quickly turned into a bottleneck zone. Smugglers had two routes to get from the DC to the FCG: through the front doors of the DC or out the backdoors on the lower level.
The front doors of the DC put the smuggler directly into the circle, where many cops awaited. Should they make it past them and down the stairs to the sidewalk alongside the gym, more cops hid in the shadows. Alternately, the side door of the DC avoided the circle, but rounding the front of the gym to the FCG door remained a road fraught with peril, and a cop usually loitered directly outside this substitute DC exit.
But smugglers could also sneak down the DC stairs into the basement, usually bustling with students during the day and eerily silent that night. Should a smuggler be trapped, escape was nearly impossible as both ends culminated in stairs, each classroom was locked, and each hallway led outside. The outdoor exits were a possibility if you were willing to face the cop who dwelt behind them: he who wore the mask of the Silver Clown. Any smuggler attempting to dart through the exit and skirt around the gym from behind would find themselves pursued by a silent, silver hunter.
Partway through the evening, OSA called an audible and switched some things up. Matthew’s station moved to the front of Old Main, where the Phantom patrolled a good portion of the night, and the new locale of Romans went undiscovered by many smugglers even after the completion of the game.
A Night of Fun
As the night came to a conclusion, the smugglers reconvened in the DC as OSA counted the Bibles that had reached their destinations; all of the Bibles confiscated by cops were out of play entirely. Although the score was very close, the dorms of Carey and Hilsen came out on top, winning them two days of free room checks during the week to follow.
OSA’s hard work shone through that night, and they truly outdid themselves with this Premiere Event. Unauthorized was a night to remember, packed full of action, laughs, and crazy chases throughout the main campus, and neither the cops nor the smugglers would have had it any other way.